Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Disappointed. That’s how I feel after playing this level, and that’s also how I could end this review. Instead, because Jake is a cool guy, I’m taking a deep breath and writing something longer than usually.

Completely Generic Rocket Turtle Chase Level is an easy and short stand-alone singleplayer level. And this is basically where its problems start. Have the word “short” next to the word “stand-alone” and “easy” – you usually get something that you totally don’t feel satisfied after playing. Don’t forget to also add “completely generic” as the title itself says, and in total we have a catastrophe.

Everything’s started just okay. My rabbit appeared in a small room from where he almost instantly warped to some other place. I understood it’s obviously a typical making-rocket-turtle-work system, so it’s okay, even though could be covered with layer 3 to make it look less out of place. Anyway, right after that the boss music started to play, a life bar appeared and I quickly found out that I won’t have much time to think. I took a look around and noticed an airboard, 2 RF missiles and – a bit surprisingly to be honest – the Rocket Turtle itself, hanging in the air in a small sealed out room below me. Two blinking arrows seemingly wanted me to get the airboard. I didn’t want to argue with them so I took the thingie, as well as RFs, and started to follow the turtle, activated in mid-time. The first thing I’ve seen on my way then was a trigger crate. “Hmm, either the airboard isn’t necessary or I will come back here later on”. Remembering that it’s a Rocket Turtle chase, I found the second option rather improbable. The boss was starting to get away anyway, so I decided to start the level from the beginning. This time I left the airboard where it was and only took the missiles, use of which appeared to be obligatory to jump off the room. “Quite a nice idea – the level has two ways to beat it” I thought. However, in wrong hands even good ideas can lead to creating crap.

I lost my hope. I didn’t see the main enemy for quite a while, as he floated out of the screen when I was RF jumping (I kinda suck at it). The crate wasn’t too useful, it seemed to just create a platform which let me pass a spike trap without getting hurt. With an airboard, this one wouldn’t be a problem at all. I probably wouldn’t even notice they’re spikes if I had it, as even without it I had no idea they are, until I got hurt by them. Okay, the tileset hasn’t really got better tiles for spikes so I just ignored the fact. I just cotinued to run the only path there was, killing some enemies on my way. Nothing seemed like seriously trying to kill me, the enemies couldn’t do much harm except for two bees (bees in a spaceship level) and a floating lizard which probably could hurt me if I was more into the chase. But I wasn’t, the turtle was surely far away already so I just wanted to see how does the level look like so I can do better on my next tries. I collected some ammo, buttstomped a next crate which again wouldn’t be needed at all if I took the airboard, avoided getting hurt by Schwartzenguard’s spiked chainball, and got sucked by a tube which sent me to something looking like an arena and lolwut, Rocket Turtle is here, immobile. That’s when I found out that this level won’t be as much fun as I’d expect of Jake or any XLM member.

I played this level multiple times, hoping that it’ll appear to be good. But it just wasn’t. Playing with airboard was always easier and more rewarding than playing without it. Choosing different difficulty levels didn’t change much. There was only one visible difference between easy and normal – there was also another one as I found out checking in JCS, which was adding one way events in a wall so a player can shoot through it with seekers. The only way to find it other than JCS is by accident. Hard difficulty setting is adding an almost harmless Schwartzenguard at the beginning and… you won’t find more differences as a bug takes place. The boss stops at one spot before reaching the arena and stays there waiting for its doom. JCS says there are also two more Schwartzenguard bosses at the arena (making a total of four) and some area fly off events at the top of it. But who cares, there’s no need to go to the arena. By the way, when it comes to it, it’s also very, very highly airboard biased, with collapsing scenery as a floor and only two boll platforms to stand on after everything collapses. And what if you fall? I guess I could say you fall into a pit, if there was an actual pit event. There is none. JJK [Edit: This bug got fixed in the re-upload].

The climate is dead. Don’t get me wrong here. I totally don’t mean anything positive. I mean the climate is nearly nonexistent. While at the beginning it looks okay, later on gets only a bit broken by a fencer, and okay I can understand monkeys in space as well as copter lizards but hell, bees and crabs are there as well. There are two (three on easy) types of pickups in the level and zero secrets, being both a gameplay and climate issue. There are some places in this level where the only objects you will see are you and the boss you’re supposed to chase. Those wouldn’t be any bad if the level really had a climate of an abandoned spaceship – bad it hasn’t, thanks to things such as crabs on flying platforms. Eyecandy is doing a better job, at least on the playable layers (which are 3, 4, 5 and 6 in this case). However inside of the walls it feels rather bland, the background parts of it look very well. The thing gets worse on background layers (7 and 8). The stars look rather cramped and artificial. Also, applying to all the layers, nothing untypical was done. It’s all as generic as possible, no interesting tricks were used to make a player remember this level for a long time after playing. It’s just another SpaceshipsBL level, with the difference of using a Rocket Turtle, what is still rather rare.

It’s empty, it’s short, it’s generic, it’s crappy. I don’t know what kind of an impulse caused Jake to upload it, but let’s hope it won’t happen anymore in the future. I must say I was almost sure that Jake can create good singleplayer levels before, now I started to doubt it. Sorry, this is nowhere close to today standards. The end.

You need to include event 255 in the bottom right corner or your death pits don’t work. Also, on hard mode, the rocket turtle stops at the bottom right corner of the pit with the second trigger crate, which allows the player to just sit there and kill him. Despite the bugs, I found the level fun, and I liked that the airboard was optional.

I say, that this should get better rating than 5.6.
Yes, It was quite easy,(Boss killed with 2 hp)
But it was fun :), the eyecandy is not bad or good, the name is horrible… I think you could hide the space monkeys, and you could use more enemies.

Just a hoot my friend!