Here's the first of a series of longer-form writing about gd I want to do. It's a review of Vivisection by hota1991. Here's a video, for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FatMUY9gLtg
The xl hell extreme is a genre unto itself in this game, with levels like reanimation, bloodlust, bloodbath, death moon, yata, and others all standing out as hugely influential and memorable. When it comes down to it, though, many of these level's decoration styles can be boiled down to 'someone made a google doc of a bunch of stereotypically scary/hell themed things and threw them at red core decoration', and that I have always found to be a very grating way to decorate.
There is no thought put into 'how will this decoration add to the atmosphere/mood', just a belief that an impressive-looking, highly detailed deco style + exclusively the color red + 'scary' art will create a mood, and it just doesn't. More often than not, they're just straight up ugly. They're almost always megacollabs, too, adding to the over-the-top hell style an inconsistent vision and art style that make for levels that just *do not work*. This has always been my problem with bloodlust, yata, devil vortex, crimson planet, step to hell, and to an extent even levels like reanimation and kenos. A few of these xl-hell levels have stood out as being pretty good, however, namely Bloodbath and Death Moon.
These levels stand for a few reasons: one, they're 1.9, so they have to rely on good decoration that adds to the drama rather then too much detail and art, adding a high-level of execution to the deco style, two, they have a very cohesive design vision, making all the parts mesh much more nicely than others, and finally, they both have great use of pacing and music to add to the drama. Since 2.0, though, creators have been drunk with the newfound editor power and have made ugly, inconsistent, self-serious levels that really don't work very well, including khrone. Especially Khrone. Except for this, here.
Vivisection brings to the table the level of execution, consistency, and pacing so many red hell levels have lacked in the past two updates and totally executes on the idea of a red-hell-xl-extreme. This level is so goddamn mother fucking extra and out there, I love it. The decoration REALLY works and is consistent throughout, and the song and pacing work really well together. This level is in no way ashamed to be a red hell level and just takes the concept and turns it up to 11 in a way very few other levels have before. It's not too self-serious, too, which makes the level so much more enjoyable and immersive. It's not trying to be the scariest thing ever, it's just being the most extra hell level it can be. And by god it works.
The insane detail is used really effectively to create a very atmospheric, dramatic, and intense experience that's totally unparalleled by anything made since 2.0 (except maybe armeggedon, though that's pretty bland and forgettable, though it is pretty). The use of spooky art is really tasteful and well-done, too, showing that you can have pentagrams without the ugly excesses of bloodlust and yata. Good fucking job, best xl hell level since death moon. It's great to see new creators embracing the hell-level and innovating on it to create some of the spookiest and most emotionally compelling levels in the game, with this and slaughterhouse. While slaughterhouse totally up-ends the traditions of hell levels, this one embraces them, but they both create very effective and intense experiences.