Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Yau,very good level,Black Ninja!Congratilations!!!Sorry for my bad english!

[Review changed to quick review, see the review rules.

I might expand my review here later but for now I’m just dropping off this 8.0 for fear of this disappearing down the list of downloads without as much as a rating. While not the most visually stunning or conceptually innovative level, Black Ninja very much achieves what he set out to do in creating this level – namely, producing a worthy successor to the earlier levels in the once quite popular Wind Meister series, and, more importantly, just giving us one goddamn hard test level.

I was around in the days the first Wind Meister levels were made and while I never managed to get very far in them I always used to have a ton of fun with ‘em regardless. Wind Meister 4 certainly lives up to the precedent set by Black Ninja’s older work, and that alone, combined with a rocking background track by PT32 and perhaps also influenced by a bit of nostalgia constitutes a solid 8.0 and a download recommendation. Granted, if you’re not into test levels this probably isn’t for you, but as far as test levels go this is obviously about as good as it gets.

Incidentally, it’s funny how even when I try my best to keep my comments in a review to a bare minimum I still vastly exceed the quick review max character count. ;P

Hey, whatever happened to that Wind Meister 4 demo that you were showing people, like, five (seven?) years ago? I liked it!

No, please, no statues!
It might offend the Boss I work for.

How to water-walk?

[Entirely unsupported rating (7.7) clearance. ~Cooba]

That program isnt projext ur server.That program makes lag and crashes ur server.

Not good prorgam :(
(Unsupported rating (7.2) removal. Could you go into more detail? I don’t think this is a common problem. Also, you MIGHT consider downloading version 5.0 instead of this one… ~Violet)

Seriously, I think that “Helpful Rating” things should be disabled for N/A’s. Look at danyjel’s review helpfulness. It was a comment, not a review…

Joseph Collins is cool man. His average rating sctrictness is -1.6 and his average rating is 4.1. His rating sctrictness would be much bigger if his rating wouldn’t count to all ratings. Just try to guess why everything what he rates has low rating.

Introduction:
This has to be the most cruel, evil, and outright irritating set of “trick” levels known to this website.

Level Analyses:
Wind Meister
I couldn’t get past Level 11, I think it was. The area with the Lit TNT. There’s “hard” and then there’s “throw-the-effing-controller-at-the-screen”.
Wind Meister 2
Couldn’t get past Level 6. I’m not stupid. . . I’m sure if I tried long enough, I could figure it out. There’s gotta be a reason for that Freeze Hourglass to be there. . .
Wind Meister 3
Almost finished this one. No Wind Tunnel stopped me. Nor a puzzle. No. . .what stopped me was. . .a freaking bug. On the “Final” map(I don’t trust that text for a minute), I apparently had enough velocity to throw myself directly through a wall. I tried to get out, but that only made me stick in the wall further. Jumping also made me sink. How throughly did you test this map? You apparently didn’t check to see if the level was Jazz 2-related bug proof. You should know by now if you get enough velocity, you can throw yourself through solid walls. With the combined wind and me Sprinting, it didn’t take much imagination for me to get jammed in a wall. Therefore, I am throughly disgusted with Jazz Jackrabbit 2 right now.

Documentation Analysis:
The documentation was little more than a “Have fun!” notice and a plug for your website. No file list? Some people like file lists in their documentation. . . It helps them host servers a lot easier, considering it’s sometimes hard to remember certain level names.

Final Analysis:
I hate each and every one of these levels. If it were personally up to me, I’d rate this thing a 3.2 and leave it at that. However, I have to be fair about how I rate this package. . . So. . . Based on the interesting and unique level, but buggy designs, and fair-to-poor documentation, I say a 6.7 is fair.
I also recommend this for download if you want to frustrate yourself trying to get through the various devilish and evil levels that “Windy Tests” hath spawned.

Edit II: Rating reinstated and first edit zonked for personal reasons.

For me, the Wind Meister tests have always been excellent, challenging (extremely Jazz-friendly :-)) tests and all 3 have provided great entertainment. Although I can hardly notice some of the new stuff when I look in JCS, I can see that everything has been revamped without changing much of the good stuff.

The eyecandy for the first 2 lvls are average and, for some tests (mainly lvl 5 in WM2 and the last few lvls in WM3), using low detail helps you out. I consider this to be cheating but there’s nothing to prevent ppl from doing this, which kinda lowers the difficulty. The 3rd Wind Meister is definitely the most awesome looking. There are plenty of cool stuff and the eyecandy there is way above average for a test lvl.

The gameplay for all 3 lvls are great, but it peaks at WM3 because of a more thoughtful layout and well-placed springs/warps/triggers, etc. In some places the areas can get a bit small if everyone tries to do the same test at the same time, but that’s Wind Meister for you.

Only WM3 has a story, which involves a frog with a computer (?). I don’t understand the story and I don’t see why it is important to the lvl but it’s still nice to actually have an objective for each test.

