Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I suppose being a betatester doesn’t rule me out of reviewing?

Concept
The concept is good, as with Lava Fortress. A plaza, presumably among the mountains, made of shiny orange triangles and full of palm trees.

Score: 8/10

Masking
The masking never gets too complicated to use, though it’s disappointing that all the masking is pretty standard. There never is a half-masked tile through the center or something bumpy for us to sneakily put on the left of a warp target and then put a layer 3 tile over it to create the illusion of the bug being fixed. I had to resort to a diagonally masked tile for that, and we all know that doesn’t really work well.

Score:7.5/10

The tiles
Well drawn, nicely animated, and in general looks good. But the method used to draw upside-down diagonal tiles can get confusing, almost forcing you to check the masking to confirm what tile that is. But that isn’t really too bad in my opinion.

Score: 8.5/10

Usability
Mostly decent. But I find a few snags here and there:

1. A section of land must ALWAYS end in a corner tile, both on the ground and on the roof. It would have been great to be able to end it with a diagonal tile.
2. The floor must always be isometric ground, and that leads people to believe you’re meant to be able to get there. NICE.
3. It’s impossible to combine different EC tiles, which can get annoying sometimes.

Score: 8/10

Eye candy
Very good compared to quite a few tilesets I’ve seen. There are tiles for sections of triangles sticking out, tiles for triangles digging in, railings that can both end normally or be violently cut off, lamp posts that are on/off, pots of plants/trees (including the titular PALM TREE :D), sections of what I like to call the ‘cave’, tiles for ‘caves’ fading to black, rain, a translucent and an opaque lightning tile (you can see how it’s used in the Night version of the CTF level I made), and much, much, much more. My es-special favorite is the fully customizable building background. Lovely!

Score: 9/10

Extras
1. It is very unconventional. Kudos! (+1)
2. Lots of duplicate tiles. (-0.6)

Final score
8.6 and a download recommendation!

You’ve done well, young Padawan.

Good tileset.

Art Design
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I like the design, there are three versions of this tileset, there are thousands of tiles (blocks, belts, vines, hooks, poles, float up, sucker tube, switches “on and off”, the signs as similar where they were in the original JJ2 tilesets.
The stakes are flags, the hooks are lights, the vines are flags, and the walls were written
“gale” “disguise” rules “epic” and “vortex” and palms.
Clouds, skyscrapers and mountains to the layout.

Masks
——————-
The masks are fine.

Example levels
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There are three levels examples, one singleplayer without enemies (evening version), two CTF (the day the first version, the second version of the night). The gameplay I like but I will not rate examples levels.

Overall, these tilesets I really appreciate it.
Download Reccomandation? Yes! :)

Okay, simple review.

Art Style:

Unfortunately, I’ve seen too much of the crazily good tilesets like Desolation, 7th Lava Fall, Swamps of the Sleeping Jaguar, WTF and all of those to give it a good rating for the visual look of it, so I’ll be fair and give it a 5.0

Diversity of Tiles:

Quite a wide selection of different pieces of terrain, a good number of animations, plenty of eyecandy and detail to go around, good work there. This section’s worth about 7.8.

Layer Management:

Quite good at using a small number of layers for the main part of the level, leaving more room for more distant scenery and background detail. Worthy of a 7.3.

Environment:

Half-city, half-resort appearance to the tileset. Looks okay during the day, but evening and night variants look quite a lot better and more atmospheric, especially with light events dotted around the place. This one nets a 7.4.

Result:

Art Style – 5.0
Diversity of Tiles – 7.8
Layer Management – 7.3
Environment – 7.4

Total —> 6.875
Final rating: 7

Nice work on that, I’ll be sure to make good use of it.