Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

This is an enjoyable little single player level. You attempt to enter some type of temple, and have to fight your way in. The plot is a bit simple, and there’s no explanation as to why you want to enter the temple, which gives the feeling that this level belongs as part of a larger pack. However, this does not detract from the overall value of the level. The eyecandy is nice, and I didn’t experience any bugs, although in one point, a few more One Way events could have been used. The gameplay was qutie good in some places, like the first spikeboll maze. The only problem I had was that a few places were quite frustrating. In the very beginning of the level I fell to my death without warning, and did the same thing again just before the airboard. Also, some of the puzzles had me stumped until I looked in JCS and realized that a block I thought would have trigger scenery actually had a destruct scenery event, or that shooting some random tile in the ceiling was the only way to continue. The enemy, goodie, and food placement were excellent, with one exception. On Hard mode, more enemies were just placed in the same spot. This makes some parts a tad boring, because they just invovle tapping shoot a ton of times, and no skill. I’m sorry if this review seems to have a negative tone, because the level was quite good overall. I would have loved to see more, and think the biggest improvement Gus could make would just be increasing the size of the pack.

I said a while ago i would review every singleplayer level from now on, you are the first, so let’s start.

First of all, i hate homemade tilesets, most of the time it’s not ‘jazzy’ enough and there isn’t any reason to use it, because JJ2 comes with some beautiful tilesets. This is why i don’t understand why you have used Nature ruins and not just ‘Jungle’. Sure, i have to agree that Nature ruins is a tileset which (if it’s used in a good way) you can make quite jungle-looking levels with, but somehow Guz managed to give the whole level an ‘empty’ feeling because of a lack off eyecandy.
The level was sometimes a bit unclear, I did also fell in the instant death pitt thinking there were some goodies over there. And the puzzle was just horrible, i just had to look on JCF how to solve it.

So, i guess you are wondering now why you didn’t get a 1.0

Well, here’s why. Village of Kali is not a good level, but there are far more worse one J2O. I can’t complain about the enemy placement, same story about the goodies (well, OK, maybe some more carrots and weapons would’ve been nice). There were some interesting and original things in it that i just might use in my own levelpack. Village of Kali may not be a good level, but it’s certainly not a bad level.

RATING: 6.5

Recommendation: NO

I was not able to complete the level…