Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Unconventional Coffee is a medium/large ctf level that won R3p’s unusual CTF contest. Its not suprising that it won, since it is of very high quality, like you would expect from a level by FireSworD.

When you first play in the level, you should learn the layout really quickly. Being symectrical, the level’s layout isn’t too original, but this one feels different to other layouts in game. I also like the fact that FS took the time to remake the other half of the layout, instead of taking one half, and then flipping it, like a lot of people do. (Like me :P)
Not a single part of the layout here would be useless to gameplay, which is a huge plus in CTF levels.

The flow here is pefect in my opinion. It finds the exact balance between a bad flow and a fully automatic flow. The death pits are very easy to avoid; so its your fault if you make a big mistake and fall, unless an opponent forces you to fall in them, e.g: If they freeze you with Ice while over the pit. In the middle there is a fly carrot that can take you up to one of the bases. You don’t have to take that route; there is another route around the edges of the level, which takes longer, but is usually a lot safer.
One evil tactic is to shoot the fly carrot into the sewers below, so people have to go down to get it, then be ready to pwn them with seekers as they come up.

The placement in this level is very good too. The contest required a level to have many PUs, and this level meets that requirement. There are 5 PUs in this level, which sounds like too many, but the large amount works here. On the left side there are Bouncer and Ice PUs, and on the right side there are Toaster and Pepper spray. The Bouncer/Toaster PUs can become very campy however, but if you fall down and shoot seeks through the entrance to the PU box you can counter it. There is also a Seeker PU in the sewers. Like with the fly carrot, the sewers can be a deadly ambush spot. This level also has 3 carrots, on on each side, and one in the higher middle. The middle carrot is in a room where you need to one of the coin warps on each side of the level. In this room there is an exit on both sides that take you to either team’s base, like in BBlair. I personally think it should be removed because it makes the room slightly too safe from enemy fire, others may disagree. The ammo is placed in nice shapes, instead of boring, overused 2×2 squares. I think there should be more RF ammo, however. There is also some food to fill the level up with events.

The eyecandy in this level is not the best I have seen with this tileset, but it is still very nice. The certainly liked the background, with those very tall buildings that gives the level a more city-like feel, different from other levels with this set. The greyish fade colour for layer 8 also helps this atmosphere, along with the awesome music. The sprite layer EC is not as great, since it is not very original, but is still much better than in the standard Colon levels.

IMO this is one of FS’ best levels. It will certainly get more attention in the future, since it is being played in the JJ2WC3. I could really give this an uber rating like 9 since this isn’t too original, but it is still extremely good. 8.6 is my rating.

Well, I finally found some time to review this level by FireSworD.

The lay-out of this level is great, since it’s vertical, which we don’t see that often. This tileset – Colon – perfectly fits the level, which brings me to another strong point of this level: it doesn’t have floating platforms. It looks like one big house, which I really like. It is symmetrical, but that doesn’t mean it’s unoriginal (see all points above).

About the gameplay. There are several ways to reach the bases. You can use the fly carrot, the float ups, the coinwarp or just climb your way up. Obviously that’s good, since players won’t be able to camp certain area’s and it stimulates using the whole level. A place you can camp is the coinwarp, but that isn’t a bad thing. It makes it worth to use it.

There are three carrots, all Full NRG’s , and five PU’s. Left has Toaster and Ice (which may be handy in the pits-version), while right has a Bouncy (great in vertical levels) and Gun 8-PU. The Seek PU is in the center, but at a tricky spot, since there is only one way out. Three Full NRG’s seems a bit much, but I don’t think it is a big problem with 5 PU’s in the level. The placement is okay too. The spots are campable, but not really save though, since they are quite open.

The flow is good as well. Especially the part from the center to the side carrots is really nice designed, with a perfect placed red spring. The eyecandy is good enough, I actually like it a lot. Lots of eyecandy isn’t always better. Layer 6 and 7 are just great, they create a real atmosphere.

