Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

This pack kinda crams a bunch of pre-existing AngelScript stuff into the original campaign. I doubt uploading the entire campaign with minor changes is legal, but whatever.

All levels have new palettes, which are sometimes cool, often take-it-or-leave-it, sometimes just look like they're hue-shifted in an unpleasant way, and one one occasion downright eyesearing (Castle). Levels occasionally do a palette shift partway through, but most of them are indoors so it doesn't make sense. The one I did like is in Marinated Rabbit with the sky turning red before the boss. That's a cool touch.

Level design is occasionally altered with the addition of previously unused enemies and a bunch of spikes. The Pac-Man ghost appears in Labrat, and its placement combined with its movement would actually add some welcome spice to proceedings, were it not for the fact that it doesn't do contact damage and therefore is basically no threat at all. The Butterfly appears in Jungle and is just kind of obnoxious. Probably the most batshit addition is the randomly appearing Cheshire Cats that fly through walls to shit fire on you (yes, really). These are, to their credit, a genuine challenge, and some tense situations can be created by putting you in a room with them where you don't have much to maneuver. Unfortunately, you're supposed to get out by using the regular hook-tail Cheshire Cats, which are bugged and almost impossible to use properly.

New bosses taken from elsewhere appear in levels that didn't have one previously. I haven't played the packs these are taken from, so the only one I recognized immediately is the falling Devan boss, which appears twice and has some graphical problems. A number of the new or altered bosses are inserted very awkwardly by doing things like turning the level exit into a warp that appears to take you back to a previous portion of the level, and then expecting you to go to some arbitrary, unintuitive place to trigger the fight. Then they're often followed by making you unintuitively go backwards to actually end the level for some reason.

Some of the changed bosses are hideously evil, such as Tweedle; he steals your ammo (somehow) and then starts firing smoke rings (which now come with an even more annoying visual effect) leaving you completely helpless. I assume you're meant to nail him with melee attacks instead, but nothing I did seemed to actually make his health go down. Then there's the Witch, who still turns you into a frog and runs off. This resets her health, so if you get hit once, all your effort is wasted. Bilsy is inexplicably only vulnerable to melee attacks; yeah, the boss who was cut from the game for being too hard is now even more of a pain. Good stuff.

Some come from the Sonic Superstars school of extending game time by being incredibly irritating; the Robot boss now only takes damage when it feels like it, which adds no challenge but just makes it take a very long time to defeat. Bubba returns for an encore in the second Hell level, now as an invulnerable ghost. The objective is to get 10 coins and enter a bonus room to escape, which is actually a pretty neat idea. The thing is, I have no idea what causes the coins to appear; I was shooting and buttstomping but the coins just seemed to appear arbitrarily sometimes. Once you warp, it sends you into a hidden passage above the arena to hit the Level End trigger and… drops you back into the arena, which is very awkward.

So yeah, this is just a hodgepodge of mostly bad ideas.

Well, according to me, this version of original JJ2 is very good. New bosses, new tilesets, everything I could ever imagine.

7/10

I like the reverse layout approach, but this is lazily executed. In particular, arrow signs still point in the old directions, there are unnecessary springs, star blocks are used as trigger scenery, and there are two trigger crates in the same area for some reason. More problematically, the witch activates and reactivates at the wrong times, the health bar flickering in and out of view for no clear reason.

Well, this definitely looks like the most competently created upload by this user. The level layout while linear is pretty solid. The difficulty and the main annoyance is the heavy reliance on respawning enemies. Add to that, like Primpy said, all levels lack checkpoints, which isn't an issue in level 2, because it is so short, but level 3 would become irritating pretty fast, if you constantly had to restart it. The bees in level one are particularly irritating, since the respawn timer is set so low. You get quite a few areas, where you would need the uppercut jump to reach, and naturally a beehive with a respawning bee is there, with somewhere around a 5-7 second respawn timer. So by the time you reach the platform with the uppercut jump, the bee can already respawn and hit you, causing you to fall back down, and repeat the process. And let's not even talk about the level 2 boss fight, which is just pure tedium, collect 15 coins, 1 by 1, doing so with jumping on the cheshire cat hooks that fade in and out, with Dragon Fly enemies right next to them naturally respawning and spikes below. Meanwhile the Caterpillar is puffing the smoke rings, to make the process so annoying, I can't see anyone finding a reason to bother with it.

