H2H7 / [H2H7 Finals] - Barons vs Canes vs Atlas vs Laborers

Asteroid Fields I think takes this for me. There's just more details that I keep opening the park to look at because you can look at it for hours and still have not seen everything. I think my favorite was actually the little UFO races off the edge. 

 

Paradise Pier was super clean, but I think I watched California Screamin' once and then poked around the rest of the park for like 2 minutes and was bored. I hope that I can get a recreation of a park to look as clean as this though, it just was very small for the scale and didn't have little things to keep you interested in the same way like the Raptor recreation did.  

- has finished stuff

- has finished stuff

- has finished stuff

- has finished stuff

- has finished stuff

- has finished stuff

somewhere a boy named Kyle is laughing.

Finals has arrived!

 

Barons: So unfortunate that this was unfinished, the foliage + rockwork environment that had been created was incredible and the coaster had an excellent start. No Fk's knot though...

Canes: Suh good! Really enjoyable, at times perhaps too busy but overall near flawless work. I actually liked the large ferris wheel, it worked fine but maybe the black was too great a contrast. Would have preferred to see [park that shall remain nameless] but this is certainly worthy of a finals park. Great job on it _____, and I can only hope to see more work from you in future. Overall a very consistent run from the Canes ending in my probable vote; well done on an excellent season.

Laborers: Almost a brilliant park. I think that the overly large architecture and empty pathing really hurt this unfortunately. Having the massive castle in the middle of the map didn't help much, I think it would have been better placed either at the very back or in a corner. Just that, the size of all the buildings really dwarfed some of the atmosphere creating peep-level features that I missed when viewing.

Heaven's Atlas: Such a great-to-see contrast to the other parks that were made [especially evident with the unfinished baron's fantasy park]. Colours were bold and worked brilliantly in contrast with the darker landscape and space setting. The entrance with the waiting transport was beautifully executed, and the fun meter was genius! I did however feel that the planet with the invert and wingcoaster was lacking architecturally, which was unfortunate because you had the two main attractions with such limited surroundings. The building that the invert wrapped itself around for example was almost completely textureless and didn't [at least to me] have an real purpose other than to try and offset the barren landscape. Still, overall a very good finals park!

 

Great H2H season in my opinion, the four-way finals I think works very well as a means of ending it 'with a bang' and I wouldn't mind seeing it implemented at the start in any future H2H competition.

HA - It's a really fun park for sure and looks so much like a Levis/cBass/Gymkid trio, which is mostly a good thing. Great hacks and the telescope hack was pretty cool once I figured it out. Space pinball is really good. I just feel that the atmosphere had very little skill or creativity (but the details definitely did). Space is really easy when it comes to "landscape," but the floating islands landscape were well done. The park screen showed some pretty awful bright colored buildings which I think would offend any real alien as a horrible stereotype of how they like ugly neon colors. For architecture it's just too weak. I am normally in favor of people going with crazy ideas and don't get me wrong, the ideas were great, but where is the skill here? It's not just about fun factor, not matter what the meter reads. 75%

 

ML - "I think I have seen this before" was the first feeling I got. It borrows from DisneyAir, DisneySea, World's Fair and even other parks to be fairly recycled looking. The building scale is pretty big, tho that didn't bug me too much. The naming... damn. Disney Punk? That's really the park name? Mr. McSteamy's Factory Tour? That's the name of the coaster in the otherwise amazing castle?!?!?? I did enjoy the park and it's solid work, but I feel like you guys really swung and missed on some vital park points. As mentioned earlier, where are the Disney references other than 20,000 leagues? A few nice full post-season park, just it kinda does not do what it should. 75%

 

RB - Amazing... aquaduct? Awesome... tree? 45%

 

I feel like an ass giving fairly negative reviews on these parks, but I was disappointed by them. They were really good, but not great and each seem to make mistakes or take big risks for a post-season park.

 

So our park... It was a semi rec from the start, tho it's true that along the way it did get close to being a rec, but is not fully. Even if it's a rec, so what? Really, I think it takes more skill to pull off something done in real life than to just make a theme up. I was happy to see such a high level of quality in the park. California Screamin is possibly my all-time favorite coaster... those supports, just damn! We did run out of time a little, but I was very happy with the end result.

 

This is going to be one hell of a match-up and the winner will have really earned their championship by taking this 4-way round.

