Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Holiday Hare 07 is Odin’s sophomore Holiday effort, and much like the official sophomore holiday pack this download is mostly made up of regurgitated material. The pack is split up into two parts, the main attraction “Jazz Jackrabbit’s Scientolomas Adventure” (Originally titled Jewmas adventure), and the much meatier Holiday Hare ’05 Remix. Both portions come up short in various areas, though the 05 remix is able to save itself a bit better since it is longer.

I shall start with the scientolomas adventure which is comprised of a meager two levels. The pack was originally centered around Jazz being a Jew, and a few of the pack’s jokes (intentional or not) fall a bit flat from the name change. The controversial line that sparked the name change is left entirely unchanged save for the replacement of “Jew” with “Scientologist”. How this is perfectly ok, or at the very least any better is beyond me. The first level in the pack is extremely dull gameplay wise, but makes up for it with its sharp sense of wit and humor. Jazz proclaims he is Corporate America as he steals coins (actually silver cookies, though the pack calls ‘em coins more often than not) from the citizens of Holiday Town (only open once a month in the year!) The level design however is extremely linear and the nearly nonexistant puzzles simple and trite. One puzzle (and perhaps the only puzzle) has a rather clever hint, however it serves no real purpose as the puzzle can be solved easily enough through guess and check. The dull level design is majorly hampered by two things: the rather slow pacing despite its amount of enemies, and that two recent coin collection levels that have been released eclipses what can be found here. It is still worth playing for it’s comedy however, though it will feel like a chore for the most part.

The second level is the better of the two by far, though it is short and rather shallow considering it has great potential for a larger product. The level is based around the concept of crate puzzles, where you must push a crate containing TNT to the silver crate to move on. It feels a little bit like Portal though without the humor. In fact, if Odin brought the humor over to this stage, then axed the first level so more time could be spent on this one, and then added as a bonus stage to the Holiday Hare ’05 remix it could have been much better. This stage also offers a very awesome, though simple, addition. It is called the failhole, so if the finicky JJ2 crates don’t work the way you needed them to you can retry without the loss of a life. The last crate puzzle is a bit anticlimactic and the Devan boss is rather dull leaving for an unfulfilling ending to an otherwise sublime level.

The eyecandy in the levels are rather basic, nothing that really pushes the tileset. However, this is the HH98 tileset, which is one of the hardest tilesets to use period. The levels in HH05 also contain basic eyecandy which is probably due to the Holidaius tilesets being limited in nature.

Speaking of HH05, the remix feels a bit spotty. Granted all Odin had to work with was my terrible review from two years ago (also granted this review isn’t much of an improvement, rarely going into detail), he did do a rather good job at trying to tweak it. The levels include more enemies, a complaint I had from the original pack. The problem with this is that some areas contain too many land enemies (a ton of air enemies, when done right, is always fun to deal with) and some enemies are placed in locations that make the level near impossible to traverse. The Bilsy boss fight feels worse with the added enemies, though if the aerial enemies in the arena were removed it could work out perfectly well. The level design, whether dilluted by the added enemies or not, is still as great as it was a few years ago and that alone should warrant this remix a playthrough.

All in all the pack has quite a few faults, though A) It is the only single player holiday pack this year (again) and B) the awesome parts are REALLY awesome. Download recommended.

Hey, if you played through this level pack, I’d love to hear what you think. Even if it’s a short review.