Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

thanks blade!!!

+ overall desert theme
+ good choice of music
+ challenging at times
+ secrets
+ good choice of pick ups

- boulders and tight spaces can get you stuck in walls
- a few tilebugs
- you get sugar rush at the end of the level

A fun level to play, doesn’t re-invent the wheel but definitely a solid map.

The main impression I get from Desert Valley is “non-stop.” The moment you start there are instantly enemies and pickups around you, and this continues to be true up throughout the level… well, nearly, at the very end the swinging vines take over, but still. The gameplay never takes a break to bounce you around on horizontal springs or anything like that. While there are constant pickups a little ways off the main path, they’re only a little ways off: you have to spend a second or three jumping, but rarely more time than that. The pace of the game never slows way down while you explore a secret area before tracing a complicated path back into the waves of enemies. The level’s length works really well for this, because I could imagine gameplay this intense getting a little tiring if the level were a lot longer.

Enemies seem thematically appropriate for a desert setting and yet also functional, giving you lots to shoot at while in threatening enough locations to pose some threat if you stop paying attention. There’s a good amount of ammo too, though I found myself wanting bouncers a lot in the earlier parts of the level, partly because they’re usually one of the most plentiful weapons and partly because the layout made them useful. Other threats are nicely varied, there are several spike pits but they’re spaced out enough not to get repetitive, and the rolling rock segments all work really well, doing nice work to telegraph the incoming rocks instead of having them fall from way off-screen or something. My favorite has a spring that puts you right in front of a rock, because of course players want to jump on springs, they’re fun.

There are a few graphical issues that are kind of confusingly obvious, like I’m not convinced I’m not somehow playing the level with a slightly different version of the tileset. Caves don’t quite merge properly into the walls at certain points, and the ceiling tiles are missing on certain walls, but most of the graphics are perfect, so I’m not sure what’s going on.

Bee’s review mentions the sugar rush and after some thought yeah maybe that is worth mentioning. This is a single level, so the designer can control when the player is able to have collected 100 food, as long as the player doesn’t die. In this case the sugar rush happens a little before the exit, but nowhere near 20 seconds before the exit, and while it does help the player over the spikes, I think either it should have been a little bit earlier, or there should have been a few more challenges. Not a huge deal though.

Overall this is a very solid map with lots of good action, a curious blend of a vertical layout overall with comparatively flat horizontal sections most of the time. The Desert tileset hasn’t gotten much use in recent years and this is a great showing with it, very satisfying to play.