Officially Timeless

  • Rating: 8

Reviews and comments

    DoubleGJ 28 Apr 2026, 16:38 (edited 29 Apr 26, 19:54)

    8Recommended:

    Yep, this level is indeed quite weird. It's still a battle level through and through, no novelty Angelscript gimmicks, pickups, or whatever, but most notably, the layout is definitely unorthodox. This level has pits that are very easy to fall into. The pit on the right side leads to a coin warp that I'll come back to in a moment, while the pit on the left has a powerup that can really only be taken with Electroblaster while on a copter, and frankly, throughout the entire Anniversary Bash battle rotations I never managed to grab it and live. Skill issue on my side, perhaps. Copters are almost necessary to get back from the bottom of the level back to the rest, especially if you don't play as Spaz, which can result in some mean fights over who gets to ride one (they take a while to respawn, but fortunately not too much). There's also an odd open space over the left pit, but just on this side. Weird, but kind of memorable, and rather irrelevant to combat.

    One of the custom weapons available is the ELEKTREK SHIELD, and there's some fun spots to abuse it, particularly a thin floor on the right side. Most of the wall structures feel rather cramped, which is convenient not just for this weapon, but for the overall selection here (well, maybe besides Firework, but there's some neat spots for it too). There's also a bunch of food in the level, so catching others with a sugar rush in here is actually doable.

    All floating ammo is placed in rings, which means you either grab the whole cluster, or you don't. You can get loaded out very quickly, but if you're unlucky or just facing players who manage respawns better, you'll be quite starved for resources. In fact, I have a feeling the whole level is built around an all-or-nothing philosophy. Bouncer PU is placed on a platform that's reached by springs spring mushrooms (I really like their sound effect!) through very tight shafts. It's really tricky to get there because of how JJ2 Medivo walls are designed, and that's without anyone making it harder. But since it's a Bouncer PU, it's really easy to just stay there and defend the position from anyone trying to get there, and there's not much you can do to punish this camping spot. Not much of a problem in group games such as AB, since the player will likely fall behind on roasts just sitting there, but doesn't seem well suited for duels.

    And now I should go back to the coin warp. It costs a whopping 130 coins. Sure, all the coins in this level are gold, and there's quite a few of them, but still, in a relatively small MP map that's a lot. If you do somehow manage to amass such a fortune and enter the warp, the reward (2 PUs!!) is made accessible for you and you only freely until the rest of the game. If you managed to survive that long to collect 130 coins, you're likely already way ahead of everyone else, so this is simply a way to stomp your opponents even harder. Personally, I like comeback-leaning designs more, so I'm not a fan, but you could treat this solution as a sort of game closer / sudden death, I suppose.

    Graphically, well, it's a very Cooba-looking level. There's classic JJ2 tileset graphics, but mixed around and with some little fancy bits. Bricks overlayed as an alpha texture on top of original Medivo walls are a neat idea, but I do admit this looks weird to me, since this ignores shading and perpective. Foliage doesn't have any shading or something like that that'd glue them visually to the underlying terrain, but at this point I'm just being picky… This has been standard practice for many years before JJ2+ made us spoiled. It's fine, the colors vibe together well. I might be biased since I just like purple and orange a lot.

    It might sound like I'm complaining a lot, but mostly I'm just rambling. Truth be told, I'm not much of a pro MP player these days, so I don't even feel that competent in rating this level, but it stuck in my memory after having played it during Anniversary Bash 28, so I wanted to do something about it having no reviews. It's an interesting experience, so if you play battle, you should try it! It's weird, so it might not be your cup of tea, which is why I think a rating of 8 to bring it just over the recommendation icon threshold will be perfectly suited.

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