Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I think this map is good. It has nice layout even if there are some mask bugs which will make you stuck in the wall like 12,35 and 26,9 and some smaller eyecandy/mask bugs (which doesnt affect gameplay for example 65,24 and 8,35).
Iam not rly sure about some eyecandy things. The first this wich catched my eyes were that black towers, they kinda doesnt make sence to me because that mountains in the backround are more detailed than that towers. It should be opposite, I would use some other more detailed ones or make mountains in the backround same simple as towers. Walls on layer between layers 4 and 5 should maybe move a little slower imo. Also i would maybe make solid branches other colored than unsolid, its kinda confusing.
Iam not really sure why there is water, I dont think it really helps gameplay in this case. Toaster PU is good choice imo Bouncers are deadly.

Haven’t played the other levels from this user, but based on the ratings, this should be a definite improvement. The level is pretty competently put together. No splitting paths or secrets or coins, but since it’s a short level that can be completed in about 5 minutes, it doesn’t matter all that much. The eyecandy seems to be on the blander side, since from what I see, it seems only layer 4 and 8 were used. Item and enemy placement were decent, but there weren’t any carrots, not that the level is that difficult, but 1-2 may have been better. There’s a boss fight with Bilsy at the end but bosses were never the strengh of this series.

Anyway, overall I think this is a competent/decent level. It does enough to tip the rating on the more positive side. Most of the basics are there and there’s nothing outright bad in it. Like I said, I didn’t play the other levels from the uploader, but this seems to be going in the right direction. Keep up the improvement!! I’d definitely encourage you to make more levels.

Cool!

Thank god I’ve stumbled across this download lately! The gameplay mechanics akin to the OG Sonic games is the definition of neatness on the highest level. I especially loved the part where you do the loop thing, as well as when at certain speed you can stick to the vertical and semi-vertical surfaces, which reinforce the Sonic feeling even more. The boss fight is literally the best one I’ve had playing a JJ2 level.

What I kinda disliked was the fact that the enemy placement was occasionally cruel and unforgiving. Like, you are running like you just don’t care and enjoying yourself and then BAM! you just ram into a group of baddies, inevitably losing all your ri… I mean gems. Also, there were sometimes some spots at which the floor layer blended with the still background one, which was slightly confusing and led to me hurting myself because I didn’t actually know whether I was supposed to land on something or not.

Apart from the cons mentioned, the whole experience was totally great and I wish Violet released even more levels like that (maybe even the whole series, hee hee).

Def recommended

A pretty decent level pack, held down by some tilebugs, spring & pole sections not working as fluidly as intended partly due to the tileset and partly because of the level creator, lack of variety in pickups since you only get a few gems, apples the occasional carrot and a small amount of ammo.

Level 3 makes probably the most mistakes, you have to find 2 trigger crates and the first one is hidden behind shootable blocks that look like tileset walls that are just above soft lock pits (meaning it’s a pit that doesn’t hurt or kill you, you just remain in the fall animation at the bottom of the map, with cheating jjfly being the only way to get out). Also some of the vine areas can get you permanently stuck in the wall tiles if you press down at the wrong moment, leaving your character in a permanent buttstomp animation. The thing is, none of these issues are unfixable, just remove the endless pits, check the tileset masking with the vine areas, and the spring and pole areas, maybe add some variety to the pickups, though that shouldn’t be the priority while the other gamebreaking issues exist.

On the positive side of things, I think the level layout is pretty good, the choice of music is good, the level is pretty despite the tileset being somewhat simple. Enemy and item placement is okay too. This can easily be a 7.5-7.7 upload once the mentioned bugs are fixed (though given how this is a 14 month upload, I’m not sure it will happen), but for now I’ll give it a 6.7 with a download recommendation, since it’s a solid pack once you look past or avoid the bugs and oddities associated with the levels.

Hoping to see more

2 really nice looking jungle themed levels. I really love the visuals for this, and the music choice is fitting. One negative I have to mention is the fact that you used those ugly red X tiles to indicate trigger tiles, I think it’s unnecessary since they look out of place and the level design is already good enough for the player to see the trigger tiles appear, since the crate is in a position where you will see the tiles appear once the crate has been broken. Like Primpy said, the boss doesn’t fit the theme, the Tuf Turtle boss would have fitted better and functionally it works very similarly.

This is a pretty decent pack with 9 levels ranging from average to good.

I do think the level layout is competently done, so is the enemy placement, there are some copy paste sections, but not the very lazy type, more like the ones from JJ 1 or the Secret Files. Also, the 2nd Diamondus level picks up from where the 1st ends, which is a nice touch. I also really liked the atmosphere of the 3rd Diamondus level, something about that rust/gold tint with the low lighting made it rather appealing. One thing I think has room for improvement is the item pickups (sometimes lack thereof). Just like Violet also said, certain areas are complete empty, then you get to a point where you get 30-40 food items clumped together. Placing pickups not only make your levels feel more alive, but they also make the length of you level longer, since you won’t just be running in a straight line while shooting.

