Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

3 levels, each scratching different itches, and rather inconsistent difficulty compared to each other.

Let’s start with Jungle Town since it’s the first map. The gimmick is that you can’t use your weapon, unless you get a special pickup that give you 1 shot (generally needed for destructable blocks) or you get the 3 way rockets from the coin warp. You also get multiple birds (I believe they respawn, unless I’m mistaken). Logically the difficulty is worked around this handicap, and does it so mostly successfully. The only issue is when you are supposed to shoot the destructable block you have to go running back and forth to get the 1 shot pickup, which adds padding to an already big and long level. Thankfully this particular level has a layout that generally nodges you in the correct direction, though due to the already mentioned lenght, you might get some fatige by the end. The level like the other 2 has an open structure, letting you do the exploring until you reach the path needed to progress, where you’ll generally be required to find a trigger crate or a 1 shot pickup. While the level is well designed, I think it should have been divided into 2 seperate levels, since the scenary will start to blend together, and being lost in an average sized level compared to a giant one is quite the difference.

Now for French Town, you can shoot in this level, so the difficulty is ramped up accordingly, but it stays well manageable. 1 thing I need to mention before anything else, is how cool the background for this level is, it’s basically a wide shot of a city (presumably in France). I wouldn’t normally even consider an idea like this, but I think it fit in very well, and looks unique. Now for the gameplay. You’ll be doing quite a lot of trigger crate hunting. Unfortunately this can sometimes lead to frustration, since you often have to enter sewer areas, and due to the tileset used, the manhole covers often blend in with the grass, so you may end up running around looking for the correct path and missing it multiple times. The level ends with a pretty fun boss fight. Luckily the level is shorter than the previous one, so it ends roughly at the time it starts to wear out its welcome.

Unfortunately this can’t be said about the final level. The biggest positive is definitely the music, which is my favorite track from the original game (Dark Groove, Hell2 level). This isn’t to say the level isn’t good at all, but there are some really big flaws in my opinion.
Number 1 the massive difficulty SPIKE, pun intended since a lot of it comes down to the spikes, they are placed in such positions that you have to make perfect jumps to avoid them which is hard with the often cramped up spaces they are placed in. Unfortunately due to the level having probably the most confusing layout out of the 3, means if you don’t know exactly where you should go and how to get there, you will be traversing through these spiked areas constantly while trying to find out where you have to go next. Add on top of that, some enemies respawn.
Number 2 is the layout and the trigger crate hunting. Even though the level may look smaller compared to the first one. I’d say it feels twice the size. The high difficulty does add a lot to it, but what doesn’t help either is how you may find a trigger crate on one side of the level, and then have to retrace your steps back to where the crate opened a new path on the other side of it. And since on your way you meet multiply trigger blocks, you won’t really have an idea which one it does open up (yeah you get text messages, but on your first playthrough will you really remember where the mentioned area is?). At one point you are required to defrost a frozen spring, so you have to go look for flamethrower ammo. The funny thing is when I got there, I couldn’t pick it up, because you have to jump from a vine/rope so only a double jump will work, which Jazz doesn’t have. This leaves your only other option as far as I could tell, getting hit by the Floating Sucker enemy, which launches you high enough to get the ammo. Of course there’s a 3rd option, but you might not have that option due to circumstances. The 3rd option is using TNT and letting the explosion throw the ammo down where you can pick it up. There is a big reason why this may be out of question, you may not have TNT anymore. Maybe you are wasteful and used it when not necessary (you get maybe 6 from the previous level) or more likely, you killed the deflated Floating Sucker with it, since when it hits the ground it will be so low that crouch shooting will still have your shots going above it, so you can either ignore them, or kill the with TNT, since no other ammo will hit them (yes, even the seeker ammo won’t register it walking around on the ground). So unless you play as Spaz or are lucky, you’ll have to take damage to get an item needed for progression, which would be fine normally, but the level is already difficult enough. There were also some areas where I had no idea how I was supposed to progress.
Edit: 2023.01.23 I was informed that the intended way was to buttstomp the Floating Sucker. Fair enough, since it respawns, it can get annoying if you don’t know that since if you shoot it by instinct it will fall into the spikes where you can’t kill it without taking damage, or you can run back far enough where it will respawn as a Floating Sucker. (I guess I was impatient at that point and didn’t even consider buttstomp an option) This also does justify some of the respawning enemies since now I actually realised they serve a purpose. Since those high areas can be reached with buttstomping, though in my opinion some require too much precision.