The difficulty varies for each WM lvl. WM3’s last lvls are surprisingly easy while the last lvls of the other two are really, really tricky. The whole test is long and they are quite varied, so no matter the difficulty, ppl will always find something they like (or hate). I also like some of the non-wind tests in WM1 and WM2.

Overall, all 3 tests are superb and each has got its own cool end-lvl rewards. Anyone who hasn’t played these superb test lvls must do so NOW and anyone who has should…well…do it again. :-P

Download recommendation and a 9.

Alexander: If you want to know what it’s like, the easiest way to find out is to download it. ;p

Black Ninja uploaded something. Its been a while.

As Black Ninja described the meaning of the title, this level should have vertical gameplay, the level size is 80×80 which is a perfect square shape; However once I got to play it I noticed the way the layout was designed it made you play by moving in vertical directions most of the time. Although this is true most people won’t notice as you still move in horizontal directions quite a bit. Fort Oblivion does a much better job of providing vertical gameplay than this level, and it doesn’t even have a title to try to emphasize it.

Furthermore I am not too fond of the layout as it doesn’t appear to have a design, or at least a very good one. There are questionable parts such as rooms that could qualify as dead ends – I don’t mind them too much though. The room at the top right contains a blaster powerup, some ammo and a coin, the fact that it has a powerup might help justify it some extent. It isn’t another platformy battle level which is good, except I think that a platformy layout with greatly-designed platforms would look better than what was designed here, mainly because the floors are mostly long and unvaried, little use of slopes except for the top area, or maybe the layout is varied enough and I am just picking at the wrong thing, maybe it’s just the lack eyecandy that I find so unappealing about this level. Too many springs were used and some weren’t placed well, the area 67,21 (JCS pos) has a carelessly placed red spring, it may not seem like much, but if I am trying to out run someone who is chasing me and I don’t want to enter the room at the top right which is guarunteed to be a deathzone if your enemy is carrying seekers, I’m toast. So you might be thinking “well then avoid it!” but that’s not always the case when you’re rushed and have little knowledge of the level, especialy if I touch it going from the left side. Another spring that bothers me is by 69,39 – It is placed near the middle and would take a little skill for a rushed player to avoid it, if it were moved a tile to the left it would be perfect.

Coins are scattred throughout the level. So there’s a coin warp which apparently sends you to one of three powerups, not by choice but by order each time you enter the warp. First: Toaster, Second: Seeker and lastly Third: RF – No apparent order applied as you would think that RF would come first, then Toaster and finally Seeker, unless Black Ninja has an odd way of thinking about the power of each powerup. Ammo placement seems alright although they don’t have appealing designs and aren’t placed strategicly. You can see the powerups, in fact Black Ninja really wanted you to see them, even at the sacrifice of adding weird wind events and invisible bomb sceneries just to prevent you from touching them without entering the coin warp. I’ve found two +1 carrots, one at the top middle, the other near the bottom middle – that should all work out nicely. I think I’ve covered everything here.

The eyecandy is, well, unacceptable. The tileset is mostly to blame, basic typical brown colored dirt, basic- looking snow, amatuerishly drawn christmas trees, I like the gingerbreadman though, he looks adorable, really. The background is just weird, it consists of moving candy canes, they must be alive, kinda creepy. A plain untextured background, I hate it. Black Ninja, however did a good job with the lighting. I like the beams of light especialy the one that appears to be coming through the large crack near the candy canes.

I can’t quite recommend this, but host it as I have a feeling it’ll be the only christmas battle level we’ll have this year and the gameplay mostly works.

-fs

Holy crap on a stick toasting over a fireplace! This server’s wicked fast! My download started at 22.7 kb; not even FilePlanet goes that fast for me.

Also, I want to know why the hell you had to password the level. Not cool, d00d. I’m docking a point for that.

Ok, let’s GET IT ON!

Eyecandy:

Not bad. The lighting wasn’t varied and you don’t use the set light event, which could’ve been a big help. The background/foreground eyecandy wasn’t bad, but avoid using the same tiles for the foreground that you used for layer 4. It gives the impression that the things in the foreground are smaller than the stuff in layer 4. The same goes with background. Also, I believe you forgot to set up the textured background. Maybe it’s broken. I don’t know. The tileset wasn’t the best, so you get saved, I guess. :P Eyecandy gets a 7.5.

Music Choice:

Not bad. Fits well, though a custom soundtrack would’ve been nice. 8.5.

Gameplay:

Awesome job. I’m not going into too much detail because you should see this for yourself. 9.0.

Overall:

Very well done. The eyecandy wasn’t the bast, but everything else brought up this level.

7.5 + 8.5 + 9.0 = 25 – 1 = 24 / 3 = 8 out of 10. GJ, d00d.

Review = Over.
Download recommendation = Very yes.

Wakeman rated this upload with two stars on Jazz2City.

Wakeman rated this upload with two stars on Jazz2City.

Wakeman rated this upload with two stars on Jazz2City.

Wakeman rated this upload with two stars on Jazz2City.

Wakeman rated this upload with three stars on Jazz2City.

Wakeman rated this upload with three stars on Jazz2City.

Wakeman rated this upload with three stars on Jazz2City.