Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Here are a couple of levels that I haven’t seen being played at all since a month of their release, despite their good quality. No wonder though, since they haven’t yet been added to any of the Zeal Servers’ levellists. Another one of the levels, ‘Escape from Precint 83’, is actually familiar to me from a JDC event which was much before the release date though.

‘Big Apple Beatdown’ however, is a brand new level to me, thus I’m looking forward to play games there. A level called ‘WHANTIL’, is probably the most popular level known using this same tileset. Comparing to that level, ‘BAB’ is similarly layered into floors, although more diversely. I can suppose most of the action in games here is drawn to the indoor corridors above the bases, which are on the bottom of the floor, being easy to attack to, and hard to defend. Sounds fun, but is it?

I assure a level of this size can fit no less than a minimum of 8 players at once. A few bad things about the level are the few quite campy spots in the level, such as the full NRG carrot, or the Seeker PowerUp. However in a JDC Main Event for instance, such cons would be minimal, if existant at all. The level flow seems to work well with wise placement of springs and stuff, yet it’s not overdone. I like how advanced players are able to use RF-shortcuts,(or walljump cough) which add to the gameplay-depth of the level even more.

I generally have no complaints about the level’s visuality. Nothing distracts the eye, and yet the level’s atmosphere is appropriate in an original way to the industrial theme. Also the pickups seem to fit in well, although I would have personally made the more powerful powerups harder to reach/hog. The shootable carrots-concept seems cool enough as well.

As I’ve experienced before, ‘Escape from Precint 83’ is for now the only decent airborne-combat level I know, which is entirely based on all players being forced to fly. You could consider levels such as ‘Medieval Skycrapers’ or ‘SILWI’ to be mostly based on air warfare, but still in those levels the flycarrots are to be obtained first invidually by players and the most important combat still happens without the flycarrots. ‘EfP83’ however, is all about your flying-skills, and there truly is space to use them.

Considering the overall level size, and the tactical layout, where bases are well separated from each other, I wouldn’t personally try a game smaller than 6vs6 here. If there happened to be a stop during the game with nomovement on, some players could fall a long way unexpectedly from their original position, which could lead to tactical disadvantages for certain players. However it is only a minor problem anyway, since massive games such as JDC events wouldn’t get stopped for a single players’ connection problems for instance.

The amount of ammo(and food as well) is massive, made to suite the big number of players. There could be more carrots though, alike in ‘BAB.’ The tileset used isn’t exactly my favourite one, but it’s bearable. The background is faded and thus can’t confuse the player, yet it adds to the level atmosphere. Overall the level is creatively designed, with innovative airborne gameplay.

This level pack=“electronic style”, as KeeS himself would say. After all it’s clear people prefer smaller games recently, thus most big-to-huge levels are only played in JDC Events and such. However both definitely deserve to get added into both Zeal Alpha, and Duels’ levellists asap. Download recommended.

Applause to OLC & friends.

All right, I promised Cooba a quality review for this on the Review Exchange thread, so here I go.

I’ll start this off with Big Apple Beatdown, since that was the first one I played. When I hear about featuring anything related to cities or the like, I think, “Oh, Lord. It’s gonna be another poorly executed Turtleville debacle”.

Thankfully, in this case it was not.

Big Apple uses the Industrius tileset expertly, the level being built in a tall vertical style that evinced the sensation of climbing higher and higher within a city. I liked how I (the player) was constantly moving higher and higher.

Continuing in that vein, it would’ve been really nice to have seen a lot of wide open space at the top, to symbolize having reached the rooftops, as opposed to the current sensation of getting partway up the building and stopping. It kills the mood a little…but not enough to seriously hurt the level. Events are placed well and nothing quirky or stupid was present, so I was, overall, quite pleased with BAB.

And now, for Precinct 83.

Let’s be honest. TechNoir (not many people get the capital “N” right) is a pain in the donkey to use. It’s so limited, the conversions out there right now are incomplete and frustrating, and it takes a skilled levelbuilder to make anything remotely engaging with the set.

That’s why I was so pleased to find Precinct so solidly built and so cleverly executed. While the background does leave a lot to be desired and the eyecandy gets a little monotonous after a while, it’s never enough so to completely turn me (the reviewer) off. Structure is sound, events are pretty well placed, and for a CTF it’s pretty fun.

If you know me, you know that I do very little CTF’ing, so that’s a high compliment.

Anyway, this level was fun, and it made respectable use of a lousy tileset. Definitely a plus in my book.

Perhaps the only real drawback (if you can call it that) is that the musics were…well, not very original. Both levels use the standard TechNoir and Industrius songs, and we’re talking about the standard versions, not some cool remixes. Granted, it was better than using a couple of really dumb or unfitting songs, but it would’ve been neat to see some creativity in that department.

Oh, well. We can’t all get what we want in life, can we?

Is OLC’s Jazz 1 CTF Pack worth a download? I think so. Both levels were playable, fun and clean of major gaffes, so that was good. I had fun playing it, and heartily recommend its download. You’ll have fun. I know you will.

To all who thought it was too easy to obtain seeker powerup in my level; it was.

I apologize but we accidentally uploaded it with spawntime of 3s instead of 30s. Kinda stupid on my part. Sorry again!

Fixed now.

First of all: I can’t seem to host at the moment, so I was not able to play these online. As such, I am not giving a rating, as I cannot say much about the balance. However, I can still evaluate some things.

Big Apple Beatdown is great. Nothing particularly novel, but very well done – flow is nice and intuitive, the level is good-looking, and so on. The only thing I really dislike about this level is that there are too many powerups and they’re too easy to obtain; you can expect to see powered-up seekers and bouncers flying everywhere.

I am not so fond of Escape from Precint 83. The concept of having all the players permanently flying is a good enough one, but I feel it could have been implemented much better. It’s really easy to get caught on the edges of the many, many ceilings, and the “pits” at the bottom just seem to get in the way. The level also strikes me as looking downright ugly, though I think that’s more the fault of the tileset (someone make a good Technoir conversion already! And then give it a palette swap so it isn’t so hideously pink!). Also, it completely breaks in 8-bit color for some reason; the background turns completely black and my FPS goes from 100 to 30.

Anyway, this “pack” didn’t blow me away, but it’s certainly worth a look.