Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

As the description above discusses, this level pack is very much a continuation (or expansion?) of Epic’s original Jazz Jackrabbit 2 levels. Same tilesets, same music, same enemies, pickups and other gameplay elements. In a way, that is refreshing in 2022, where scripted gimmicks have become the norm. ‘Nostalgia Pack’ proves that that isn’t required for a fun single player episode; the levels in here are quite solid, and overall fun to play.

Similarly to abgrenv’s previous levels, these offer multiple paths to the finish, as levels usually aren’t completely linear but rather consist of a series of relatively open areas connected by a single tunnel or warp – the latter preventing the player from becoming lost. That is a welcome break from Epic’s style of level design, actually, and encourages exploring and discovering the many secrets hidden in the levels.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some issues with them. Notably, I got stuck twice; once in the part of the Colon level where you morph into a bird (the one way doesn’t work) and once in the first Beach level, where a tile blocked me from reaching a spring. The foreground and background layers also don’t seem to support 800×600, probably because they were simply copied from the official levels. More thorough testing might have been useful here, but apart from those issues, I fortunately didn’t encounter any major bugs.

The larger issue for me was that it all started to feel a bit stale after a couple of levels. Sure, the levels are competently made, and there are hidden gems, food and powerups to discover; but that can only obfuscate the fact that all levels follow the same formula for so long. There are no bosses to change the pace either, except for a Uterus at some point, which abgrenv didn’t even try to make interesting (and the level says as much). I would have appreciated a bit more variety in the level design; even the official levels contained many features not used here, such as smoke rings, speed blocks or potentially challenging enemies like floating suckers.

Overall, it feels like more could’ve been made of the premise. But this is still a fine level pack, and worth playing if you have some time to kill and feel like blasting through a couple of oldschool JJ2 levels again.

Edit, RE: Yes, in Beach it was the pole and spring section, as Spaz; and the issue with the bird section in Colon was that the one way simply didn’t seem to want to let me pass, so I never reached the revert morph and trigger zone.

I don’t have much to add to Stijn’s solid review. These are good levels for sitting back, tuning out, and playing some JJ2 with nothing else to worry about. I think the Carrotus levels are the weakest, feeling too rectangular and not very organic, but it’s nice to see the float lizard copters getting some use, even if not to the same extent as in The Big Rescue. It’s great that the layouts give you a lot of choices of which directions to go in and have lots of extra goodies just off the main road. There are a lot of uses of buttstomp blocks to mark out goodies just for Jazz or just for Spaz(/Lori), which mostly works well until the level with TNT, at which point they all start to be accessible to either character, and it’s not clear if the pack realizes this. Likewise, powerups and shields frequently appear behind thin walls that can be shot through with electroblasters or bouncers. But the variety of goodies and powerups is a welcome one (even birds and invincibility carrots make appearances), and they help against the enemies, which are fairly numerous but never feel particularly difficult when faced with so much ammo. It’s a good time to play.

Thanks for the review, much appreciated! May I ask what you mean by the one way not working in the Colon level when you morph into a bird? Also in the first Beach level, did you get stuck in the spring and pole section? Did you play as Spaz or Jazz? Because I do recall Spaz having some difficulty in that area.

By the way, that bird morph gimmick was a compromise unfortunately, I wanted to make an underwater section, changing the water level several times to be able to break trigger crates, but giving maps a water level resets the lighting to 100% (something I wasn’t aware of), so I had to come up with the bird morph instead, otherwise the level lost atmosphere with full lighting in the sewer areas. The only reason I included the Uterus boss was because the game crashed every time I used the “End level” trigger events (no idea what caused it).

Edit: Odd, looks like the Bird has different hitboxes depending on if you morph from Jazz or Spaz, I played through the level multiple times as Jazz and never had the issue, but with Spaz the “one way” event didn’t work as intended, it does actually function though, but only if you try to pass through it while wallhugging the right side of the wall, it’s a rather weird bug. On the Beach level, I’m assuming it’s the spring at 145, 25. I’ve fixed that, it should work properly now

Primpy, didn’t test it with her, so that is a rather odd coincidence. Thanks for the review!

Edit: Thank you to everyone who reviewed the pack, much appreciated :)