Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

It’s been a while since anyone released any single-player with an actual storyline, and especially a long time anyone released any episode as big as this, which inspired me to write a full review for this.

Well, actually the storyline is kind of confusing at times, partly due to the broken English used in cutscenes and dialogues that are a big part of this episode. The cutscenes and dialogues are mainly done with Angelscript here, and although they are mainly just still images and text, there are nevertheless some cool effects. However I think they could have been done better with a bit more effort put into scripting, such as defining which character to display in the cutscenes. Right now it seems a bit goofy that they are all displayed, and our main character is called just ‘Player’. Also some of the text is hard to read in the limited time since there is simply too much stuff in the background.

But basically, the story begins with our player waking up at home just like any normal day (I don’t know if there was a preceding episode to the storyline?), and goes to the nearest police station to look for a ‘Secret Room’, and after that things start to get twisted (not spoiling you more).

The levels do look mostly okay. Sometimes I’d expect there to be more detailing though, and sometimes there is too much since often the tiles that are meant for the fore- and background are used for the sprite-ground, and vice versa. Also sometimes the gameplay gives me the feeling that this could very well be something of various hotel-levels turned into single-player, since the gameplay is often about going up and down building blocks in an urban environment, indoors and outdoors, or just running straight by a linear corridor.

The number of levels is more than a hundred, but a big part of them are cutscenes and savepoints, and then the rest of the levels are cut into parts whenever you reach a certain goal. Not sure if the cutting was really necessary although the idea works nicely as checkpoints.

But the gameplay has also got it’s action-part, and that is definitely the best part about the episode in my opinion. It can be riding various vehicles or running away from evil police soldiers, or crawling in tight air valves. Actually this episode has a very violent theme, and the levels are filled with blood, fire and dead rabbits. At those points I notice potential influence from various FPS-games such as doom, especially at the levels with more creepy atmosphere and creepy music.

Talking about music (which I know isn’t very essential about the levels and was an optional download), I think this episode uses some of the most terrible tunes I’ve heard since a while, since some of them are of type chiptune, and very poorly composed ones. (I can imagine Angry Video Game Nerd raging while playing this :D)

Another annoying thing about the gameplay is the blaster that was made reloadable, because you can hold at most 15 bullets, which is used very fast with maximum fast fire. Then, you will need to press R everytime to get more ammo for it which seemed just kind of pointless to me, and it felt that it was rather done because it’s “just cool” like this. It happened a few times that I’d shoot myself into a death pit by seeker-recoil after my weapon automatically switched when my blaster got empty.

Some of the more passive levels, like elevator rides and the like could have been compressed a bit, since there wasn’t even anything to look at since the visuals were just generic. However, the levels and the storyline got more and more interesting as I progressed, and there was nice unexpected turns in the storyline. At the later levels you could also find yourself dying by rather unexpected events as well, such as sudden police-ambushes. Also at times it really took me some time to find the right way to go in the levels (I think I was just being lucky to find some of them by accident). The biggest pain was one of the last levels where you need to look for a very well hidden switch that I couldn’t simply find without looking at JCS, since there weren’t even any hints.

In the end, I found this to be a fairly entertaining episode. Definitely more entertaining than any usual single-player episode with the idea of ‘just playing’, but the gameplay-flaws and other small details I mentioned prevent me from rating this too high. It still has potential to be the best single-player release of last year.

So, well done and thanks for releasing this!

EDIT: Quite soon after I was finished with my review, I realized that I overrated this episode, so I tried to modify the rating to be more of a match with my criteria. Actually in general I feel that I have been too generous towards the releases I have reviewed recently, so I will pay closer attention to the quality of the uploads I review in the future.

Nevertheless, I still find this single-player release to be one of my favorites from last year, but I should advice other players that it isn’t anything especially original, although a lot of effort and experimenting probably went into the designing of the episode. You may still like it, if you are thirsting for new single-player adventures like me.

This is a levelpack that focuses more on story than gameplay. Which is fine, I enjoy a good story. I will talk about the story later, and boy I have a lot to say.

First I’m going to talk about the gameplay. It is simple and straight forward. I love how many tuf turtles are in the levels, they are my favorite enemy. At the top of that there are also fencers and ravens. (I hate these annoying things.) The fencers are very easy to kill, as long as I use the bouncers they cause me no harm. And there are a lot of dead ends, which is good because it adds to the fun of the levels.

For most of the levelpack Spaz is a wanted fugitive which I find interesting since I love good R-rated thrillers, and this feels like it. Of course, more like PG-13 since the F word is censored. But I still like how many times damn and hell are used in the levelpack, I have never played a levelpack before in this game that has swearing especially to the point this one does. But anyway, the main reason I find it interesting is because Spaz is usually the hero. Turning around to make him a criminal is great.

There is more to the story, but I am gonna allow the people reading this review to enjoy it fully.

As for the eye candy, as a huge fan of the drink coca-cola I love how often it’s shown in the levelpack. And I also love how beautiful the city looks.

My only problem with the level is the fact that floppy disks are used. Floppy disks have been obsolete for a very long time. So what’s the point in having them here? Maybe this levelpack takes place in the 1980’s, but if it’s supposed to take place in the present I find it stupid. But I can easily overlook that since the rest of the levelpack is awesome.

So yeah, I’m rating it 9.8, I know it’s a very high rating but this level earned it.