Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

The struggle I have with this tileset is I don't believe it's a city. There are hints of scaffolding, abstract skyscraper silhouettes, and a handful of signs suggesting buildings, but none of it quite convinces me, not when there are actual mouse cursors hovering around on top of what look more like banner ads than billboards. To me, "City" evokes something more like in "Tales of the Neon Sea." But I guess that's the difference between a cyber city and a cyberpunk city. This is a city that's inside a computer, but a more up to date version of a computer than the old green matrix stuff we used to get. This is Ralph Breaks the Internet. It's not what I was looking for, but it is, in itself, coherent and consistent.

Ten, twenty years ago I don't think we'd have liked this very much… the colors are flat with next to no attempts at shading, perspective lighting, anti-aliasing, what have you. It looks nothing like what Nick Stadler would have done. But somewhere along the way, flat colors became a style, at least when you got the shapes right. And this does do good shape work! There's a very cool mix of straight lines and rounded corners, and most of the ads (except the ones that just say "AD," which don't look so great) have nice detailed art. More importantly, everything's constantly flashing. (Except the most basic ground tiles… I guess that would be a bit much.) It definitely helps sell this tileset as digital and vibrant.

One nice thing about this set is how unique it is for JJ2. There are a couple other ad-centric city sets I can think of, though neither are on J2O, but they're both clearly physical cities, nothing like this purple-and-black cyberscape. It's always good to have something genuinely new to play around in. There are also a very respectable number of other incidental graphics, all or mostly also animated, besides the ads. There's no shortage of ways to keep levels looking interesting. Very good work there. I'm also fond of the harsh diagonal lines used by some of the background elements.

I can't deny that I'd prefer a hypothetical version of this set that did have shading and things. I do think there could be more here that signifies city, like vehicles of some sort. But this tileset has a very clear and unique idea of what it wants to do, and with only minor hiccups (again, the "AD" animations) it succeeds impressively.