Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Christmas are coming, and so do christmas levels. I’m not against it, I even made a christmas level myself, but not only some are below average, but also a few have nothing to do with christmas except for the name.

When I saw the title, I thought it will be a snowy battle level with xmas music. However, I was wrong – for unknown reason (originality, maybe) Jarno Vos decided to use Carrotus Night and add some snow – and you must know this snow is purple. Still optimistic (as I am), I continued playing the level. Boy, I could’ve stop at the very first look…

Panic
The level is heavily vertical. It’s only a bit widhter than the game window, but the height is like, hmmm, maybe 5 or 6 screens. So there’s this shaft, and there are some airboards. The autor predicts they are necessary, and basically they are (fall to the bottom and you have no chances of going back up), but then why we can avoid them? If the player is fast enough he can move above them and continue the play on his own feet. Of course, he wouldn’t want to, but still it’s bad. Especially since walking players are faster than airboarding ones.

‘Cause it’s an unfriendly place
The ammo placement is quite like plants on a desert – not much of them, and they always stick together (that’s called oasis). On the top there’s TNT, in the middle there are Frostbiter, Seeker and Bouncer. There’s not much on the bottom (some coins and a carrot, which isn’t something great – I’ll explain that later), until you go to bonus. Wait wait, bonus? Oh yeah, sure there is one. You could guess that looking at the coins. If you were lucky enough – they don’t respawn! And more than that, you need to get them all if you want the bonus. And even if you got them all, you’ll spend a while finding it. I think I can tell that it’s the arrow on the right wall, especially since the bonus isn’t quite worthy the trick. What you get is some Toaster ammo and entrance to the room on the very bottom. It contains a bit of Fast Fire, 2 carrots (once again I’ll get back on that later) and… spikes! Iiiiingeeeenouuuuus. It’s so easy to touch them, that I begin to wonder – does this room help or actually acts fully opposite? Hard to guess, especially since the spikes are in the normal part, too. Lots of. Argh!

You’ll run back…
Back to the ammo, at first I didn’t understand why Frostbiter ammo is placed in such obscure place. This still is strange, when bouncer and TNT are easy to get, just like the Blaster power-up (TOO easy on this one, I say), and Forstbiter isn’t more powerful or at least as powerful as them. Soon I found a wicked passage in the wall near Frostbiter ammo, which led to a text saying “SHOOT!” I did what it wanted me to do, and so I got a fire shield. Yay, it’s hidden enough! One good thing so far. If there only was a quicker way than going all the way back to get out…

…and forth
While the level is quite small (which I don’t count as bad, I like small battle levels – of course 1 screen size level is breaking the line), it contains whole 9 carrots! To make it even worse, in almost all appearances they come in groups of two. Maybe it’s to give a chance of entering the bonus? Maybe that’s the christmas gift? Anyway, that’s another wrong thing. I was coming to this one from a while in this review – carrots on this level are done horrible! There’s barely a chance to roast someone, even with the Blaster PU.

You call that christmas?!
The last on the long list of cons comes eyecandy – or should I say it crawls, because it’s barely noticable. There’s NO background and foreground eyecandy (the lake on bottom has the same movement speed as sprite layer) and the layer 4 eyecandy is very poor. A few flowers, carrots (one badly done), caverns on the left (I named them so, but only because I couldn’t find a better word – they make no actual caverns at all) and a few unnatural pumpkin vines. Oh well, at least it’s better than nothing – and believe me, I saw many levels with really zero eyecandy. Maybe you did, too.

No way!
This level has barely anything to do with christmas, as well as with joy (the basis of christmas IMHO). No recommendation, really. When I looked into the readme file, it was clearly saying that the author is 8 years old – but that doesn’t change the fact that the level is bad. Jarno vos, maybe you should train a bit with more skilled levelmakers – I’m sure you’ll find someone who will want to teach you levelmaking basics – or at least check out JCSref or a proper article. Meanwhile, I cannot give this level anything over 2.2.

Eyecandy
Blandest level I have seen for ages. No background eyecandy, barely any sprite layer eyecandy, no foreground; there isn’t much, and what is there, is ugly, like the snow.

Gameplay
You did a good job on providing hurt events. Never put hurt events in multiplayer levels. I’m going to take 0.5 point off the rating because of that. The layout, being also bad (lots of dead ends, don’t put dead ends in the way you did.) downmarks this level a lot.

Eventing
If a player is lucky enough, he will not touch an airboard, and thus he will be more swift. Player must be forced to touch it. Otherwise, he will fall down to the bottom of this level, and he will be stuck. Also I’d take out the Airboards and replace them with Fly Carrot MCEs.

Have You Played This In Battle Mode Cooba???

I think he have. Have you jarno vos?

Can’t play the level. However, i’ll give you a few tips:

1. NEVER password your levels. It really makes it annoying for reviewers.

2. If you’re using an ‘offical’ tileset, don’t include it. It just inflates file space.

3. From the looks of it, it sounds like you didn’t make the airboards spawn. Airboard battles are bad enough, but non-spawning airboard battles? puke

4. “Have You Played This In Battle Mode Cooba???”

(Please do not suggest that people use illegal software. -Trafton)