 

Edit: I am not going to post a reply to the reaction to this post. I stated my honest opinion. Focus on the parks guys.

Darren, is RCT a game?

Atlas. Wow. Well this is interesitng. 

 

The architecture is atrocious. The colors are an absolute disaster. The layouts are terrible. The hacks mostly seem simple. Nothing here follows conventions of what NE thinks of as good.

 

I fucking love it. 

I guess I can go ahead and explain what we intended our finals park to be.  What's there already gets the main idea across: a fantasy world where guests have to enter by crossing a large mysterious bridge overlooking a foggy lake and a barren land.  At the end of the bridge stands a shining castle labyrinth.  The idea was that there would be almost no movement upon opening the map, just peeps walking across a bridge looking over a dead land.  This would be confusing and force people to explore to find something.  The second part of the map was going to be an underground/water civilization bustling with movement and a totally different color scheme than anything above ground.  It was an ambitious project, essentially creating an entire world with 2 contrasting atmospheres rather than 1 cohesive theme park.  

 

Unfortunately we just couldn't really tackle it like we wanted to, and as the deadline drew nearer it became clear that it wasn't going to get done on time.  We did want to release what we had and explain our vision though, rather than claim our hard drives crashed; it's better to admit defeat than shift blame.  Thanks for a great season everybody, Louis, Liam, and itm especially.  I'll post reviews later today, but I was really impressed by all 3 after my first look around

So today I went back for a more in depth look at these parks.

Started with Heaven's Atlas again.
I think I've never seen a heartline coaster being used, so that was an interesting starting ride and it worked well. Your first Asteroid had some really interesting architecture and color combinations. Some of it was a bit undertailed, the Transasteroidial station for example. The Warp Portal was very cool. Very very cool. I really liked Zippyr Zoppyr Zruum. When I started playing RCT again a couple months ago, I had this same idea for a micro to get back into the game but I never really knew what to do with it. You pretty much built what I wish I could/would have. Nice Job. Whoopsyl Slyzkof is one of my favorite coasters in the contest. (The yellow flyer) It reminded me a bit of Line Rider. Very clever idea and splendid execution. I really liked what you did with the log flume and launch tower and that space-steampunk asteroid. Looked very nice. The Asteroid with Mörsoc and Eclipse was by far my least liked area of the park. It wasn't as colorful and playful as the rest and not nearly as creative. It was pretty much the most normal area you had and it did not really fit.
This is easily another 5* park from you guys. It's one of my favorites in the contest.
9/10

Next up was Hurricanes.
The architecture in your park was superb. I particularly liked the buildings at the entrance and the Mystic Manor. The foliage and the lake gave this a very nice and open atmosphere which I liked very much as well. The part that I cared for the least were your rides. Yes, they were executed very nicely and holy shit those supports on California Screamin', but it feels like a rehash of what we've already seen. The quality was certainly there, but they just didn't hold my attention for too long. Whereas I spent more time looking at your foliage/landscaping/lake and architecture, I spent so little time with the rides.
8/10

Manual Laborers were next, I went alphabetically by team name.
Save for some extremely boring flat backsides, the architecture was spot on. Some really cool interiors although it was weird to see there were windows in the middle of the bathrooms .
That castle was such a cool construction and the coaster made it even better. Coney Island is the coolest wild mouse ever. Some of your areas could have donw with some more color though. The area with and around the castle was really dull as was the entrance area compared to the area near Spark Gap and Coney Island.
8.5/10
 

 
I feel like an ass giving fairly negative reviews on these parks, but I was disappointed by them. They were really good, but not great and each seem to make mistakes or take big risks for a post-season park.
 
So our park... It was a semi rec from the start, tho it's true that along the way it did get close to being a rec, but is not fully. Even if it's a rec, so what? Really, I think it takes more skill to pull off something done in real life than to just make a theme up. I was happy to see such a high level of quality in the park. California Screamin is possibly my all-time favorite coaster... those supports, just damn! We did run out of time a little, but I was very happy with the end result.
 
This is going to be one hell of a match-up and the winner will have really earned their championship by taking this 4-way round.