Another thing that was excluded was the coin warp. Wouldn’t call it an outright negative, but having an extra goal per level doesn’t hurt. A positive thing about the levels ranging from average to good is that there wasn’t anything particularly bad I noticed in them, so you have a pretty decent base from which you can improve when it comes to creating levels.

At first I thought there weren’t any secrets at all, but I did find 2, so they are either very well hidden or very few. I think the first level is actually the weakest, it’s the one where the lack of item placement is the most noticable. I initially wanted to give a 6.7 with a recommendation, but the levels mostly improved as I progressed, with no real low point luckily.

So I’m giving it a 7.2 with a download recommendation.

(note that after playing this pack, I feel like giving Diamondus 3 a score of 3 was too high, since you are capable of much better, which makes that lazy reskin even weaker in context)

Eh, what’s there even to say, it’s hard to give a rating or a review or any sort of opinion on this upload, since I don’t even know what it’s supposed to be. I mean yeah, I guess it’s categorised as a “Single Player” upload, but the level doesn’t seem to want to fullfill the list of things required to be called a single player level. You just drop into a (apart from the layout and pointless pickups) completely empty map without any purpose or goal of what you are supposed to be doing. Once you actually start exploring the level you realise it’s just a bunch of warps to different locations with seemingly no good reason. There’s a coin warp that just warps you back to where you came from (also, the gold coins respawn in the exact same room the coin warp is in).
Then you have another room that just gives respawning green gems. It’s one thing to add dozens of warps that progress the level in no particular way, but it’s another to give mostly no good indication of where these warps are. Sure some of them are in door textures but a lot of them are just randomly placed.
Also apart from a Dog I found, there are no enemies in the level, adding even more to the confusion of what this level is intended for. Are walking simulators a thing in platformers too?

The worst thing is that there is actually a complete level (as far as layout is concerned), so this whole thing could be salvaged by making it into a proper single player level, that would at the very least be decent (with sensible item and event placement of course).

I feel bad for giving it such a low rating, but there’s not much to recommend in this, since there’s no real point in playing the level. I don’t even know if it has an actual end or if it’s just a pointless loop inside a goalless level, since I didn’t even see an ending areas with end level triggers, but to be fair I only checked the level in the editor for about 2 minutes.
Maybe you guys can see what I can’t see and understand what this map is supposed to accomplish.

Check this out: https://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/9222/hose-my-live-20-d/

Perfect Pack! 10/10 HYPE

Oh, BTW in my own version I inserted boss music (Calling for Wisdom Uterus, Psychosis for Fooruman and Darkness for Dragon). I have them in MP3 format and is made by both Christopher Emirzian & Tim McFarland.

This pack is awesome. 9.2/10.

Also, I can make my own version of this pack by changing tilesets (mainly from Stone Abyss) and music (or leave the original tracks), and even adding AngelScript codes.

Well, well, well… Nice one Dragusela! 8/10!

BTW in my version I used Stone Abyss tileset of Carrotus and the texture background was made using MLLE.

Make good levels, especially the XLM ones!

good

I don’t have much to add to Stijn’s solid review. These are good levels for sitting back, tuning out, and playing some JJ2 with nothing else to worry about. I think the Carrotus levels are the weakest, feeling too rectangular and not very organic, but it’s nice to see the float lizard copters getting some use, even if not to the same extent as in The Big Rescue. It’s great that the layouts give you a lot of choices of which directions to go in and have lots of extra goodies just off the main road. There are a lot of uses of buttstomp blocks to mark out goodies just for Jazz or just for Spaz(/Lori), which mostly works well until the level with TNT, at which point they all start to be accessible to either character, and it’s not clear if the pack realizes this. Likewise, powerups and shields frequently appear behind thin walls that can be shot through with electroblasters or bouncers. But the variety of goodies and powerups is a welcome one (even birds and invincibility carrots make appearances), and they help against the enemies, which are fairly numerous but never feel particularly difficult when faced with so much ammo. It’s a good time to play.

Replaying this, I still enjoyed fighting the Lori clones, the urge to search for gems, and the handy seekers & bouncers that got me out of dire situations. The level’s short and pretty straightforward, with little secrets but a few alternate paths leading to green/blue gems. The powerup is nice but makes the boss easier than it already is. DL this!

Not amazing but not bad either.
Beating it with Lori is possible, too.

Hey! Thank you very much for all the reviews given by each of you!

I really appreciate the fact you enjoyed it, as well as all the criticism towards some of the issues! It surely gave me much advice for the future and motivated me to create more!

Love!

Thanks for the review, much appreciated! May I ask what you mean by the one way not working in the Colon level when you morph into a bird? Also in the first Beach level, did you get stuck in the spring and pole section? Did you play as Spaz or Jazz? Because I do recall Spaz having some difficulty in that area.

