Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Devans Gone
Since everyone else seems to be too damn lazy to review this pack and also because I don’t have anything better to do, I’ll review this singleplayer pack. I only played the normal levels, and I’ll review this at once, because I don’t have much time. Behold.

EYECANDY: 2.1 out of 2.5
Well, the eyecandy in this pack is certainly good for the tilesets used. I really like natural tilesets, and this pack contains much of them (Diamondus, Jungle, etc.). The eyecandy actually contained some original things, like the standard background trees from Diamondus used in the sprite foreground. Overall, I can say the eyecandy is very good, but sometimes it’s a little too much. This is especially in the Jungle level, where the path you need to take in the trees is blocked by leaves, as well as the enemies. Could be better.

PLACEMENT: 1.2 out of 1.5
The placement is really one of the best things of this pack. There are just enough carrots to stay alive (and this is really necessary since all the levels are crammed with enemies) and the save-point placement is also OK, other developers could learn from this! Now on with the ammo: much of the ammo is placed randomly in crates, and I like that. There are also a few powerups (including seeker, which is quite necessary to get through the harder levels) Once you open the level is JCS, you’ll see that there are much easy/hard events which is a good point. Nice job.

ENEMIES: 0.8 out of 1.0
It seems like Devan didn’t take his friends with him when he left, since all levels are filled up with enemies. Most of them are turtles, but also salamanders and other forms of unwanted life forms. Luckily there are enough carrots to keep you alive and also enough save points. This level would be very good if you want to shoot all your problems away!

STRUCTURE & GAMEPLAY: 4.3 out of 5.0
Let’s get down to business with the most serious factor of this pack: the gameplay and structure. Well, I can say that this has been worked out pretty fine. The structure is very nice overall, closed in some levels (the jungle one) and very open in other levels (the labrat level) The gameplay gets a huge bonus because there are three different levels of difficulty which adds lots of replay value. Overall, this pack doesn’t take long to finish (one big hour should be enough) The structure itself feels good enough and there are much original things to find. The music files fit nice to the levels, by the way.

RATINGS:
Nobody did a good job with this level pack. The originality, overload of enemies and different difficulty levels make this pack the best Singe player Pack in 2005 so far (the only one too, I believe, but it says something) The episode is not really long and the storyline is not very interesting, but I could describe it as “short but shocking” and that is something we need, don’t we?

Score: 2.1 + 1.2 + 0.8 + 4.3 = 8.4
Download: Yeah. See above for reasons.
Host: Perhaps in Co-op, yes.

Greetings,
~ ChippieBW of [si] and XLM