Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Bah…

Visual Appeal – 3 out of 5

This tileset, being a Disguise one, certainly isn’t capable of having too great eyecandy, but this level doesn’t even look as if the author tried (sorry). The background looks bland and uninteresting (putting rain in the background in such a tileset is a… waste, for me), and layer 8 isn’t even textured. For one knows, why? I’m not sure if it could get anymore overused and boring with the background like that.

The other layers don’t help out the level either. Battlespaz uses the same one brick in terms of soil, and the same one wall tile in terms of a wall. Please. I don’t think I need to explain it’s a bad thing. There’s also very few eyecandy aside from the casual shields, torches and knights. How about some actual tile variety? I’d appreciate it, to be honest.

Playability – 3 out of 5

First off, the flow of the level could have been better. Specifically, I don’t like the bottom of the level (it gets frustrating with how the platforms above the pit are designed) and how the hook tiles used the Hook events. It’s certainly not the best thing to put in a multiplayer level, since hooks can seriously slow a player down. Use the Vine event next time, please.

Another bad thing I noticed, is that the ammo was so scarce it makes no sense collecting it. In fact, I’m 90% sure that there is more food in this level than ammo. What sense does it make? It’s like that in one of the coinwarps (three fastfires and like 10 candies?) which makes it heavily unrewarding and thus pointless. The other warp has a seeker powerup, and there’s a blaster powerup somewhere else in the level. Seeing as this is mostly enclosed, the Blaster and Seeker weapons will be the destructive here, which would just lead to total chaos, and chaos is not a good thing.

• Might be playable.

• Slow, generic, probably not worth the time.

Overall
Let Saphir’s really high rating not deceive you, as this is only a slightly above average level with several problems. Download? Nope.

I had the opportunity to play this level online yesterday and come with a few suggestions. It pleases me to see that Battlespaz actually listened to me :)

Introduction: A medium-sized or so battle level using the Corrupted Sanctuary tileset by Disguise. As the author says, it’s well suited for 4-8 players, and it’s not far too large for a duel.

Eyecandy: The eyecandy in the level was decent. There are no stunning views, nor are there any major flaws. It mostly looks good; flicker light is used to create a certain kind of “feeling”, which it does, together with the “holes” in the wall (layer 4 background). The eyecandy tiles included in the tileset are all used properly, and in my opinion the level doesn’t get boring to look at too fast. A bit right of the top carrot there’s an empty space with no real eyecandy, which looks somewhat empty if you look at it (won’t be noticed while playing, though). Oddly, the layer 8 background isn’t textured. This doesn’t really bother too much, with the lightning effect, rain, and clouds (or whatever it is.. mist? smoke?) giving a decent enough look to the background, but a textured BG might still look better.
8.5
Item Placement: Items are generally placed quite well. There are 3 powerups in the level. The bouncy PU, which is placed in a 1 tile wide deadend path which can be VERY risky, is placed well in my opinion, since the sloped nature of the level makes bouncers very powerful here. The blaster powerup is in a less risky spot, and is in fact quite easy to get to and get away from, which speeds up the gameplay some. The seeker PU is in a bonus warp; there are, as the author mentioned, two bonus warps in here (GJ Battlespaz, definately an improvement) and just enough coins for them to be somewhat hard, but not impossible, to reach. The other coinwarp leads to an area with fastfires, carrots, and food. Yes. There is food in the level. It is placed in similar places as the ammo, often around and in between ammo pickups, and neither adds nor removes much of the fun of playing. It’s not that hard to get sugar rushes here; I’m not sure wether that is good or bad, but the food, just as the ammo, is generally placed well, as in it looks good. Coins are also placed well. There are 2 carrots exluding the ones in the coinwarp; the top one is well placed, while the one near the hooks seems to be put there just because the level needed a carrot (actually it’s useful at times, but its position seems rushed). The seeker/food pickup area around 36,42 looks overcrowded, and the bouncer PU is maybe a slight bit too close to the carrot, but those are the only real complaints I have in this section.
8.2
Gameplay: The gameplay of this level seemed good in online play. It’s usually easy to get around, with springs where they are needed, but not so much that the player feels like he/she is getting pushed around. Hooks are used extensively in the level, but they are placed well enough not to hinder the gameplay (although they might add a very, very sligth Spaz bias to the left part of the level). Around the middle bottom of the level there’s kind of a spike pit, which will take 5 coins from you if you have that when you fall. The sloped platform area above the spikes thus become a place where you are careful with your jumping. Sometimes, the spikes can be used as an escape route, but someone might be camping the exit, so it’s not wise to use it without reason. There is some kind of a dead end at the bottom right of the level, if you enter from the spike area, but it’s hard to reach from that direction (you need to fall down on a small platform and then jump over a short gap) and easy to defend. In addition, if you have coins, you just might be fast enough to get in the warp, get out, and have your enemy trapped in there.
There are a few camping spots around the level; the aforementioned dead end is one of them. The top area, with the carrot and bouncer PU, is another; the third, and best, is the are left of the spikes, where you get warped both from the coin warps and if you fall onto the spikes. Most of the fighting seems to happen around the hook area on the left, where some coins and one carrot are placed – it’s also a place from which it’s hard to escape fast – and around the bouncer PU/carrot; that area is open with multiple escape routes. The other parts of the level, aside from the spike area, are mainly diagonal, semi-narrow corridors, which are well suited for escaping in, or swift assaults. There are holes in the ground (not just tiles left out; the holes look good) that you can use to duck from enemy fire; this works somewhat well agaisnt the powered up blaster if you have seekers you can fire out of the holes, which makes the blaster PU slightly weaker in the level, another reason for it to be easy to reach. Overall, the gameplay is quite good, although the springs in the bonus warps are useless.
8.5

Music/Tileset choice (no rating): Both were, in my opinion, well chosen; the music fits both the level and tileset well.

Bugs: BattleSpaz seems to have fixed any major bugs this level had. At 12,24 you CAN get stuck with Spaz, but only if you actually try. This won’t subtract any points as you won’t get stuck in it unless you actually try; it’s only slightly easier to get stuck in than any normal narrow area.

Comments: I liked the spike area. It changed the gameplay in a positive way.
I also liked the general feeling of the level. It’s good to see you changed anything that needed to be changed (read: that I thought needed to be changed).

Overall: A solid battle level which is very good for a second upload. D/L recommendion, definately.
8.5

The castle are nearly made from one single block since the others had a lot of bugs while adding to others, and also there is really only 3 types and I’ve used them somewhere…
But thanks from critism Cooba, I will improve my levels from base of this.

W000000000000T!!!!

great tileset man, and a great level too!!!

but….

i found a bug, it was in the lowest single stone that is floating in the air in the upper of the level, i came stuck in it…

so plz fix it now you still can!!!