By the way, that bird morph gimmick was a compromise unfortunately, I wanted to make an underwater section, changing the water level several times to be able to break trigger crates, but giving maps a water level resets the lighting to 100% (something I wasn’t aware of), so I had to come up with the bird morph instead, otherwise the level lost atmosphere with full lighting in the sewer areas. The only reason I included the Uterus boss was because the game crashed every time I used the “End level” trigger events (no idea what caused it).

Edit: Odd, looks like the Bird has different hitboxes depending on if you morph from Jazz or Spaz, I played through the level multiple times as Jazz and never had the issue, but with Spaz the “one way” event didn’t work as intended, it does actually function though, but only if you try to pass through it while wallhugging the right side of the wall, it’s a rather weird bug. On the Beach level, I’m assuming it’s the spring at 145, 25. I’ve fixed that, it should work properly now

Primpy, didn’t test it with her, so that is a rather odd coincidence. Thanks for the review!

Edit: Thank you to everyone who reviewed the pack, much appreciated :)

As the description above discusses, this level pack is very much a continuation (or expansion?) of Epic’s original Jazz Jackrabbit 2 levels. Same tilesets, same music, same enemies, pickups and other gameplay elements. In a way, that is refreshing in 2022, where scripted gimmicks have become the norm. ‘Nostalgia Pack’ proves that that isn’t required for a fun single player episode; the levels in here are quite solid, and overall fun to play.

Similarly to abgrenv’s previous levels, these offer multiple paths to the finish, as levels usually aren’t completely linear but rather consist of a series of relatively open areas connected by a single tunnel or warp – the latter preventing the player from becoming lost. That is a welcome break from Epic’s style of level design, actually, and encourages exploring and discovering the many secrets hidden in the levels.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some issues with them. Notably, I got stuck twice; once in the part of the Colon level where you morph into a bird (the one way doesn’t work) and once in the first Beach level, where a tile blocked me from reaching a spring. The foreground and background layers also don’t seem to support 800×600, probably because they were simply copied from the official levels. More thorough testing might have been useful here, but apart from those issues, I fortunately didn’t encounter any major bugs.

The larger issue for me was that it all started to feel a bit stale after a couple of levels. Sure, the levels are competently made, and there are hidden gems, food and powerups to discover; but that can only obfuscate the fact that all levels follow the same formula for so long. There are no bosses to change the pace either, except for a Uterus at some point, which abgrenv didn’t even try to make interesting (and the level says as much). I would have appreciated a bit more variety in the level design; even the official levels contained many features not used here, such as smoke rings, speed blocks or potentially challenging enemies like floating suckers.

Overall, it feels like more could’ve been made of the premise. But this is still a fine level pack, and worth playing if you have some time to kill and feel like blasting through a couple of oldschool JJ2 levels again.

Edit, RE: Yes, in Beach it was the pole and spring section, as Spaz; and the issue with the bird section in Colon was that the one way simply didn’t seem to want to let me pass, so I never reached the revert morph and trigger zone.

This level pack has the potential of becoming the Devres of the Plus era, and that’s not something to be taken lightly. Although there are some minor shenanigans that could be prevented in the next part (assuming there’ll be more) or with an update to this one.

The episode starts with a scrolling intro, where the story is so straightforward that it’s main purpose is to make fun of itself. This is surprisingly followed by a tutorial level that teaches the basics of Jazz’s moveset in a similar fashion to ‘Rabbit in Training’ in the original JJ2 campaign. While this tutorial arguably does a better job explaining the basics than the original, it’s incredibly weird to see it in an episode that quickly gets brutally hard compared to the original levels.

All the levels are carefully designed. Eyecandy is everywhere and its amount and placement always feels natural. Same goes for lighting in caves and the matching color schemes in the backgrounds. The levels are mostly designed around familiar JJ2 gameplay although there are some exceptions such as the floating rock ride in ‘River Ride or River Die’ and swimming with limited oxygen in ‘Swim For It!’.

Food and gems, while not serving any purpose due to the removal of Sugar Rush, are everywhere and fun to collect. Exploration is often rewarded with coins, which do serve a purpose as the coin warp near the end of each level is the only means of getting 1-ups! Carrots can be found often but not always on the straight path, sometimes a risky jump is necessary to get one. Ammo is relatively scarce but the levels are designed around its usage pretty well, just make sure to conserve it for those occasions.

Enemies are mostly placed where they form a fair challenge instead of just being cannon fodder. Except for the bats in the latter half of the pack, they’re often hard to notice and feel like a cheap trick that JCSers try to avoid nowadays. Oh, the ghosts in the temple section of ‘Swim For It!’ can be annoying as well, they’re invincible and eager to attack, unlike what a hint message near them says. What is lovable however, are the intuitive test-like Airboard sections spread across the levels.

Overall it’s a pack clearly aimed at the experienced JJ2 player. I highly recommend it if you believe you fall into that category. I played on Hard and enjoyed the extra health enemies had. Button mashing JJ1-style is so satisfying! The many things I enjoyed here really made up for the few frustrating design elements, and I’m a sucker for cheap humor so..