Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

YaY, another CTF. This one’s by CelL and uses the Wasteland tileset by Blade.

Design: 7.5
This level is very well designed, and looks as if it has been planned out beforehand. It basically consists of a large metal ‘hull’, if I may call it that, around the outside, with an open bottom guarded by Area Float Ups. There are four metal platforms ‘floating’ in the level, with ammo and springs to reach the higher platforms. There are also two big pointy things poking out of the sides, where the bases are. Finally, there’s a long horizontal platform or two along the bottom with warps back up to the higher platforms.
This level looks complicated at first (the vast amounts of eye-candy don’t help much here) but once you’ve had a good bounce around in it you can navigate it fairly easily. However, with this you can run from base to base in about fifteen to twenty seconds sometimes, with not many obstructions along the way. It’s also seems very horizontal as well, as you don’t need much travelling up or down to get from base to base. But it plays how I think it’s meant to.

Placement of stuff: 8.5
There’s a lot of ammo almost everywhere – it’s hard to run out of it in this level. You can also see that each ‘platform’ has its own type of ammo – there’s seekers at the top, and bouncers along the bottom, for example. The one thing I found sort of annoying was that it’s mainly placed in 1×1 blocks of the stuff – ie one tile at a time – so you can’t really be running along and getting lots of it at a time, instead you have to walk along the platforms and do precise jumps whenever you see some.
There’s one power-up in the level: it’s for the Seekers and is located in the middle up at the top. You come across it many times in the level, mainly by warping to it after dropping down or by jumping past the platform it’s on. This is OK as Seekers can often be wasted easily ;) but some players could use the seekers too often. Another hidden powerup somewhere else would be a nice addition – the level’s big enough for one!

Eye-candy: 9.0
Whooooooa, there’s a lot of this. The author has used the background tiles from the tileset to great effect. It’s all Layer 4 eye-candy, but the tileset supports this and it doesn’t really matter. At first it can be hard to distinguish between the foreground tiles and the background tiles, but you can soon overcome this. The foreground tiles are also well presented, they don’t have some sort of grid on them or anything.
The background layers are pretty good – there’s two layers of horizontally scrolling metal and pipes and stuff going in different directions to each other. This isn’t exactly a new effect, but it comes out tops. If you look in JCS (hee hee, aren’t I evil) you can see there’s some parallaxing Layer 8 in there as well – you don’t really notice this ingame but it’s a nice touch :)

Music: 9.5
Good choice of music, in my opinion it suits the level well. It’s at the right pace, and is at the same ‘speed’ as the background layers. You also don’t keep humming it for hours on end afterwards.

Originality: 6.0
There’s nothing new about the concept – grab the flag and return it to your base before your flag is stolen – but the tileset has been used in various new ways, which especially shows in the background metal eye-candy. Overall, there’s nothing really new except various new uses of the tileset. It’s good to see tilesets being used in more, interesting ways, though :)

Lastability: 5.0
Lastability isn’t too great, sadly. You’ll spend some time happily bouncing around getting the feel of the level and finding some secrets and getting all the ammo, but afterwards you’ll find that it’s quite easy to travel from base to base and you could end up getting bored quite easily. You could host this a few times, but you’ll get tired of this easily.

Overall: 8.5
Overall, BlueCore CTF isn’t a bad level. It’s fairly large, but you can find your way about too easily after quite a bit of playing and then it can get boring fairly easily. It’s worth a download and is great for some online servers, but only for a bit. Well done, CelL :)

Oh, and I got a new review system =D[This review has been edited by Shen]

Since Shen wrote a long enough review, ill summarize my thoughts into a short one. The music is great, the backround eyecandy is an interesting idea. I didnt like the layout to much, it was to…plain and to roomy, not my type of level. The ammo was placed ok, the carrot were ok. There is only one powerup (I only found one) and its a seeker. It is easy to locate, and another powerup would be welcome, but the balance right now is ok. My final rating would be a 7.7, since the level is good, but i didnt like the layout much, and it got boring fast. I may upgrade the rating after further play. Great work CelL!

