Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

“Get it, play it, love it!”

Well, I got it and played it. But I’m afraid to say I did not love it.
Before I review this, I just want to mention that this is TSF ONLY as my 1.23 JCS crashed when I opened one of the levels.
PLEASE, everyone who makes TSF levels make sure you MARK THEM AS TSF. ;)

OK, enough of that, now onto the review:

EYECANDY

The eyecandy used here is just very bland and repetitive. There is only a background in Layer 8 and not in Layers 5-7.
Layer 4 is very repetitive, the bottom and side edges of most of the walls and platforms in this whole pack are missing. You have only used about 2 tiles for the ground.

1/10

GAMEPLAY

There is hardly any gameplay in this pack whatsoever. Mostly I was just running right through a very linear level into warps. Then most of the levels had a Boss Fight at the end. I know Boss Fights are good, but having them in 16 levels one after the other can get very boring. Most of these levels had a Schwartzenguard at the end.
There are Bonus Areas, but they are too easy to access as the coins are very poorly placed. You should learn how to use Layer 3 to hide things.

1/10

WEAPON & ITEM PLACEMENT

There are hardly any items to be found here. Food is very scarce, I only got a Sugar Rush after about 13 levels as there was only about 7 or more pieces of food in each level.
There is not enough ammo. Some are placed in boring 2 × 2 square shapes.
When you get the Blaster Power-Up, the whole pack just gets far too easy. I could beat the bosses in about 10-20 seconds with the PU.
One of the levels had 4 PUs in one area one next to each other. As I already had the maximum rapid fire, I thought that the PUs were then pointless.
Carrots are nearly everywhere so gaining health was too easy.

2/10

ENEMY PLACEMENT

There were not enough enemies in any of the levels. Not once did I ever go down to one Heart health. There was one occassion were I was at 2 Heart health but that was only when fighting Bilsy and he was still too easy with the powered up Blaster.
Placement is very poor, all I was doing was running right and holding down Space all the time. I was shooting EVERY enemy that I came across.

1/10

OBSTACLE PLACEMENT

There was hardly any puzzle or obstacle that needed going through. There was only one instance where I can recall shooting Destruct Scenery in one of the later Carrotus levels.

1/10

TOTAL SCORE: 6/50
CALCULATING 6 / 5 = 1.2/10.0

DOWNLOAD?

I’m afraid I cannot recommend this level for downloading. But do keep making levels, DT-boy.
Do not try to make a very large pack unless you are experienced enough to make that many levels. Only start by making about one or two levels. If you feel that you can then make a large level pack, then give it a go but do take time to check that everything works.
You should learn how to use Layers 6 & 7 to make good backgrounds and how to use Layer 3 to make hidden passages.

What is KERT, BTW? Oh, OK. Didn’t know that.

Where did NightHawk get the music,‘Facing the Evil’ from?

Love it! Perfect I think! Great mask, tiles and animations! Good exapmle levels! Love it!

The lead should have had more attack (as in adsr), the guitars don’t really fit the song at all, and the breakbeat is just boring. Otherwise kind of interesting.

In short: NEEDS MOAR BPM + DISTORTION

[Review changed to quick review. – Cooba]

this is cool

nice tileset.. i already used it for my example to xlm ;D
most because its high quality much different tiles like grass + industrial – moon
just everything what a tileset needs even the events like vine + poles are in it :D
pallette is nice i can almost every tile in layer 8 as 3D background without bleeding.
Desolation PWNS you all XD

~Faw

a bit harsh on my ears =( i can\‘t follow the rhytm good.. =S
some parts are nice though but i dont like all the sounds of instruments.. but i give an 4.5 because u changed much and its an real conversion :D

well.. i think i shouldnt give an download recommendation.. maybe next time..

~Faw

Ah, right. I forgot to mention, the weird sound that follows almost through the whole track is the heavily modified “Are you ready?!” voice sample from the JJ2 version.

Oh, this is nice. Gus properly “episodified” Tomb Rabbit and gave it an Episode File (so it shows up in the episode selection menu) and an opening cinematic. The episode file is quite nice, especially the logo, though I wonder why it’s placed in-between Jazz In Time and Flashback. Starting the episode starts the opening cinematic.

