Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I like the basic idea here but I don't like any of the execution. There's not enough recognition that the base designs might not be perfect.

Dean Tube is just as visually confusing as ever, perhaps even moreso, but now with lots of enemies and powerups. The EB powerup makes sense because of the sparks in the walls, but after a while it's clear there are just powerups for the sake of powerups. Enemies are placed without regard for which tileset they're in—having sparks and pacman ghosts in the same level feels especially egregious. None of the original level's weirder features are normalized, there are just more events. Even the missing animated tiles aren't fixed.

Forrest Jump (I do like the name) does a bit of decent background layer work, even though it doesn't seem to understand the concept of animated tiles. It connects the last loose bit of layout to the rest of the level and adds a lot of carrots. But mostly it's barely changed. Inner wall tiles still appear freely on the sides of walls, branches still sprout into nowhere, walls are still mostly gemless.The idea of following an extremely cramped level section with an extremely open level section is kind of interesting, but little about the new area feels purposeful or elegant (especially the swinging platforms), and the way out is marked with an arrow made of pickups, but if you eat those pickups before hitting the trigger crate, what are you supposed to do?

I didn't get very far into Battery Jazz. It's a bunch of weird mechanics poorly matched to limited use of the tileset. Smart tiles would help, but besides that, most every problem in it would be solved by just making a Battery Check level instead.