TILESET/TILESET USE: The author uses Wasteland, but I can’t say I love the use. The background eyecandy pretty much obscures all the green in the background, so the whole level feels very grey. There are a few interesting things, but overall this is just Wasteland, with nothing very new.
Pros: No noticable tile bugs, not all plain and ordinary.
Cons: Nothing new, too grey.
Rating: 7.2

WEAPON/ITEM PLACEMENT: Weapons seem pretty good. Various types of ammo are scattered (not randomly, though) around the level, not in big clumps, which is interesting. There might be not quite enough, but I’m not sure. There are two full energy carrots, one in each bottom corner. (Right below the warp to the Seeker Powerup) There are three powerups, the Seeker at the top middle, and two others (RF and Bouncy, I think) in the middle, accessable by Electro Blaster.
Pros: Everything placed pretty well.
Cons: Maybe a few too few weapons.
Rating: 8.5

ORIGINALITY: There is very little that is original about this level. You’ve got the four big platforms, the hidden alcoves, the EB-only powerups, the float ups at the bottom, the scrolling background eyecandy. There are one or two interesting things, but nothing much is new.
Pros: No “never-done-before-because-it-sucks” things.
Cons: Nothing much else, either..
Rating: 6.3

GAMEPLAY/DESIGN: The level consists of four large platforms, and four things sticking out of the side walls. And there’s a tunnel running along the bottom. It all seems fairly fluid (time between bases around 6 seconds), but I wouldn’t have minded it if the bottom middle large platform had been moved up a bit. The design is solid, but it does have a little too much feel of going back and forth.
Pros: Everything seems to work.
Cons: A little too tested by time.
Rating: 7.7

REPLAY VALUE: You may want to play this a few times. However, I do advise turning off the music and playing something else in the background if you want to really enjoy the level.
Pros: Not applicable.
Cons: Not applicable.
Rating: 7.5

OVERALL: This is a good CTF level which can’t really be improved other then starting from scratch. Or improving the eyecandy. The author comes close to triggering flag bug in several places, but avoids it somehow.
Pros: Design, weapon placement, some other stuff.
Cons: Music, lack of originality, some other stuff.
Rating: 8.2

Yeah… the music is alright. Only with this titleset there isn’t much eyecandy. But the background and the pipes are okay. A challenching level. Weapons are okay. Almost a 8 form me. :)

At first blush, this level looked like it could become a classic. The grey-metal Wasteland eyecandy was good-looking and gameplay was fun. That is, for the first ten minutes of play or so. After that, problems in the general structure of the level became quite apparent and the level lost some of it’s enjoyablility (is that a word?). Wasteland is probably a bit overused, and the eyecandy in this level was odd. Also, it quickly became apparent that this was the layout from the underworld. Still, it’s a solid Capture the Flag level. Let’s review, shall we?

TILESET/TILESET USE: The level’s author decided to use Blade’s “Wasteland” tileset. While “Wasteland” is a very good tileset, the grey-ness of it is a bit overwhelming. The monotone color scheme of this level was not exactly interesting. Instead, it made everything feel a little bland. I was expecting more, but maybe I should not have. Wasteland does look fairly spiffy, but it does also have its limits. I liked the detail the author put into the pipes in this level, but I still think that the eyecandy was a bit bland.
Pros: I did not see any tile bugs. The little individual pipes were well-done and it showed effort.
Cons: The color of cement is only so interesting. Nothing creative, new, or interesting.
Rating: 7.5

WEAPON/ITEM PLACEMENT: Weapon placement is definitely the strongest point of this level. Some may consider this too many powerups, but I myself think that this is a fairly good balance for the amount of carrots there are. The basic ammo was well-placed. The basic ammo was not clumped as it often is in levels such as this, but it was also not so sporatic that ammo drain occured. The balance was very good. As with many levels these days, electroblasters come in handy for getting powerups that are in walls. Ammo placement was well-done. Good job.
Pros: Everything was placed pretty well.
Cons: Some might consider the amount of powerups there are to be a little bit too many.
Rating: 8.5

