Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Upon being chided by certain reviewers, I have decided to focus a little less on my fellow posters and a little more on the subject of our postings.

After all, Laro B’s RoE Episode 2: Spear of Darkness may not be my very favorite singleplayer pack in the world, but it’s a good one, nonetheless. It certainly deserves more credit than I gave it initially.

Let me tell you why.

Demonic Mines

RoE 2’s starting level has very solid Layer 3-4-5 eyecandy (although I was less than impressed with the background details) and great gameplay. I liked how the music, lighting events and environmental TnT all significantly contributed to the mood of the level.

On the other hand, I felt that the background layers weren’t utilized very effectively. True, DM was supposed to be a dark level, but there was too much darkness for me. Maybe a few more holes punched through to reveal the sky would’ve helped.

Overall, I was pleased with the first level, although a few minor faults prevented my complete enjoyment of it.

The Dark Castle

Wow. What a level.

For starters, let’s be generous. I haven’t seen a level use the Medivo tileset this well in a long time. If EVER. It’s ridiculous, the amount of detailing Laro B got into TDC, and every bit looks as if it belongs. The gargoyles are perfect, the combination of windows, lava falls, edge-tiles-as-eyecandy and so on is impressive, and the structure is uncommonly good.

This level is freaking HUGE, and it’s very fun to play. It’s also got a sick music track, one that works exceedingly well for TDC.

Once again, though, I did have some issues.

There’s a wall bug behind the carrot barrel in which I got trapped in the wall by bad masking. That’s not good. In addition, while most of the level was great, I wasn’t a fan of the Layer 8 background at all. Red on red on red on red is only so pretty, and eventually it got kind of boring.

I also found the section cordoned off by trigger blocks to be quite annoying. I mean, really. I spent most of the level trying to find a trigger crate to open the blocks, only to learn that there wasn’t actually anything TO open.

Ooh, I felt like hurting somebody real bad after that…

Also, a few of the Boll platforms over the pits were a little tricky to get onto. Not impossible, just mildly challenging.

So, once again, the second level was good, but a few quirks messed it up.

The Darkness

Aha! A boss level!

This happens to consist of a darkened arena with lava falls and spike traps, as well as a…devilish…Bilsy boss.

Sigh.

While the eyecandy was excellent as usual, although the music track worked quite well for the fight, despite the fact that the darkness added a new and exciting element to the fight, I was not impressed with the attemped Bilsy prison.

Using wind events to keep Bilsy locked in does not work. It only succeeds in making the area inaccessible to Jazz. Bilsy can teleport around the level, thereby neutralizing almost every form of containment imaginable for it.

Because Bilsy is thus exposed, all one has to do to beat it is buttstomp on its head.

Still, it was a decent enough level, and didn’t sink the pack TOO low.

Hell

This was the first level in this pack that I didn’t really like.

Don’t get me wrong, it had good gameplay and structure, and the song, although not a perfect fit, still fit well.

That’s about where the upsides end, however.

Even though the Dam Nation tileset admittedly leaves much to be desired, so does Hell’s eyecandy. The only background eyecandy is lava. The foreground eyecandy is used well, but is often sparse in places (this wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been some decent background eyecandy to pick up the slack).

Lighting events were used, but hardly maximized.

The tileset version chosen wasn’t the greatest, but to be fair, there isn’t much of a selection out there, since the Hot version was already used in Episode 1 (I would’ve probably used the Day version).

Overall, a so-so level.

Caves

This level features a number of elaborate passageways and rooms, a veritable block of digital Swiss cheese that fully lives up to the level’s name.

Unfortunately, though the Caves had really good eyecandy and a killer atmosphere, I felt that it still had a number of problems.

What, in particular? For one thing, movement was seriously limited. I lost track of how many times I got hung up on awkward roof angles or trapped in small tunnels (although the One Way Events helped).

I also didn’t like the high number of baddies that were placed in dark areas or obscured from sight. There were plenty of carrots in the level, but I never knew if I was about to jump into a darkened room and get killed by something I couldn’t see.

Finally, while they worked well enough, I didn’t feel that the Sparks were an appropriate baddie choice.

In the end, though it had some shortcomings, I was somewhat satisfied with the level.

Iron Mountains

This was a solid level, but not for the reasons you might think.

It’s not because of the solid Layer 3-4-5 eyecandy employed, nor is it because of the good level structure and smooth-as-usual gameplay.

It’s because of the end boss.

