Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I would like to start of by saying that this level doesn’t require JJ2+ to play. Now let us begin:

There are some things good with this level. The length of the level is good. It isn’t too short so that you complete it in second, but also, it isn’t too long. There are a good amount of enemies and goodies (although some parts contain too many blue gems), and there is a fair amount of puzzles envolving trigger crates and stuff. The level also appears to be mostly fixed in terms of eyecandy.

However, this level has a lot of room for improvement left. The level lacks originality. There isn’t anything new about it, and infact, some of the ideas were copied from the TSF easter levels. There is nothing original about the eyecandy either, which still has a few bugs in it. I don’t think the up arrow made of sparks looks very appealing. Also, the level could be more fun with a story, otherwise, you don’t know why you are playing it. The difficulty of the puzzles and secrets could be improved. They don’t require much thought. You could still do the airboard part of the level without an airboard (and it is probably much easier). Finally, the music doesn’t really suit the level.

PROS:
+ Level is a good length
+ Nice amounts of items and enemies
+ Nice amount of puzzles
+ Mostly fixed.

IMPROVEMENTS:
X Nothing original about it
X Puzzles don’t need much thought
X Eyecandy still has bugs
X Music doesn’t suit the level
X Needs a story

FINAL RATING:
Overall, this is a pretty average level. Perhaps higher, since it is improved from the old version. Because of this, I shall give this a 6.5.

RANK: 6 OK
DOWNLOAD?: This level ranks somewhere in the middle. There are houndreds of better levels out there, but you could also do a lot worse. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to download this. Have a weak Download Recommendation :)

An improvement on your previous version. No idea why it’s called Forest as it doesn’t really look like one.

EYECANDY

Everything looked OK although there are still a few tilebugs in the Layer 4 ground tiles. The background was OK but nothing very special and I couldn’t really see the BG in Layer 6/7 until I got near the bottom of the level.
You could add some atmosphere to the cave parts by using the “Set Light” events to make it a little bit darker and seem as if you’re in a cave.
Overall, the eyecandy is nothing really special, looks kinda similar to the original TSF Easter level.

6/10

GAMEPLAY

There are various puzzles to be found in this level. They all involve breaking Trigger Crates and do not require too much thinking to proceed. The triggered bridge across the pit works much better as you now are unable to run and jump or copter over it.
There are a few secrets that can be found here, some of these are hiding Coins which can be used to gain access to the 20 Coin Warp where you can get a Toaster Power-Up, a Full NRG Carrot and some ammo.
The level was a good length, not too long or too short. It lasted me about 10-15 minutes which is good.
A few more puzzles were added to the level, still didn’t require too much thinking but you needed to explore the level a bit more to find more crates as there was more than one in each of the 4 warps.

7.5/10

ITEM & PICKUP PLACEMENT

Food was plentiful in this level this time. There was enough to start two Sugar Rushes.
There were enough Carrots to find. I did get down to 1 Heart Health but I was able to find a +1 Carrot, of which there is a reasonable amount of them.
Two Full NRGs can be found here; one in the Coin Warp and another just before the Boss.
Amount of Gems has now been reduced, I only found about 300 this time.
There was just one 1UP to be found so gaining an insane amount of lives will not happen.
There was one Power-Up which can be found in the 20 Coin Warp but I thought this was useless as I already had maximum fast fire on the Blaster.
Overall, placement of the pickups is good and there is now plenty of food to get.

7.5/10

ENEMY & OBSTACLE PLACEMENT

There was a reasonable amount of enemies in this level, not too many or too little. They were not in annoying places such as on 3 tile wide platforms or platforms above Springs.
Obstacles in this level were Trigger Scenery and Spike Balls to fly past. The spikes were kinda easy to get through and not much thinking was required to get through the Trigger Scenery.
The boss wasn’t too hard but the amount of Fast Fires I picked up from enemies made him a bit easy.

7/10

SUMMARY

PROS

+Good length of level
+Puzzles to solve
+Secrets to find.
+Coins to collect.
+Improved on previous version
+Decent eyecandy
+More exploration required to find the remaining crates.

CONS

-Too many Gems
-Not enough food
-Eyecandy looks too similar to the original TSF Easter level
-Puzzles still don’t require too much thinking

TOTAL SCORE: 28/40

FINAL MARK = 28 / 4 = 7.0

SHOULD YOU DOWNLOAD?

Marian has put more effort into the level to add more puzzles and the level lasts longer than before, took me about 5 minutes longer. So, I would say YES to downloading this.

Wow. People who give out 10.0’s and use a quick review so you can’t give it the helpful rating it deserves are noobs.
Thoughts aside, let’s begin…

(If I bold something, it means you should probably FIX IT.)

THE LEVEL
This level has improved greatly since the last one. It’s far from perfect, but still better than the last version. Marian has fixed many [NOT all, just many] bugs in his stage, made it a bit more interesting, and livened it up with a nice and fitting music song. It is TSF only, because there are many Jazz/Spaz only specific areas. Like doublejumping and uppercutting.

However, despite its obvious perks, Easter Day is still r-i-d-d-l-e-d with bugs, boring stretches and ripoffs from actual Epic levels. The part with the blast’em blocks [with a BUTTSTOMP SYMBOL :(:(:(] with a space in each row….Ripped from “Bad Pitt”. The part with the staggered carrots…Ripped from, well, ALL the Carrotus levels. The spike puzzle was very annoying and merely was a bunch of spike bolls in a long stretch. The unusually high concentration of crates made it even more annoying. Notable, however, is the fact that the crate puzzles WERE unique [to an extent] and kept me going. Thousands of tile bugs [and at least one spring bug] complete the wreckage, leading me to wonder how far the state of BETATESTERS has degraded these days….
This is all fixable, though. First and foremost, Fix the darned tile bugs. Fix the spring trap between the platforms. Ten out of ten times I would get stuck in it. ALWAYS HAVE A FEW BETATESTERS RUN OVER YOUR LEVEL BEFORE SUBMITTING IT! Very important. Take out the Epic puzzles and replace them with your own. Yours are good enough that you do not need to thieve from Epic.

So, what to leave you with…..
GREAAAAT improvement, though still badly in need of help. You fixed the annoying boss bug from the last level [yay Just keep chugging away, and watch it go. Neutral DL recommendation, as it’s a massive improvement over version 1, but still needs huge amounts of work. Good job!