ORIGINALITY: If ammo placement was this level’s best side, this is definitely its dark side. Simply put, while this level is quite solid, there is not anything original in it. The eyecandy is not original, nor is gameplay. While the float up use towards the bottom of the level is not often seen, it has been done plenty of times before and has by this point became uninteresting. Originality is easily this level’s worst part, and that drags down the level’s quality and makes it a tad less fun to play. Something a little more creative would have been nice.
Pros: This level does not take chances with things that could have turned out awful.
Cons: This level takes way too few chances. Nothing that has not been done before is in it.
Rating: 6.7

GAMEPLAY/DESIGN: The level’s layout (which is quite evil) consists of four gigantic platforms and smaller platforms coming out from the walls. While playing is fairly fluid (it did not take that long to get from base to base), playing it over and over is not very enjoyable. The level is by nature fairly linear: one or two routes are by far the fastest while others are too slow to be usable. The flow is still more or less good. The problem with this level is that you can not play it over and over again without becoming bored. The only thing I really hated was where the springs next to the bases were. They can be used to get to the above platform, but they confuse me into thinking there is something in the little compartment that the springs are located in other than basic bouncy ammo. Other than that, gameplay was solid, but linear.
Pros: The flow was more or less good.
Cons: Layout gets old quick, and is sometimes a bit annoying.
Rating: 7.5

REPLAY VALUE: I can not say that I like the replay value of this level as much as a lot of other reviewers. Simply, this level seemed to get old after about ten minutes of play. There are not many alternative routes, and eyecandy was nothing spectacular. Also, the music got really, really annoying. I had to test it on a computer with speakers to make sure the music was good, and it was just not worth the effort. I suggest that those who wish to play this level a lot turn off the music and turn on something more interesting.
Pros: The level was OK.
Cons: Got old really quick. Background music is annoying.
Rating: 6.7

COMPATIBILITY: This level really looks as if it would cause flag bug, but fortunately does not, at least during testing. Still, the places where there was not a sufficient mask make me nervous.
Pros: Not applicable.
Cons: Not applicable.
Rating: Not applicable.

OVERALL: This is a solid Capture the Flag level, more or less. While this review does sound very negative, it is because I am comparing it to CelL’s other works. The flow of this level is more or less OK. Still, I was just expecting more from CelL and was a little bit disappointed by what I got. This level does not show much room for improvement beyond improving the eyecandy slightly and maybe tweaking the flow a bit. This would not improve my score much, but it would be nice. Not a bad level, but it has some problems that make it not so interesting to play. A download recommendation for Capture the Flag players.
Pros: Weapon placement was pretty good. There were no tile bugs.
Cons: Gets tedious fairly quickly. Music was annoying. Low replay value. Ho-hum eyecandy.
Rating: 8.2

OVERALL RATING (Not an average): 7.7

Looks like Cell made another semi-laggy level. But what do I think?

GAMEPLAY:

It’s a little orignal and symmetrical from what I can tell. It’s easy enough to get from base to base; nothing wrong with the flow. The only thing I didn’t like about the layout was at the bottom middle where there is the bouncer and toaster ammo. You could have done something more than just make straight paths from one side to another. That’s the only thing I found wrong.

EYE CANDY:

This level has some of the best eye candy that I’ve seen with this tileset. The background makes the level a little laggy and can be a little confusing, but that isn’t that much of a problem since Hardware Acceleration and/or Low detail can be used. It’s also a shame that the level can’t really live up to the name in 8-bit as it does in 16-bit.

CARROT AND AMMO PLACEMENT:

The full energy carrots in this level were placed slightly differently from what I normally would see. One is placed at the bottom left and the other bottom right. Near each carrot, there are springs that lead to a warp to the top middle of the level. On top of that, there’s a seeker powerup near that warp target. This could lead to some interesting gameplay. Anyway, ammo placement was overall alright and no complaints with the placing of the powerup.

HOST THIS OFTEN?

Maybe. Decide for yourself. I’ll rate this a 7.7 since it’s a nice level but could be a little better.