Entry: Goodbye / Ruby Tuesday

Presentation - 15 / 20

The samplestart was placed in quite a strange place in the song-- although you placed it at the chorus, the way it started and ended felt slightly strange-- the ending made the vocals drop out, and the fade-in was slightly too early-- you could have started it right at the beginning of the vocals. The graphics fit the double-nature of the song-- its somewhat energetic, while being slightly sorrowful and resentful at the same time (it also highlighted the song's genre somewhat)-- although the background is... lazy (straight from game)-- it worked quite well considering what the song was like. In addition, the banner worked with it quite well, while looking nice and snazzy, although I have issues with your artist text-- it can be tough to read due to color scheme used, as well as the font-- it didn't go well with that nifty song title.

An LRC was included, but for at least 75% of the song, it was super off-sync (lines either start too early, or end too late-- very noticable, mind you). Please fix.

Steps (with Oni)

Light Chart - 2.5 / 5

For the first few bars, you had it made. The steps certainly fit the song, being both energetic and controlled at the same time (which is very much the nature of the song in terms of energy). The flow of the steps was nice and smooth, and you get credit for that, but past the few bars, it gets... highly repetitive. The steps were virtually a never-ending stream of detached 4th-notes and 4th-note triplets. Yes, this is a Light chart, but you could have varied those 4th-note patterns a bit more. The step patterns you selected could do well, but only if you varied them, while keeping that nice balance in the step flow.

Standard Chart - 4 / 7

Okay... the steps fit the theme better than the Light and Oni charts (I reviewed this one after those two.. quite obviously), and for the most part, were well-selected and well-balanced (4th-note patterns building up to 8th-note patterns in the more emotional parts of the song, etc.), except for one thing-- jumps. At times, they felt extraneous, such as at bars 28-31, where the song breaks down a bit in preparation for the chorus-- it's a lot quieter there than some earlier parts, so it's weird that you used a good number of jumps there. In addition, you should calm down a bit on the use of freeze arrows-- at some points, they worked as great accents, but as primary elements, they didn't work excessively well in this song-- especially in places where they take the place of everything else, such as in the end (honestly, you should vary those a bit-- use of extra hits to keep up on the energy of the song, while gradually breaking down the steps-- that'd be a nicer effect for that part).

Heavy Chart - 2.5 / 10

Ouch. The patterns you used here were a mixed bag-- some of them fit the song, such as the 8th-note patterns and some of the lighter 16th-note patterns (which served to accentuate some of the melodic elements of the song, while keeping to the song's theme in some places), while others (such as some of the jump patterns-- I don't see why you should have jumps within 8th-note runs in such a song-- it wasn't over-intense... some of the trickier 16th-note patterns didn't fit in well-- the karaoke-ness of these steps didn't quite work out when considering the rest of the steps, which didn't seem to follow everything too well-- I noticed some restrant in the other patterns, so I don't know why you decided to place them). Due to this "pattern mix-up", I began to wonder where this chart was headed (especially when surprise gallops kicked in... they just didn't fit in with the rest of the steps), as the steps became more "ultra-random" as the chart passed. The flow of the steps was okay, and it was fairly well-oriented, but that's only a small consolation when considering how the patterns were actually used.

Oni Chart - 1 / 8

Oh, my. Granted, you based this on the DJMAX chart, but it's hard to deny that you have to make it work for the song and for DDR. Okay, for DDR, it would be a viable 10 (unlike some of the "boss songs" in this contest, which were simply too excessive to play-- even they would be 10-footers, they're still too much EVEN for 10-footers), but for the song, its a bit too much-- the song didn't really call for a 10-footer, and in general, was a fairly controlled song-- it was energetic, yes, but when looking at the song, it didn't seem to call for plenty of heavy 16th-note patterns. Just look at the quieter parts of the song... perhaps even the parts leading to the first portion of the song-- we have a pretty heavy 8th-note stream already, for a part that was near-silence... not a good call, don't you think? Seriously, you could have made this an "Edit Chart"-- it didn't quite work well with the song, and with the other charts. Speaking of the patterns themselves, I don't quite like some of the jumps, especially those in the parts with plenty of 16th-note patterns-- some of them looked really awkward (bars 20-22 is an example of this)-- that aside, the jumps themselves were pretty excessive-- you could have calmed down on these, even if this is an Oni chart.