The Ranking Charts for February 2016 have just been released and can be found here!
This month Blue Dragon, Lost The Lights, Kurokami and iJinjin picked the maps for the Monthly Ranking Charts.
The charts have previously been created by letting four dedicated community members select the most noteworthy maps of this month. We also reward the top beatmap in each category by providing 1 month of supporter status to the mapper.
For osu!, we decided to let Blue Dragon pick their favourite maps.
This is different than what I'd expect from one of Bearizm maps, which often contain fast-paced jumps and a constant beat throughout the song. However, in this case, Bearizm manages to take the beautiful way in which the song is presented, adds an excellent mixture of slow sliders, fast sliders, 1/4 jumps in the highest difficulties, interesting aesthetic choices which only add up to the beatmap's intensity, and several ups and downs as the song asks for it. A beautiful song asks for a beautiful map, and this one does its job perfectly. At first, it does seem like a weird beatmap with all the sliderjumps, but as you get used to the song, you can clearly see how everything is planned out to play perfectly well.
Cherry Blossom's beatmaps are usually considered as a standard of mapping that involves flow, structure and playability in an excellent mix that takes the three aspects equally in account. While in the easier diffs, what prevails is the excellent use of structure and symmetry, the Another and Sakura no Hana difficulties get attention from the player because of their amazing use of sliderart and a perfect mix of jumps, compressed streams and spaced streams. As with every CB map, this one looks nice, plays nice and that's why it's featured in here.
Secretpipe is more often found mapping upbeat DnB songs, and while this is an exception, it doesn't take anything away from his consistent mapping skills in making longer, repetitive songs enjoyable to play all the way through. This song sets a much darker tone than we're used to listen in DnB songs, but Secretpipe takes the player to a restless, heavy-beat styled journey in this 6-minute marathon map. This beatmap has its structure focused in re-using previous beat placements, which is a common technique in DnB beatmaps and proves itself to flow intensely and making it enjoyable to play. Not to mention the awesome hitsound work done here, with the dubs of wubs that complement the beat of the song.
While the previous maps can be highlighted by their extremely well-done use of aesthetics, this one clearly stands out from the rest. This one takes in account the song, the beatmap, the storyboard, the timing, and how everything managed to work well together. The timing work from Bonsai (188 timing sections in 2 minutes!), an impressive SB from XinCrin that can put the player in a completely different ambient with the rain sounds and the moving backgrounds, and of course, the beatmapping from Auxent, YellowManul and Sieg. As said before, aesthetic is not the main point of the beatmapping here: the notes are perfectly matching with the song, spacing is used accordingly and, while not an insane beatmap by any means, it does what the song is supposed to do: be relaxing, calming and puts the listener (or in this case, the player) somewhere else, out of stress and anything negative.
Gotta go fast! What best describes this map, certainly, is "fast-paced". Well, of course, as the song is constantly 254BPM with powerful vocals and the background beat! ktgster certainly has good experience from extremely fast songs (as noted in the famous Speed of Link beatmap), and manages to capture the feel from this one perfectly. Even in the lower difficulties, you can feel the "non-stop" feeling that the song is supposed to give you, and this is something that lower difficulties rarely capture in a fast song. Not to mention the last difficulty which is an interesting challenge for whoever wants to test their aim, speed and consistency!
Speaking of intensity... With a lot of wubs and onii-chans in this beatmap, it certainly deserves a spot here due to the fact that the song, originally, seems extremely hard to map, but in the end, all of the mappers involved here managed to make an intense beatmap, with the extreme speedup being perfectly mapped and, well, since 2013, RLC has proved himself to be one of the mappers who can best translate playability into technical quality. In every difficulty, including all of the guest ones, this proves to be true. The mapset follows an insane song closely, and while making it intuitive to play, doesn't make the structure any less important.
For Taiko, we asked Lost The Lights about their favourite maps in February 2016.
This is definitely my favourite map of February (The last ranked of the month too!). This has everything: a great song from a great game, a good spread and a REALLY fun and challenging Inner Oni, which gives the map additional points. The quality of this map is great. While the easier difficulties are mapped following the main rhythm of the song, Inner Oni keeps following it plus follows the background rhythm. OzzyOzrock really did a great job here!
A really nice song mapped by the great lolcubes. This map deserves the 2nd spot here. A really well done approval map having a challenging Inner Oni and an Oni if you can't do the streams on Inner. If you like long maps and want to have fun, this is the map for you. Nice job lolcubes ╭( ･ㅂ･)و
For those who have played this game, they know that this song brings feels. A great song pick and a great map structure which, in my opinion, fits and flows with the song perfectly.
What can I say... Good song pick, first of all. I barely enjoy maps like this, but I did enjoy this one. It has a good structure, it's not simple, neither complex, but it is clearly mapped in a way that fits the song and flows with it.
Even if this is a slow and relaxing map, it is mapped in a way that fits the song, so it has a nice quality. Good structure and fitting patterns, there's nothing else to say.
I know people will murder me for this, but I'll pick furioso melodia as the last chart map. I'll be honest, Nwolf did a really good job with this map. Even if the patterns are kinda awkward to play, they fit the song. This map is a complete challenge, filled with 1/3, 1/6 and some 1/8. Give it a try if you want a good challenge!