This level seems to be hard to play, but you will learn it fast enough and probably like it ;)

Well, I think this deserves a real high rating, since it’s original in many aspects. Disagree with me, I don’t care ;P

Thanks for reviewing guys. There are a few things I feel like stating, one of them is the fact I realized beforehand that hunters would use the pits to regain health. As for the flag carriers having a defensive advantage because of that; I wouldn’t worry about it too much, since hunters at full health will take more risks, so it evens out. Also consider that the carrots are easy to defend, and there’s an ice powerup and ammo to freeze players, so you can kill them even at full health thanks to the pits. I like to think of it as an added tactic, not a problem.

As for the carrot in the coin warp.. yeah I feared it would be too easy to defend, but it’s a safe spot, and a safe spot isn’t much if you can’t stay safe for a significant amount of time. The carrot also makes the bonus worth taking. Besides, it’s narrow and cramped. If you played plenty of team games, it’s obvious how neat being safe for even a short period of time can be.

As for the lack of originality pertaining to the eyecandy: I fully agree, but keep in mind my first intention was to create a fully standard, conventional level as a joke, since I figured R3ptile would be receiving relatively unusual levels, this one would be unusual to other entries since it would be conventional. That idea didn’t hold though.

This is really nice level since it has unique gameplay. im not really sure what makes this level unique, since it uses default tileset and all that stuff, but eh, my guess is that its because of the vertical-based gameplay. the layout is symmetrical though, and usually symmetric layouts are very boring, but this one is not. also, the pits are nice touch.

there’s also lots of powerups, and four carrots, which is unique for this size. first i wasnt sure how it works out, but now that i’ve played through level a bit, and been looking around and stuff, i can say that it works out here. the powerups are nicely chosen too, there’s even ice one. there’s also two coinwarps, which lead to carrots i think.

eyecandy is pretty good for this set, since this is quite limiting tileset in some cases. however, fs managed to make a level which looks nice, and doesn’t look boring, so thats nice.

i don’t have anything more to say, except that this is indeed very unique level. download recommendation.

(im sorry about this bad review >:()

The name unconventional coffee fits this quite well, as this level was indeed made for the unusual ctf contest. The eyecandy in this tileset is good enough, it serves it’s purpose keeping the area identifiable and keeping me from getting seriously bored. As for the gameplay, this is where the level really is unconventional. It takes advantage of fly carrots, to enable players to freely move about the central area, and uses pit’s to add risk to getting powerups, and mindlessly walking around, what is great about the pits is that they are really nessessary for the layout, I’ve seen pitfall levels where the pits are just sort of there, and there are other things the creator could have put in the place of the pits, but not in this level. The seeker powerup isn’t quite in the middle, not that it matters really, I’d say it’s symetrical still. With the large open areas RF spamming could be quite a good tactic, but FS predticted this and used a minimum of RF ammo. One of the only real problems this level has is the RTS zone near the top, a user could camp there and just replenish himself with the full energy carrot right there. In general I like this unconventional level just as much as I like coffee. (YAY FOR BAD PUNS)

RATING Unconventional Coffee

‘Unconventional Coffee’? So complicated name, and so UNUSUAL level!

so:

EYECANDY
Good points:
Very unusual eyecandy. big level. Smart use in one of the Epic’s involved tilesets. Nice!
Bad points:
PLEASE Help me to find bad points!
I didnwt find! :-)
Total: 100/100

GAMEPLAY
VERY UNUSUAL!!
LOTS OF SECRETS!
SO LOVELY!!
Total: 100/100

PLACEMENT
This is the FIRST CTF level i downloadED USING food, some goodies(like Freeze Enemies)
BUT i liked the Traps!!
SMART!! COOL!!
Total: 100/100

Music:
You do a smart way to not select “Colony.j2b”-It’s sucks. but NICE MUSIC!!
Total: 100/100

RATING: 100/100=10
Download? YES!

p.s: you can use “Town House Lite”- TSF Tileset converted to 1.23. I think is better than colon.