All I hear is "skill skill skill skill skill" despite the fact that voting is based on what you LIKE or DISLIKE... You would think that a technically precise and skillful park like Lotte World being beaten in rankings by less "skillful" parks would've taught you a thing or two about what matters to the voting body here at NE, but I guess not. To be honest, I'm bored of realism now because no matter how much skill is involved, it always ends up looking the same now - tediously detailed architecture with curvy pavement. Whoop de Doo. Plus, I would argue it's relatively easier to build looking at a ton of source reference images and copying / translating them piece by piece into RCT than it is to sketch your own world and build it from scratch - which is why I don't like recreations and find them pleasing but boring.

I'm more interested in creative ideas, originality, intriguing concepts and cool execution of these ideas in ways we haven't seen before, creating something beautiful that isn't limited by reality.

And let me also say that taking a big risk for a post final park may just be what is needed to take the title from the "safe and skillful" canes...

I'll add that while it may not have been the most technically-detailed or skillfully built, Asteroid Fields was honestly amazing. It was a joy to see ideas like the fun factor meter, the tilted rides, and the observatory (I lost it when I came across all 3 of those). The fun factor is an amazing thing, and while I'd much rather attend a park like Paradise Pier or DisneyPunk in real life, this is a game and I could stare at Asteroid for a long while. It's not my typical style of park that I lean towards, but it what it arrives to be that makes me want more: it doesn't care for detail, for insane hacks, it just aims to make a cool, fun park filled ideas and motion. It's a big F U to parks built nowadays where we only look at its value in terms of Art Deco blocks and authentic transfer tracks, and for that I really love it.

Now that said, I also really love our park and think it's one of the better Disney parks made, and that sign across the back of the loop is on point. The atmosphere really kicks in and sells the park to us, and the alternate-universe-recreation is one of my favorite things in this game, with assess details and rides like the Manor and San Fran Painted Ladies. There's some really amazing stuff here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJiH4z0WApg

Not going to write anything too in-depth. There are plenty of essays in this thread already and I don't have anything to add, except that this has been a wonderful installment in the H2H saga. Thanks to the admins and the teams.

 

Robber Barons - 2/10

Sadly not even the finished parts were particularly enticing.

 

Hurricanes - 9.5/10

Every single structure is a work of art. The support structure on California Screamin' is flawless (mad respect to whoever had the time and attention to detail for that). Pretty much everything was perfect. Definitely felt smaller than the other entries by a little. Also suffered from some of the glitchiness from Port of Entry.

 

Heaven's Atlas - 8.5/10

Not the best thing I have ever seen, but it's still special and imaginative and wonderful in a whole lot of ways. The invert seemed way too short at first but ended up being my favorite ride in the park. The little space highway was an awesome touch.

 

Manual Laborers - 8/10

A strange mix of a themed area in a real park, and a generic area in an alternate-universe park. Still though, that castle was the tits. For its sheer size though, I wish there was more to do inside of it. Wonderful architecture, but suffered slightly from being so strung out, I think.

DisneyPunk:


My first impression of this park was that it was right up there with some of the best H2H park of all time, initially the architecture, themes, atmosphere, everything was top notch, incredible really. The entrance area is almost perfect to me, the carousel is very well done, love the colors everything. That whole side of the park is spectacular, the Steampunk Street, the train tracks, architecture. The cutaways on the Orpheum and Speakeasy Simulator were great, the Speakeasy was especially nice. The backstage areas were nice enough as well, served their purpose without being too much of a focus and distraction.


The Coney Island section was nicely done as well, a little sloppy in places, especially near the water and with the indoor coaster. Overall a fun section, reminds me a lot of DAW, which was obviously a huge inspiration to this park. The next section was nicely done as well, with the old fashioned buildings, created some nice diversity and had a strong Disney vibe, but again, a little sloppy near the water.


Now we come to the space area, which is where the park begins to fall apart for me. Now, it does have some flashes of brilliance, and definitely could have been something special. However, it just felt empty, the Birch tree planters felt completely out of place, the brick was distracting and annoying to me even. Spark Gap was a cool little ride, but felt super rushed and sloppy, would have liked to see that area expanded a little to allow for normal landscaping and more theming. The trackitecture in this area was very good, the space theater and building with the planets were awesome, but still let a lot to be desired. The space shuttle and orbiter were the best parts of this area, really liked the interacting with the orbiter and Steam Transportation System.