For Catch the Beat, Kurokami was the chosen one to declare the winners of the February 2016 beatmaps.
Despite the struggle during its way to be ranked, I think it has become a good mapset, especially with the help of Xinely and alienflybot regarding the spread. The song itself is really catchy and because of this, its rhythm is easy to follow. Additionally, players of different levels can enjoy this set, which in my opinion, is one of the most important points and a reason for me to add this set as my favorite one for the Monthly Charts.
Well, this one is quite a hard song to map a harder difficulty on, but I think beside the star rating, it was a success. This set's spread is also very good, not much to object. Because of the low BPM even the Salad plays like the easiest difficulty, Cup.
The creator of this set is well known in the CtB community, although I know her ever since she mapped for osu!. Her style and way of mapping is really unique which makes her maps really good. This set is one of the harder one but can be still enjoyed by players of all levels. Really good work here.
Yeah, well. Dispite having a hard time to choose beatmaps from the osu! section due to the amount it provides, I choose this as one of my favorites. Its hardest difficulty is easier than the usual ones, and that's why I quite enjoyed it for Catch the Beat. Beside that, I find the song choice great as well because, if you ask me, in this era of mapping it becomes rare to find music which goes into the direction of classic.
I did not choose this because of the dashes or for its difficulty. No. I just think that once in a while easier sets should be present as well. This is a perfect example how to make easy, yet challenging, mapsets. There are not too many jumps but the patterns make the difficulties quite hard to full-combo. In my opinion this is a really enjoyable map which is worth to choose for the Charts.
None of the difficulties of this mapset could be called challenging in CtB, but it still reminds me of the way old maps worked: when HyperDashes were used where they belong to. It can be recognized on the easier difficulties that this is not a CtB specific set, but I still enjoyed it, which might be also because of the music itself. I hope I'm not the only one with this feeling!
For osu!mania, iJinjin was able to select their personal most noteworthy beatmap from last month.
It's rare to see a chart in mania done right, but Pyakura has definitely outdone himself with Dreadnought. Everything about this chart fits so well with the music. And man, those SV changes in the harder difficulties are just top notch. The use of slowjams, stutter SVs, and the extremely fast scroll speed at the very beginning are all so appropriate to the music and adds to the enjoyability factor of this map. The spread ranges from Easy difficulty that 7K newcomers are able to enjoy, up to the
whopping 6-star Hyperspace difficulty that poses a challenge even to the top mania players. Dreadnought definitely
deserves the top mania chart for February.
It's always nice to see a ranked marathon chart in mania, because we don't have a lot of marathons in this game mode. The patterns are very diverse, ranging from sections full of chords to full out 1/4 streams at the guitar solo. One thing I really like about this map is the interaction between the storyboard and the chart. - Bad Apple -'s idea of including a gunshot hitsound for every time a shot is fired from the storyboard is definitely a nice touch to the chart.
Oooooh, another marathon chart from this month! Also, congratulations to Hydria for his first ranked map! This is one of the more interesting 4K maps that I have seen. As with most marathons, this chart features various patterns and some interesting long note usage throughout the map. There are some tricky sections, such as the slightly-off-rhythm vocal section close to the beginning of the song. The 1/8 roll sections at around the 5 minute mark are really satisfying to play. Finally, the use slowdowns and speedups feels really natural and is commendable. Really nice patterns overall.
Save the rhinos!!! Ichigaki is a pretty well known mapper in the mania community for his various ranked 4K charts. This time, he brings us another cool map featuring Zan as a guest mapper. A lot of streaming sections in the INFINITE difficulty is something to look out for, and it's pleasantly comfortable to hit. On the other hand, Zan's EXHAUST puts more emphasis on the melody, resulting in a chart that players will enjoy along with the music. Given the uncommon rhythmic structure of the song, novice 4K players will find some good challenge even from the easier difficulties of this set. Very nicely executed!
First thought that crossed my mind when looking at the mapset: a lot of Russian mappers in this chart! This map includes both 4K and 7K, the two most played keymodes in mania. With a lot of different guest mappers, the charting styles for each difficulty are very different. One specific difficulty that I enjoyed a lot is Kivicat's 7K MX. Really nice work on pitch relevancy and the long notes. The patterns are challenging compared to its star rating, so be prepared, players!
NAN NAN NANJA! Our anti meta mapper Kamikaze again brings us with a very rare 7K / 8K mapset, featuring Rayz141 and Evening (Zenx) as guest mappers. The patterns in here are comfortable and friendly, so it's great for players that are looking into playing 7K or 8K. Zenx's difficulty includes some neat SV changes, so look out for that too! Finally, props to Agka for the audio waveform-like storyboard.
The February 2016 ranking charts will end on the 15th April 2016. For the next month, we will elect new community members to pick their favourite beatmaps, so stay tuned!
Congratulations to the winners of the January 2016 Ranking Charts. They receive a month of supporter status for their efforts!
Good luck with the new charts! We'd love to hear any and all feedback you have about the new format and selection process for the charts - feel free to leave a comment below!
—OnosakiHito
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