It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do, but once the Rocket Turtle disappeared, I learned I was supposed to fly up this shaft, all the while dodging some Schwartzenguards placed behind walls. This made the fight challenging, and also more enjoyable than the first boss battle.

Mistake me not, though, there were plenty of problems with Iron Mountains.

It has bland background eyecandy.

The music track is arguably the weakest selection of the whole pack.

The inappropriate Sparks were back.

Parts of the jungle tree swamp hid baddies, which was very annoying.

There was also a 10-coin warp, which took some effort to hunt down the money for and only provided a few mere un-powered-up Seeker missiles.

Overall, yet another so-so level.

Woods of Light

This level is a recycle of an RoE 1 level (like about half of this episode is), played through in a different direction and different tileset. This time, the Rocket Turtle chase does work, and you can engage in a race with it.

Trouble? I beat the Rocket Turtle to the end by at least a full sixty seconds, but I STILL couldn’t go to the next level.

The level has some of the best eyecandy in the pack, as well as great gameplay and excellent eventage, but all that means very little if the level can’t be completed. I played it fully through two or three times, monitoring closely each time (both passing the Rocket Turtle at the very end AND allowing it to finish before me), and I even looked in the JCS just to be sure, because I couldn’t believe it.

As far as I can tell, it’s impossible to beat this level without cheating. I don’t understand how everybody else seems to have overlooked this detail (Unless I’ve missed the boat on the proper execution of the Rocket Turtle, which is entirely possible).

Plus, unless I used the uber-cheap upper route (which eventually I did), the level was very easy to get lost in, and it took me forever to figure out I was supposed to use the Lizard’s helipack to get to the end.

Nippius Blizzard

I hate this level. And there may or may not be a level on J2O that I hate more.

Oh, sure, it had some good eyecandy, and once I got used to the brighter-than-usual foreground, it was a nice atmosphere, but let’s be honest. There’s no enemies. No ammo or food. No carrots. No nothing.

Just a whole lotta rooms with spike pits, and absolutely no way to replenish your health if you fall when you fall into said spikes.

Oh yeah. And some wierd dressed-up kitties in random places.

It’s the most markedly empty Jazz 2 level I’ve seen in my life, and unlike in some levels where emptiness is actually a good thing, it drove me insane here.

Also, the layout was so confusing that I had a tough time finding the end.

The music compounds the emptiness and solitude of this level to an unimaginable degree. It’s impossible to overstate this. It’s a VERY good level/song pairing.

If this level had had some carrots, it might’ve been one of the best levels in the pack. Instead, it’s one of the hardest levels around, since you have to make it to the end on exactly five hearts, no more, no less.

Summary? Not the best level of the pack, but decent enough.

A Few Overall Thoughts

I was impressed by the level of eyecandy throughout most of the pack. RoE 2 seemed to have a high standard of prettiness, and (usually) ended up hitting said standard consistently.

However, I had some trouble accepting the pack’s story. In my mind, it was confusing, poorly grammaticized, and contributed very little to the episode.

The story levels were similarly a little uninteresting for my tastes. They weren’t terrible, but they weren’t the highlight of the episode, either.

Plus, the only thing I know of keeping this pack from being 1.23-compatible is the C + C tileset, so why not just use a different one?

On a more positive note, I liked the music a lot. It picked up a lot of slack.

In the end, I think that RoE 2 was a missed opportunity. The first part won Singleplayer Level of the Year last year, if I’m not mistaken. That makes it hard to look at this episode, which I feel takes the RoE saga a small step backwards.

It’s not quite as good as Episode 1, but Spear of Darkness is still worth a download. After all, let’s look at the positives. These levels have good structure and great eyecandy, as well as some nice music. Just because it’s not the greatest thing out there doesn’t mean it isn’t a good pack. It is. Download today.

A good pack, though I liked the first episode more. I liked the level layouts, they were quite good. The shuttle level was awesome, good idea! Ammo placement is fine, the story is original though I don’t really like it that much. Also, you should get the spelling errors fixed.

This pack deserves a 7.5, but I’m willing to raise it to 7.7 thanks to some stuff I liked in here. Keep up the good work and fix the spelling! DL rec.

EDIT: Raised to 7.8 because some stuff was fixed.

I haven’t played this pack yet, (tbh right now I’m only downloading the 1st pack :P) but I have a question: why releasing this episode for 1.23 when the previous episode is released only for 1.24 clients?

Either release both episodes for 1.24 or do the 1st episode for 1.23 as you did here.