9
Starling is fun stuff, a bold revitalization of the ancient art of combining JJ1 sets to form new things, but a JJ2 set for a change… the exact reverse of the IC JJ1 episode. And what do you know, it looks great. The deliberately non-fading background is a particularly cute touch, but the layer 4 stuff is still a great mixture of clearly Colon-inspired while not trying to faithfully recreate every single Colon detail. The crates feel appropriate despite not having a clear analog, and the pillars are fine too. I wouldn't have thought of any of this but it's all nifty and clever.
The biggest risk Starling takes is the sewer/coin area, but I don't think I'm thrilled with how it ended up. It just doesn't seem worth it from a gameplay perspective, despite how interesting it is. If you want to go to the roof, you can use the lamposts, even if they are very narrow. If you want the powerup you can shoot it through the wall. The sewer takes a while and feels like a trap to get camped on. It's very interesting but I wouldn't want to go there, although JJ2 players are like ants and I'm sure some people will pass through it anyway.
Outside the sewer, well, I like cramped spaces in Battle levels, with weapons that can reach around corners a bit, and Starling delivers, but with nice smooth walls instead of the uneven alcoves of cramped levels of yore. It's not a silky smooth gameplay experience by any means, but it's consistently interesting, and because part of the problem with the sewer is that it's so skippable, well, you can simply skip it!
7
Starling! Now this is a level to remember from the JDC season 33, in many ways! There is also a CTF version made of it, but since this is the original, I'll focus my review on it.
I feel that the recent levels by cooba have had a greater focus on unique gameplay traits combined with more restrained visual side. This level follows that tradition. That isn't to say that this level suffers from lack of visual detail. In fact, there are quite some nice original approaches to the visual side here, like combining wall tiles from Stonar-tileset with the palette from Colon, making it feel like an alternative Colon-tileset was used here.
A significant amount of effort was put into the sprite layer visuals, and especially into the wall-tiles, which helps to maintain some visuality, but perhaps there could have been more variety to it? I feel that with the level's palette, the colors are quite intense and they are everywhere. The night palette in the CTF-version helps a bit. The level background is a bit too empty to my tastes, but I admit it helps to balance the otherwise intense colors a bit.
I think the gameplay is the stronger side here, but with a more quirky style. The layout is definitely unique, but I think it suffers from too narrow passages here and there, which have luckily been improved in the CTF-version a bit. There are also a few spots that enable camping with limited ways to counter it. Bonus points for the (sewer?) room with the coin minigame to counter camping at the top of the level.
To summarize, Starling is a unique and original battle level with a mix of new- and oldschool gameplay-traits, eventhough it's not my favorite battle level by cooba. However, I have some fun memories from it as it got highlighted during some recent JDC events. I especially remember the LRS-round with the death circle-mutator; An intense final battle between me, FawFuL and minmay in the final ring. Good games!
Battle, by 
