[TC_Halogen]

This was a BRUTALLY hard fucking vote for me. I kept bouncing back and forth between #3 and #5 before finally making my decision. Both submissions were good; job well done to both of you.

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Swamp Thing 1 — With the exception of some proper jump/jack accenting outside of the ridiculously overemphasized structure, this chart’s approach simply doesn’t work. Even as a dump file, there are parts that are just entirely unplayable.

Swamp Thing 2 — I was going to leave some commending points about the song cut, but that last cut absolutely ruined that thought for sure; it was brutally obvious and painfully forced. The chart itself is alright and has some acceptable pattern presentation at times, with a few cool little blips of color play to accent the percussive drum fills, but it’s not got anything special that makes it stand out.

Swamp Thing 3 — While I personally was not a fan of the final audio cut, I can at least respect the overall decision making in forming the overall phrasing of your submission. As a whole, it was a tasteful approach musically and is actually the only serious entry that gets the drop in there (even though it’s only a part of it). Relevance to the overall song’s melody felt solid in terms of patterning, though I wish there was a bit more swing representation at times. Some slight inconsistencies throughout, but nothing is glaring and the chart plays with very good fluency.

Swamp Thing 4 — This chart plays like something I would find on osu!mania — very aggressive layering with generally fluent patterning overall. Relevance is solid, though again, lacking a bit in the swing department with regards to the melody. While the difficulty is quite high, the patterning is tame and approachable for people who are interested in getting into harder charts. The thing that hurts me on this is the song cut itself — the song never really peaks in terms of intensity and the overall difficulty curve feels flat despite the music changing a bunch.

Swamp Thing 5 — Plays a bit more true to the melodic elements earlier in the intro and has some nice color theory, and also does a respectable job following pitch to the banjo with jacks; however, the relevance gets a bit shotty as the end of the song gets closer and jack usage gets slightly overaggressive at times as a result. Not a fan of the overall decision making for the song cut, as we go from building up into a conclusion and it doesn’t quite progress naturally. Additionally, some of the most intense layering comes in the build-up right before the cut and the release following that just doesn’t quite add up for me personally.

Swamp Thing 6 — Somewhat similar cut to Swamp Thing 4, and actually suffers from somewhat similar issues as well: a relatively low difficulty gradient despite changing elements in the song, though I will say this does a better job increasing difficulty slightly as musical elements progress. Personally for me, this does less of an effective job having an aggressive structure because it doesn’t highlight some of the nuances in the banjo’s melody. It’s explicit and pretty clear what decisions were made and why, but the decisions themselves lead to a difficult yet generally uneventful approach.

Swamp Thing 7 — Like Swamp Thing 3, I dislike the cut decision. However, also like Swamp Thing 3, I can absolutely respect the execution behind the decision of your cut; it allows the song to terminate in a way that is logical and sensible without a noticeable tip off that the song’s been reduced. The chart’s presentation is alright and is generally clean, but doesn’t provide anything that’s noticeably memorable to me outside of the opening color play. Pattern-wise, the chart fits the song for me, but it doesn’t quite do it justice.