Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

It’s always good to see people release single player episodes. This particular one is quite good too, and I found it enjoyable to play. It comes from Snooze, who is perhaps best known for his CTF packs, New Ages I, II and III. This is his first major release that is single player, and I hope it’s not going to be his last.

The best part about this pack it its atmosphere. It is set almost entirely within a series of dreams, and because of that the levels take on a somewhat surreal tone. Snooze does a very good job at conveying this theme, with the eyecandy being a particular strong point. In some places it does get a bit weird, but dreams aren’t always normal and logical. One thing I thought was fairly impressive is how some of the levels have different areas that look very different, with the background transitioning and the style of the foreground also changing. Most people would just start a new level to convey this effect, so having it happen within a single level makes it very neat.

The gameplay is also good, though it does suffer a bit due to a few problems. One in particular that I noticed is that the instant-death pits are often hard to spot. You never know when a drop is going to be fatal, and because of that the levels can be a bit more frustrating than they have to be.

I also find that in an action oriented pack, having a QoB-style level early on is a bit disruptive to the overall flow of the levels. I’m not a big fan of maze levels, and this one in particular is difficult due to a lot of obscure triggers. The goal is to find 10 coins. I couldn’t, so I settled with 5, then hit the checkpoint, killed myself, and grabbed those 5 again. That’s a bit of an exploit, but at least I didn’t have to cheat. Call it an alternate solution to the puzzle.

I also thought that the hell level was a bit confusing. It’s more straightforward than the QoB one, but the layout is very open, and I found myself at times not sure where to go next. Also, at the end you wind up with a checkpoint and a dead end. It turns out there’s a hidden tunnel by there, but I couldn’t find it at first.

The final level is a bit different from the others, in that it is more puzzle focused. In a way it’s similar to the QoB level early on, but it’s a lot more action oriented, and I at least enjoyed it (though it took me a while to figure out where to go).

Other than that all of the levels are quite well designed, fun, and challenging. And, due to the very original visual design, you’ll always want to know what’s next.

Like snooze says in the download description, it’s probably a good idea to play this on easy mode unless you are pretty good at single player.

One additional comment I’d like to make is that I found it a bit annoying how the main character (and narrator) of the episode often comments on what he sees. Sometimes this is alright, but sometimes it’s completely unnecessary, because the player can quite easily see what the level looks like. I also thought it was a bit funny how the narrator sometimes comments on how cool/beautiful a certain scene looks. These comments seem to pop up fairly randomly, and come across as the authour of the level complementing himself. I thought this felt a bit arrogant.

Anyway, this is still a great pack, and I highly recommend you download it as soon as possible, since you never know when it’s going to be deleted in a fit of rage.

Quite an evil pack. The best thing in my opinion is the execution of the theme. There are some unfair situations, and you may feel the author (or demon) is being a complete bastard at times, but it’s real fun.

I don’t really know how to rate this, but I can’t really understand what the benefit of being able to stream music in JJ2 is. The streaming server is not always online apparently, and the result is that whether a level using this will actually have music is mostly a gamble. This is not what you’d want when creating one. You also need a permanent internet connection and the tool needs to run alongside JJ2. I think spending 10 minutes on browsing modarchive for a suitable song, or downloading the MP3 you want to use, is a better idea.

This mp3 tool came before the JJ2+ mp3 support. We had already made an early version a couple of months ago, but this is the update.

The server is now online 24h per day!

And JJultimate is Sfaizst thing, I haven’t made it.

And plus stealed our idea, we was first with mp3 in JJ2

I’m afraid I don’t see the point of using this utility since JJ2+ now supports mp3 audio. Well, the difference is that you wouldn’t need to have the audio files on your PC, but that’s just about all. Nothing more.

You should also work on your English, I was annoyed when I opened the program and saw a message saying “The JJ2MP3 Server is offline or have some Problems, only YouTube Support Work”.

So, this program is completely useless. If you don’t have enough storage for MP3 files on your computer, you could just listen to some online radio. I guarantee it’d be better.

I’d also like to mention that there is a button within the program leading to a site where users can download Jazz Jackrabbit 2 free of charge which is illegal. There are such links in the readme file too. Please re upload your program without the links, thank you.

The facts that it’s useless, contains links to illegal content and the text’s written in Engrish mean you should not download this program. It’s junk. You still get 0.5 points for the effort.

*edit:*@djazz: I wasn’t talking about whether the server was online or not but about how poorly the message was written.
It doesn’t matter who put a link to a site where the game can be illegally obtained but the fact it’s there. You should remove it.

edit @Sfaizst: Oh yes, you are completely right. BlurredD must have stolen your idea! You should now press charges against him for doing that! And really, who even uses JJ2+? Most of its features already were in other programs that came out way before plus did. BlurredD is such a thief!
I’m also looking forward to your upload of JJU or whatever you call it. I’m sure there are more people using JJU than ones using a legal copy of the game.

I fixed them up a little too….

EDIT: ….Them, being the 1.24 levels….

And you included the TSF versions of the levels why..?

Excellent program, I’ve been looking for a way to get the last few tracks into a format that I can convert to mp3, thanks a ton for making this!

It was incredibly easy to use and incredibly useful for my specific needs!

Anyone who wants a good program to listen to these in, I understand that .IT, .XM and .S3M aren’t regular sound files, you can use WinAMP to listen to these files alone, but there are programs that were made to create and play these, ModPlug Tracker, Scream Tracker and Impulse Tracker.

These programs can also export to formats playable in regular Music Players, such as iTunes.

I recommend finding ModPlug Tracker, and opening the converted files in there, you can then export it to a .WAV file (you can also .MP3, but that is very low quality, wav is recommended) and then use another program, such as Audacity, to convert the WAV to an MP3 :).

(I know this is an old release, but looking at how recent the comments date, who knows, somebody might find this somewhat helpful in the near future)

It’s still not completely working in 1.23! There are several animations missing in each of the levels. You need to re-insert them in 1.23’s JCS to make the levels work.

EDIT: The 1.23 levels work now.

Nice music… some songs better than the Jazz2 music! But i don’t like all..

good level

[Review changed to quick review. For more information, see Review Rules. – Violet CLM]

It will use JJ2+‘s setting.

isn’t this included in JJ2+? what happens if both are applied?

Great work. No bugs, and now i can run some larger music files as well. Great job

[Review changed to quick review. For more information, see Review Rules. – Violet CLM]

Does it supports JJ2+ ?
I remember that port changing doesn’t work on JJ2+.

Fun little pack.. Not as good as I was hoping, though. My favorite level was Headbanging. The CTF levels disappointed me, but the battle ones are really nice.

Links broken. re-upload

Now, these are some nice tileset edits, or pallette edits orso…
The only question is, why are 1 & 2 just the normal Diamondus tilesets?

Wouter.

[Review changed to quick review. – cooba]

They are pretty to play in with their eyecandy. the gameplay is very good and it doesnt really irritate you at those times. some levels are awesome because off the concepts. some levels misses the concepts and variety tough.
GJ tough, overall, fun to play! EDIT: The levels didn't age well. Lots of dead space, ammo issues. Overrated 9.2 goes to 7.

This level is perfect for alot of people but i cant seem to play it in mutiplayer but even playing it alone is 10/10.

Ok,back to original reveiw
The rooms are huge and seperated
The games are fun but i still hav problems with shaking
EyeCandy is perfect

Overall:10/10

Download Recommendation
Yes