Number 3, the moving platforms. I don’t know if the intention for them was to work like this, but they are extremely annoying, and make platforming a crapshoot basically. You barely get any control over your character whenever you land on these moving platforms, since they will catapult you off themselves unless you are standing next the wall, but since you can’t just through them since the One-Way funcion wasn’t added to them, you have to try your luck by going to the edges and jumping from there which requires far more patience and precision from the player than it’s realistically worth. One of these examples is the frozen spring area. If you return from where you picked up the flamethrower ammo, you’ll eventually have to somehow jump up to the area with the frozen spring. It’s in the area where the gold coin is, even getting back to that point is questionable since in the underground area I have no clue how I’m even supposed to continue, there’s a long strech of spikes with 2 Floating Suckers and a very tall wall with a Normal Turtle on it. I have no idea how you are supposed to get back up there when returning. I ended up using JJFLY and JJINV cheats to see through to the end, because I had very little fun that would justify me to find the end of the level through normal means. And judging by the boss arena, I think I made the correct choice. Seriously? Bubba boss in a small space with springs covering the ground, walls and ceiling with 2 pinball bumpers? It is quite a shame because otherwise the level is pretty, and like I said, at least the music choice was awesome.

Still though, I think the first 2 levels were good enough to warrant a recommendation, since those were well worth playing through.

The 3rd level would need some changes to be enjoyable because as of now it’s a confusing frustrationfest. Maybe I missed something or assumed the wrong path as the intended one, but then it should be made more obvious. I’m sure it’s not that confusing for the actual level designer, since they were the one to come up with the layout and different ideas, and spent who knows how long creating the level. But if possible either simplefy the level a bit, make more deliberate methods of shoving the player in the correct direction and if possible don’t have the trigger zones and trigger crates be 2 levels worth of distance from each other.

But like I said, the other 2 levels are good in my opinion. So this pack get’s a download recommendation.

Edit: 2023.01.23 Due to some of my issues being cleared up for me level 3 makes a bit more sense, Navigation can still be tricky and frustrating, but certain choices at least have a purpose rather than being oversights. Due to this I’m bumping the score up a bit.

This pack is even more city-heavy than Sonic Generations, but the levels really are quite different. Though one thing I do think reappears throughout is the problem of the trigger crates. It's almost always hard to tell what they do, because they tend to target things off-camera. The third level does the best, I think, with text signs accompanying most or all trigger crates to explain where you should go next, though you have to do some thinking to figure out which areas are described by certain words. The first level does okay, because it's pretty consistent, though the presence of layer 3 in front of some of the trigger blocks is off-putting. The second level is the most confusing, despite being filled with cool related tricks. This is a fundamentally difficult problem of game design, but trigger crates alone are not enough of a varied vocabulary to explain to players what they need to do next, especially if all trigger sceneries (no matter their trigger IDs) use exactly the same tiles.

Jungle City is linear with a gimmick: a bird does all your combat for you. Well, mostly. You can still buttstomp and stuff. There's also a whole fetch quest thing associated with this gimmick where first you have to find a bullet, then you have to find a birdcage, and then you put the two together to get the bird out, and if you ever get hurt you have to do it all over again. (Though fortunately they generate if you're still in the area; if you've moved on further in the level you may want to find a new bullet/birdcage pair.) Honestly this feels like a little too much punishment for getting hurt… just find some way to give me the bird permanently, that's the more engaging part of the gimmick.

The other issue I have with the level is that it really, really likes layer 3. There's nothing wrong with some secret areas, but (and this is a pattern that reappears throughout this pack) it's hard for the player to know what's a secret area and what's the main path, and there are a lot of places where the room is partly obscured by foreground and partly not. None of that is inherently bad, but it's so constant (at least aboveground) that it starts to feel more cruel than exciting.

Otherwise, though, when the level sits back and lets you play it, it's pretty cool. Slaz is always good at making levels that are playgrounds with things to do, and there are goodies everywhere here. War Torn is one of the best tilesets out there and (this edit of) it looks great here. More importantly, the level really is designed to be played with a bird, it doesn't just feel like an afterthought. Enemies are rarely very tough, and sometime you even get to shoot through destruct scenery because there are enemies on the other side, which feels really cool.

French Town is probably the normalest level, as it's roughly linear and you have guns, though there are a lot of times where you have to wander around to figure out how to open some door or other. There are lots of nonscripted gimmicks here too, really pushing the envelope, and lots of mysterious, hard-to-see passages that may or may not be necessary to find in order to progress. When this level works, it feels great, but sometimes it does verge into the obscure. Sections where you have to shoot certain destructible blocks to progress through them at a different angle are very cool, though it's hard to notice some of the tiles you need to shoot through.

I think my reaction to Industrial Town is a lot more positive than abgrenv's, though there's no denying it's difficult. It's a very non-linear level with two different types of trigger crates: three that unlock the end area, which is clearly labeled from the very beginning, and some more that do other things that you have to figure out. There are a lot of paths to navigate, some of them probably optional, and you approach areas in different orders and from different directions. That's a tough level design challenge but I think Slaz nails it. I think getting rid of the intermediate trigger scenery obstacles would make this play that much more smoothly, but in general, if you don't mind things being on the cramped side, this is a good experience.

Slaz's levels are for when you're in a specific mindset of wanting to explore. They're not designed for people who want to zip to the exit: you're rewarded for exploring, and there are too many obstacles to go quickly even if you wanted to. These three levels all take different approaches to this—constant back and forth between sewer and aboveground, inventive puzzles, non-linear layout—but they do share that. And they look good too, that helps.