Next we have the 20,000 Leagues section, which was nicely done. Actually looked a lot like the section I wanted to do for our week 5 Disney Space park before that was canceled/changed. The sub itself was very nice, as was the ride itself, the queue was cool, as were the cutaways (Kraken was especially cool). However, there were to many lotr rocks for my tastes, would of rather seen some 1k work or more natural landscaping integrated with architecture.


As we come back around to the entrance near the emporium, there are some obvious rushed and unfinished buildings, ugly open path missing objects etc… Sad to see it like this, as a more polished area here would of improved the park greatly. A lot of people have been complaining about the scale of the buildings, which in my opinion isn’t a big issue, at least in this situation. Big exhibition halls were popular near the turn of the century, so why not.


Finally we come to the castle, which is probably the biggest problem with the park other than the unfinished areas. It’s simply too big and clashes too much with the rest of the park. Maybe putting it in the back like other said, or simply making it smaller would have allowed for a more cohesive look. Sure the architecture is impressive, but it doesn’t really serve a purpose being out of place. The ride was interesting though, definitely the best ride in the park other than maybe 20,000 Leagues. Overall there was lot of twitching and odd rockwork. Again, feels like a lot of this was built in a huge rush, which is a shame because the potential is through the roof.


In conclusion, this parks initial impression was out of this world, I loved the theme so much, however, as I let it sink in more the unfinished nature and rushed portions really brought it down. A true shame, as this would have been one of the best, (and still can be) H2H parks ever if another week or two were put into it. And I truly do hope that the builders can give this a proper finish as it would be a shame for the 65% of this park that was well made to go to waste. Rating: 80-85/100




Asteroid Fields:


This park is so weird for me, as was Heaven’s Atlas entire season. It’s like every park was an attempt to parody the state of NE, or prove a point. Fantasy, Narrative, Storylines, it’s all very interesting, however not my cup of tea. Sure I can respect the parks and ideas, but to me, it’s more important to showcase skill in the game rather than creative ideas. Many of you will probably disagree but that’s how it works. That doesn’t mean that this isn’t a good park though, I truly enjoyed it, however when it goes up against something that’s a semi-recreation and a display of perfectionism, it’s hard for me to put it above that.


Now, I’ll admit, the entrance area was spectacular, the parked ships, and entrance coaster/buildings were awesome. The Fun Meter was funny as well, and definitely proves the agenda of the team to focus on fun rather than skill and perfectionism. Sure the colors were a little obnoxious, but I can get past that considering the theme. The first asteroid was definitely my favorite, with the architecture and flying saucer go karts. The warp portal ride and the heart line coater were also nice touches that really made this area look special.


The 2^nd crater, with the two coasters was probably the 2^nd weakest. The gold was just ugly, and the architecture was plane and forgettable, leaving lots of be desired. Layout wise the coasters were fine, definitely liked the Intamin coaster the most of all the coasters in the park, but its obvious that the layouts weren’t a focus. The inclusion of Toon supports was really odd as well, much preferred the style of the winged coaster flying between rocks and such.


The next asteroid, with the train and red plants was better, I really liked how the path extended around the corners of the asteroid and on the sides, would have liked to see more of that.


Moving on to the haunted house and power station section, I really liked both of these, especially the haunted house, the lightning was very cool. The inclusion of a water ride was somewhat confusing, didn’t really have a place here, with everything else being steel and metal, the water was rather odd, but I can get past that. Some nice buildings here and the pistons were cool, but have been done a lot so ehh.


On to the flying/4d coaster, which was a very cool ride, awesome idea to have it jump between rocks and elements like that would have liked to see more of that in the park. However, being that the ride is a discontinuous entity, it hurts the cohesion and makes it hard to follow and confusing to look at. It’s hard to tell really where each element is located, how fast its going, what’s next, which was obviously the purpose of the ride, but something I wasn’t a big fan of. The look of coaster and their layouts is something that’s important to any park, and when the coaster is presented in this way it’s difficult to get that effect, at least for me. The diagonal launched/ drop tower was especially cool, the ride op booth was also a nice touch, good integrating this with the side of the asteroid.


Finally the center asteroid, with the observatory. Very nicely done trackitecture, although I would have liked to see this be more of a focus in the park, rather than just another section. But still, it was awesome to look at.


Now on to what is probably the most bazar thing I’ve seen this season. The “view train to have a look”, what is the meaning, point, purpose of this, everything about I confuses me. If someone would explain this that would be great.


