Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Well. From beginning, you should know this is not remake, concept of the level has nothing to do with concept of Battle1, no main idea, nothing. Just few copied details, which could contain really any level. It won a remake contest maybe unfairly, but the thruth is that this is one of the best CTF levels ever.

First Impression
Ladies and gentlemen, wow. The level uses BlurredD’s very night version of Castle tileset and I wonder what is, and always has been possible to do with it. But you need to Blacky. The abstract work with anything how Blacky does it, it’s awesome.
Eyecandy is in one word fantastic. The main part of the eyecandy is fruit, probably. The contrast between extremely dark, black level and those bright limes and lemons works greatly. The main color combination is awesome, I think all levels before just had to be as colorful as possible… Eyecandy is completed by ammo, by just two or three pieces of seekers or fastfires in the area, so it doesn’t have any bigger functional meaning. Just Blacky’s system of eyecandy. Cool.

The… Level itself
Two bases at two ends of the levels, weird, isn’t it? The level is, as we are habituated in Blacky’s levels, symmetric, but today it’s like 10 times more symmetric than anytime. Not the eyecandy (the occasional ammo is mainly the eyecandy, as I said), but all gameplay stuff. Warps to bouncer power-ups at both two bottom corners of the level, seeker power in the middle of whole level, RF above seeker in the wall.
There are three totally different ways how to get to the base (in one you are using vines, in second copter, in third warp), which makes the games a bit more interesting ;)… It’s much bigger fun etc. There are also shorcuts to the bases, but… Skill needed ;p
Flow… Well, it’s probably the main reason why I didn’t give 10 to this level. Although the level is symmetric, you will need to train here long time for knowing the terrain perfectly. There are things like six-tiles wide hole near the base. It looks like you can just run, but if you’ll do so, you will fall down and you may lose a point just because of this. You’ll often jump to the walls, which you will not like ;p. But if you’ll learn the level and you will use springs in way you have to and jump where you should, you’ll love the flow. It’s just made for experts in the level, that’s that.
Ammo placement. Sometime it’s placed in spring holes, as it was in battle1, there are also two gun barrels, which will not cause lag, in my honest opinion, because they will not be used much ;p. There are also gun crates, here it will be worse.
Balance of the level. Horizontal balance is total, absolute, etc. Vertical balance – well, the main powerup of this level, RF one is placed at the top, same with bases, +1 carrots and bouncer PUs, but the players are mostly in the bottom, more open and “airful” part of the level. I am a bit scared they will camp near to full energy carrot and seeker PU, which are placed really, really near to each other. And mainly, for going from one part to other, you need to go thru carrot or seeker. That’s not well, really.
It’s impossible to play this level with Jazz, Spaz biasing is way too big. Music choice rocks, unfortunately I use WinAmp. Few Battle1 places like +1 carrots or ammo tubes (which were near bouncer PU) looks nicely ;p

Let’s duel… Or do you want 4v4?
I tried duel couple times and the level and it works, although it’s really big. Duels are possible, but expect longer games than normally. It’s fun to play 2v2s here, 3v3 games are okay also. It’s the big plus of the level, you can play it in number of players that you want.
There is milion of other things, cool details in gameplay, which I haven’t mentioned just because I don’t have infinity of time.

Go download it. Now. But don’t call it a remake. Okay?

(it contains some bugs but I am going to tell Blacky about them as soon as he will be online, so I am not counting with them in the final rating and I, as you could notice, I haven’t mentioned them in the review ;p)

Danyjel, Blacky remade Battle1 by changing it’s concept and moving stuff around. Stop saying it’s not a remake.
Review coming soon.