Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

The plot is… well, cheesy in places, but very origional. It was enough to keep me playing til the end.

Sticking to origionality though brings with it shortfalls. There is only one enemy type, and absolutly no pickups, which the author explains that stuff that jazz could use would be nonexistant in the internet. This is acceptible in a sence, as it does increase the difficulty, but at the same time, saying carrots were “Restoring programs” would have been as simple as passing sparks off as “Antivirus programs”

The main tileset used was simplistic, flat, yet perfect for the world that Troglobite is creating. The eyecandy is simple, but the whole area is covered in animations, which makes up for it.

The area where it does fall short, is in the music. only 2 music files are used, and one was used for all but one level. By the time you are finished the final level, you are pretty sick of the same music file.

Overall, It needs tweaking, but that does not stop it from being a good play. I would recommend it.

Starting Comments
I’ve played this several times now, once during betatesting, once before the last update and once afterwards. Let’s see how this pack fares in it’s totality.

Gameplay: Average
The pack starts in a somewhat confusing area. You are presented with the ending of your average Epic episodes, Devan is defeated and you’re about to see an ending movie… or are you?

The plot thickens (!) when Troglobite himself enters the game as an omnious voice and tells you that you need to get to the internet to stop a hacker or else we’re doomed for ever. After ‘installing a patch’, you can shoot the Windows program running Jazz2 and escape towards the internet.

The game will mostly take place on the internet from now. The areas are kind of bland at the beginning, but get better later on. You run on lines of code, which can have all sorts of meaning, like damaging codes that hurt you or codes that get deleted when you touch it. There are also antiviri (yes that is the plural of antivirus) in the form of Sparks enemies, that will try and ‘delete’ you.

The levels can get quite repetitive from time to time, for instance in cases where you have a certain agile obstacle placed five times after one another. This doesn’t really add to the fun, really. In fact, when you find a certain obstacle hard, it gets pretty frustrating if you’ve got to do it several times.

Then there is the lack of goodies. If I recall right, I found only few carrots and one 1up throughout the entire pack. No ammo, no food, no shields, no fastfires or anything. This makes the pack pretty hard from time to time, but luckily there are also few enemies to cope with, so it’s not that bad.

Of course this pack isn’t all let-downs. On the contrary, one of the best points of the game is yet to come. When you find the heart of the virus, you’ve got to eliminate it. This is done in a standard JJ2 boss fashion, including a health-bar and epic music. The boss is a series of moving walls that can hurt you. If you manage to get past, you’ve got to shoot through a hole in the wall, which takes a lot of precision to pull off at first, but gets even tougher later on, when you’ve got to uppercut or double jump past moving walls and need almost perfect timing to shoot the hole.

Once you complete your AVG-job, you realise you’re still in the virus and in for a lot of trouble. Levels from here will be confusing and a tad scary (will not spoil it for you, play yourself). You will also be presented with cunning puzzles and odd enemies (well, not odd to the average Jazzer, but hey, MCE’s are fun). Then, you escape the virus and presto! You’ve unlocked the next episode. (In my case, that is. I don’t play regular episodes… :P )

Atmosphere: Nice
First of all, nice job on creating those tilesets yourself. However easy they may be, they do the job, and that’s what counts. The levels look moderately good, with the exception of the internet levels, which looks very good. Call it a matter of taste, but I like them. A lot.

The music selection is really awesome, as well. The internet levels use a remix of bonus2, which just fits really well for levels like that.

… hmm, I have little more to say here. :P

Eventing: Below Average
This is where the whole pack (and the score thereof) takes the fall. Though it’s good as it is, and the final level has clever puzzles and fun use of triggers, and don’t forget the cool boss, this level is still missing things… Especially the internet levels lack enemies and goodies, and that’s not recommended. They may call it a platform game, but that doesn’t mean all you do is leap from platform to platform. A few extra puzzles wouldn’t hurt either, especially again in the internet level.

Now of course there is your story, which might suggest that the internet just isn’t a place for lots of ammo, or enemies, but you could have implemented enemies as viri and ammo as ‘upgrades’, like you did with the airboard and the ‘Cut and Paste’ commands.

Overall Fun
It’s a fun pack to play for a while, though it is rather short. But if you appreciate a new wind blowing through the story of Jazz, do play these. They’re fun.

Download Recommentdation
Yes.

Score
7.8

This is a great pack. Like EM said, it had plenty of things I have never seen before, like the new boss, the internet play [to clear this up, you aren’t actually on the Internet, just in the story.] Small assortment of baddies, even smaller amounts of goodies, and many annoying tile enemies make this pack average in likeability. The boss is extremely creative.
The whole concept is good. To sum up, I will give a 4.8, but a dl rec, because EM is right: Bad level, extremely good concept+attempt.

Wow. Great story, it is quite amusing and entertaining. Good custom tilesets i especially love level one. THe internet one is simple yet creative and effective, although it lacks purple =). The puzzles in level 7 are quite creativve and challenging, and i like the homemade “boss” battle in the campaign. This was very well planned and made, and it deserves full marks.

I DEFINATELY suggest downloads