Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

A level submission from Disguise, the first of many if he sticks to his statement. And from the looks of this level, I hope he does.

Eyecandy: The eyecandy is very explicit, without being jawdropping. Good use of the Swamps tileset, which includes the nice rivery (is that a word?) background. Nice use of trees and layers to cover up passageways and make the level look darn cool! I especially love how the orange leaves go over the path and over the platforms as well. :)

Layout: A fairly balanced CTF level, with bases at opposite ends of the map and at opposing hights. I’d say it is pretty much balanced, athough it might be easier to reach the red base, as all you have to do is follow some paths down, whereas reaching blue you have to run back and forth upwards. Still, good here. Nice use of pathways and passages to move easily arround. :)

Ammo placement: Very good ammo placement. There are enough weapons that you have a supply of ammo, yet not so many that they become scattered all over the floor. The toaster powerup is accessible by all, meaning all players hae a chance to go dish out damage with it. Bouncer power up is locked in the bottom left and is still fairly easy to reach, though red players may be closer than the blue. Although in a crowded server amo may get a little scarce, but that happens with all levels. Good job. :)

Playability: This level plays well. ‘Nuff said.

Download reccomendation? Well, take your mouse, click on that button that says ‘Download’. Get his level! Good job Disguise, I’m waiting for your next project. :)

Indeed, as Disguise wants to explain in his description, he obviously tried something different this time. In my opinion it’s his luck that he wasn’t really able to do something completely different than what i sometimes call “south african style” (i guess thats only logical because this style is, imho, one of very few ways to make a good level at all).
Nevertheless, the design of “Swampy Showdown” is a bit less tight than in other Disguise creations. There are quite large structures (and empty spaces!) and the level somehow gives me the impression of being too large (well, it has at least 115*80 tiles). By the way, “Swampy Showdown” is definitely one of the levels where i have to admit that my overall impression is really (too much?!) influenced by the tileset (Agama’s “Swamp”, which looks completely breathtaking, so beautiful!!). But back to the layout: the weapon placement is okay (not a lot of them, though) and events are hard to find (which isn’t a bad thing as it is an important feature of Disguise’s very own style). The CTF route is quite long, probably too long to score a lot (but i don’t really wanna judge that, as i’m no CTF freak).
The layer arrangements are…sound, not spectular (as always, sorry :-).
As the background music, Disguise choose a ST3 module by an unknown finnish(!!) artist called “Jungle attack” (1997). No super hit and very slow but it still fits good in this jungle atmosphere.

My conclusion: sounds boring by the time, but this is yet another great level by Mister Disguise. Awesome tileset choice, playable as hell and perfect for battle games. His attempt to create a new own style pretty much failed and you know what? I’m even happy about that (7.5, mainly because of the cool composition…tileset, level and music :-).

…what Aiko said…
But I’ll lower the rating by 0.5…

A good level (But it would have been more interesting if the level were more detailed) using a great tileset. A 7.5 from me.
P.S: You forgot the single player start events, Disguise!!

Single player starts in CTF levels are always a bad idea. ;-P

I’m used to levels using the South African method from Disguise, but this is not a bad level using the “normal” method, though I can not say that it lives up to all of the levels he created with the South African method. This level does not, in fact, feature many platforms. Instead, it features a lot of normal ground and just a few platforms. This is pretty much the best kind of level you can make using the Swamps of the Sleeping Jaguar tileset, but this level has some problems. Weapon placement is fairly good, but there are some navigation problems, stemming from this being Disguise’s first non-South African levels. I will no longer bore you wish my strange-sounding modifications of the term “South African” and just give my rating, a 7.5, and a download recommendation. Not bad for a non-South African level. Oops…