Overall, a nice, cute park, with a great idea that was done decently well. But not to the standard of the other HA parks, which was somewhat disappointing. Also would of liked to see more content, the amount of open space really hurt the park. NOW I KNOW THE THEME IS SPACE BUT HAVING A THEME OF OPEN SPACE SEEMS RATHER LAZY. Not that it was a problem, or that the park is bad because of it, but I think this could have been helped by a few more tracked rides that jumped between asteroids around the park to fill it up more. Overall, a cool park, nothing really mind-blowing, but still well done park that did the theme justice. Rating: 80/100



I'm not going to review our park or the Robber Barons park, maybe I'll post a little thing about them later, but at this point I'm only doing these two. Good luck to all teams in the voting, and thanks to all competitors, voters, and reviewer's for making this a great H2H!

Barons- Agree with what ling said. What was there didn't catch my attention at all. Really sucks ya'll didn't get something together...

 

Canes- I dunno. The park is executed REALLY well. Far and away the best placing of scenery. The architecture and little details built from scenery are perfect everywhere. The rides are done spot on. Cali screamin should probably win best steel coaster of h2h. There was just something about it lacked. Ambition maybe? There was nothing particularly stunning or amazing. Creativity perhaps? I don't think a recreation is the best route to go for h2h finals. Content maybe? The park has a lot of water in it, and feels like other things were maybe left out in sacrifice of that. Still, fantastic. Maybe even perfect in terms of execution. 

 

The Atlas-Canes matchup is the toughest one for me to decide on. It's two totally different parks doing completely different things. 

My favorite is Paradise Pier from Hurricane. It's a nice realistc park. Though there's nothing special and very very fresh/original, it's overall well done.

Asteroid Field has cool concept and clever ideas, but the structure and color are too random in my eyes...

Of course all the parks are great and need time and skill to finish, thanks for all the hardwork and good work!

POLL IS NOW LIVE

 

Please consider each park against the other park in its individual match up. This is a key feature of this voting system.

 

If you wish to vote, you must vote in every match up that you can legally vote in. Anyone not associated with a team that is found to 'null' a particular match will have their entire vote discounted.

Can someone please define skill and how the Atlas park lacks it?

it's just kumba trying to praise his team's park and dissing the others to sway votes, seen it every matchup of the canes and it's getting old, we know you want to win Kumba and I enjoyed the park but please stop acting like a kid wanting to get into the cookie jar... I honestly feel like paradise pier was a sequel rather than an original concept, I liked the creativity in asteroids better but I feel like it was missing something and was heavyly reliant on the changed colour sheme, still a great idea though, Disneypunk was cool but please MORE PEEPS, felt a little lifeless though.

 

shame we didn't get far with this park but real life caught up with us and nobody on the team had anything left to give this season...

Asteroid Fields is being heiled as the greatest park of the finals, but I don't see it. It's got some of the best ideas of the contest, and an amazingly fun atmosphere, but the execution is lacking, which leaves the park really ugly. I know it's meant to be alien and exceptionally foreign, but the bright colors don't mesh well at all, and it makes things hard to look at for too long. The brilliant things I find make me want to keep looking for more, but the mess of the rest of the park makes doing so hard. It's definitely a good park, and PACKED FULL of BRILLIANCE, but it's not a finals winning park imo. I think a lot of things could have been toned back to make this a lot more cohesive, relatable, and all around more engaging. 

 

Paradise Pier also lacked a bit of engagment factor, but for different reasons. Some areas were brilliantly done, and kept me wanting to look around, but others fell flat, and I kind of glanced over them. I think a lot of bigger things, especially the taller rides, overpowered the buildings below, and washed them out a bit, ruining a bit of their charm. I think with a bit more space, or a bit more size, a lot of things on this map could have shown through a lot stronger. I also thought the ferris wheel was pretty ugly, and that some of the hacks were a bit lazy.

 

I haven't even opened the barons park yet, so my review for it is still incoming.

 

Our park is obviously the best and you should all vote for us as the winners.

The working telescope. Oh my god. I missed it first time but someone wrote about it on here so i went to have a look... one of the cleverest ideas i've ever seen. Worth the win just by itself, although the whole park is more than deserving. 

 

Three great parks here (well three and a half, i guess), i'll comment on them all individually when i have time. Vote goes to Asteroid though, worst screen thumbnail, best park by far.