Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

To perhaps encourage more people to review this one, I, as a member of the same group as the author, am giving this level a simple and very tight review, for what is it all about.

The funky blue fade in the background caught my eye first once looking into the level. In front of it there’s some nice underused eyecandy-stuff used, although not really special. The masked walls meant for sprite-layer shouldn’t confuse anyone as it isn’t used for the sprite layer at all. Also some other original decoration like transparent black’n white spots for example are put into the level. Too bad they end up being only very minor things about the level overall. There were a few strange tile-bugs at spots eventhough the level was supposed to have been betatested carefully, I as a lesser one too.

The gameplay is outstanding enough and doesn’t fall under circumstances like for example that the bases are too easily to be reached, bad balance, and so on. Only thing that I thought later about was, that there could be possibly a smaller spring-usage actually.

The choice and placement of pickups remains pretty alright too. There is just a small overuse of ammo in general. Don’t know if putting the carrot into a narrow gorge was that nice idea, especially because Yasco did use that earlier.

As a summary I would give the level a score of 8, but for the sake of good habits, being a groupmate I remain not rating it officially. Do download and review!

Cooba: That’s true. Glad to see your standards changing too, maybe. http://www.jazz2online.com/J2Ov2/downloads/info.php?levelID=2771

Guess belonging to the same group made me “overrate” it perhaps, if anything.

SJ

Betatested this a lot and helped him change a lot too… lets see.

Eyecandy
The eyecandy is good. The tileset doesn’t have a lot to offer, or they just don’t fit within the level. There is foreground, but it doesn’t confuse or get in the way. It’s a lot of eyecandy for this tileset, but maybe use something with more eyecandy tiles in the future. The background is just bland though, but it’s best the tileset can offer probably.

Gameplay
Very smooth. Float ups make sure you don’t just crash into walls without reason and springs are placed right, so you can just walk to the left/right without crashing into walls. Suckertubes here are handy too. The only thing is that the middle might be a little bit campable because of the coin warps and seeker pu, but there’s enough space to shoot people. The coin warps might be a bit too easy, since you only require 2 coins and you land right on the opposite team’s base, but it’s still a nice add. The layout is very easy to learn too, it has a lot of ways but it’s easy to remember. There aren’t a lot of dead ends either, and if there are there is a goodie.

Placement
Enough for everyone. The Pu’s are unbiased and on each side the ammo differs a little, but it’s still balanced. There’s not much more to say.

Maybe there could have been some food to fill up the level (sorry forgot to mention). The 1+ carrots are placed nicely and are reachable to both Jazz and Spaz. They do need to be shot down.

Comment overall level: Good job, nice relaxing music and easy to remember layout.

I dont have much time, so expect sort of a short review.

Gameplay
The level has a somewhat interesting layout, the flow isn’t all that bad either, the springs put you more or less where you want to go. Although there are some rather questionable features such as the coin warp, because it is so easy to get to your base from the location of the warp you might as well not use it, they will take around the same time.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| – 7.8/10

Eyecandy
The eyecandy itself was fine, but there wasn’t quite enough of it, and that made the larger more open areas seem very empty and I must agree with cooba the palette animation wasn’t exactly helping.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| – 7.3/10

Event Placement
The event placment in the level was rather nice, not too much ammo not too little. the full NRG carrot adds a reason to go to the bottom, and it’s placement in the pit like nblast does help. The choice of powerups is rather good too. The traditional seeker power up, but you also have a bouncer and RF powerup, the bouncers are very good for the underground sections while the RF’s are nice in the more open parts of the level.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| – 7.2/10

Bonus
-I really liked the carrot placement.
– 0.1/0.5

Download recommendation?
Yes, it may not be the best ctf level out there or the prettiest, but it is rather fun for a play time to time.
=D

=)Freestyle.(=

Thanks for the reviews. :)