Unfortunately the levels lack any form of secrets as well, so while the level layout is actually good (slightly reminiscent of the original levels but more linear), it is a very "what you see is what you get" sort of experience. Sure there are some unaligned or misused textures (and a part in the Medivo level where you can get stuck on the chain next to the wall) but the levels are put together competently, surprisingly so, considering what the users other creations look like. These levels don't have that cheap "I made this in 20 minutes" feel to them. So while they aren't perfect and have a lot of questionable design choices, they clearly have a thought process behind them, rather than looking like the first draft of a prototype of a demo level.

If those rather significant annoyances weren't part of the levels, this could get a recommendation and even a higher score. But with the way it is, feels more like above average/decent levels, designed in a way that irritates the player, if anything. Though from that perspective it is unique.

It's like listening to an album you somewhat enjoy, but through low quality crackling speakers, or dropping a sandwich in the dirt and trying to eat it like that, the fundamental content might be decent, but a variety of factors drag it down, so you can't enjoy it in it's best form.

Accurate level description, sums up the entirety of the level. A rocket turtle flies by for no clear reason but doesn't do anything—otherwise, you're collecting coins and then laying TNT. It's reasonably novel but not all that engaging, since you're doing the same thing five times. Graphics are functional but smart tiles would have fewer bugs.

Trivially beatable by remaining directly under the falling coins and buttstomping enemies until ten coins fall.

The trap that scripting springs on unsuspecting level makers is suddenly there's no reason to take shortcuts, other than, well, they're easier. The Medivo level pits you against enemies that have been given boss health bars, but there's nothing to ensure you actually fight them instead of skipping them. Text strings politely ask you to go back if you didn't fight them, but that's all. In the Psych level, an invisible coin warp takes you to a TNT pickup and another warp back, instead of a script giving you the TNT ammo directly if you have enough coins. If the levels had no scripts at all, these would be understandable compromises, but because other things are scripted, suddenly these are points worthy of criticism.

(Similar issues apply to editing tile(set)s—suddenly every drawing made in history is theoretically available, so why settle for a tile that's close enough?)

Focusing on what the levels do do, though, rather than what they don't: this is pretty all right. Lots of pickups, including the traditional JJ2 thing where individual levels focus on individual ammo types. Trigger crates that aren't too far from their respective (clearly marked) trigger scenery blocks and sometimes do interesting things like sit on top of spikes. Level layouts that go in all directions, not just right, and feature tileset-specific obstacles. For all that the bosses are the most memorable parts of this pack, the levels aren't just window dressing, they're worthwhile (if not amazing) in their own right. Generally a pretty good time, though everything (eyecandy, layout, scripting) could take a bit more polishing.

Is this level pack creative? Sure!
Is this level pack good? Ehh…

Pros:
- Interesting boss ideas, albeit simple;
- You can tell that some amount of effort went into making it;
- Levels are visually distinct from one another and can look pretty nice at times.

Cons:
- The level layout is a bit flat, not great but not terrible;
- Lots of tile errors, inconsistent tile usage;
- The boss fights are repetitive and become tedious rather quickly;
- Not Lori-friendly, probably beatable as Lori if you're really good at it;
- If there are secrets, I couldn't find any;
- No checkpoints whatsoever.

While I can't really recommend this level pack, I have to appreciate the effort that went into creating it. These are three original, short to medium-sized levels that try to bring something new to the table, which is very commendable!

Here is the gameplay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwSEQDTlWaU&t=1023s

For the most part, these are less full-fledged test levels and more ideas, suggestions, hey what if test levels tried doing this too? And viewed that way they’re pretty interesting. The timing required can be incredibly finnicky to the point of feeling random—I could never climb the fencer tower without setting off two at once—and there are lots of moments that would work much better with some scripting, e.g. to keep me from dying, or to restore Uterus’ spike balls, or to get around the need for all those smoke rings. But if you abstract away from the implementation, with its bare-bones graphics and its empty win areas, and think about the ideas being presented, then sure. Maybe some test levels could benefit from things to stomp (that don’t lock up the camera after a while), or some of the other funny tricks that are presented here, albeit preferably with a little more forgiveness.

I can tell this was made in about 2 minutes lol. Work on it and you’ll probably get a higher rating.

Looks like JJ2 is popular in Romania. :D
What about this upload… It’s just an original episode modified by a beginner in order to understand how JCS works. It’s a normal part of learning but it’s obviously not worth to be downloaded. I don’t want to demotivate you though. Keep trying and one day we’ll see a decent level made by you.

It’s literally just the first episode of JJ2 but you start as a frog. No effort put into this whatsoever.

Based on the level names, I assume you are romanian?

(oops, sorry for breaking the rules)

Incomplete and doesn’t belong in J2O. I had fun for, like, 20 seconds though.