While it is essentially just a level, Gus took some measures to make sure it didn’t appear as such, and I must admit that it works really well. The palette of the tileset the level uses was altered in such a way that all HUD elements (such as the score indicator) are hidden, as well as the giant beam of light that usually follows Jazz while moving. This left me puzzled for a while and I only noticed it when the level ended and the reflection of the spinning diamonds was still there. Really clever.

The cinematic itself is, while short, quite nice. It’s not perfectly centered on the screen (which I suppose it was meant to be) but does look like a short movie clip rather than some clever parallax scrolling trickery and works well enough.

The upload also includes a patched version of the tileset used for the Tomb Rabbit credits, which also removes the score indicator and the rest of the HUD. As the author notes in the readme, it has some problems though (the tileset looks worse due to the limited amount of colors available and the enemies which were originally in it aren’t visible anymore). Still, I think it’s a nice addition, and it’s of course optional.

All in all, yet another refreshing and interesting upload from Gus, and certainly worth downloading alongside the original Tomb Rabbit. Keep up the good work!

A first remark: please do not put files in subfolders.

This tileset (which, as the title suggests, partly consists of tiles taken from Super Mario Bros.), is a classical “megatileset”, with several types of tiles which not necessarily fit with eachother. The tileset has some original, seemingly hand-drawn tiles, but also contains for example Jazz/Spaz/Lori animations, a textured background taken from Blade’s tilesets (which sadly does not work, even in 16-bit), and a lot of tiles ripped from the original tileset and other sources I cannot identify. And, of course, it contains tiles with all sorts of characters to make text signs with.

As can be expected the quality of those tiles varies, but is generally acceptable. Most Mario tiles are quite nice, I especially liked the question mark-block animation, though the combination of NES Mario and SNES Mario tiles doesn’t work too well due to the difference in palette and resolution.

A lot of tiles would be useful if only they were finished. For example, there’s a nice platform (taken from Mario) which is completely useless because there are no tiles for the bottom of the platform or to make corners. There are ripped tiles from the official tilesets, which suffer from the same problem. If you really have to rip tiles from other sets instead of drawing your own, do it in such a way that they do not limit your creativity by not allowing you to build platforms with more complex shapes than a rectangle.

Additionally the palette is quite bad, as the Textured Background does not work, and water looks horrid even in 16-bit. You might want to ask someone about this or read up at JCSref (http://www.jazz2online.com/jcsref/) or Disguise’s Tileset Resource (http://www.jazz2online.com/tilesets/) about this, Typhoon Bunny. The masking is severely flawed too: the ripped Carrotus vine, for example, seems auto-masked, so it doesn’t work as a vine. Vines should be masked with 1-pixel, 2-pixel max thick lines instead.

The author asks me to rate the example level too, but as this was uploaded as a tileset I’ll stick to rating the tileset only. The example level is quite nice, though, and even while it does have some flaws it shows some nice ideas and is a very good example of how to use the tileset. Even though the tileset is pretty bad I’d still recommend downloading this just to play the (single-player) level. I do not understand why there are 3 seperate music files in the zip file, though, as there is only one level. Jazz2Online is not a music repository, and you should only include music if it is not included with the original game and used by a level.

All in all this is a pretty bad tileset with a nice example level. So even though I’m giving this a 4.0, I still recommend downloading it just for the level.

Happy Birthday.

The remix starts with some non-distinct electrical noise which I can’t make much of. Then the beat slowly starts kicking in, but the electrical noise does not disappear, giving the whole a quite chaotic feeling, which I don’t really like. Having a bassline throughout the whole tune is not a bad thing usually, but when you try the same with whatever it is that is played throughout the whole song now the result is just… noisy.

Around 2:10 there’s a break where the noise fades away for the first time, which is nice, and the song turns into some breakbeatish rhythm with distorted voice samples mixed on top of it, and it becomes a lot more apparant that this is actually a remix of Tubelectric. This part was pretty cool, however again that atrocious noise can be heard in the background, which really turns me off.

The Tubelectric theme is repeated a few times, though remixed in such a way that it indeed sounds like how the author described it, distorded. It sounds slightly out of tune and a bit too distorded for me to like though. The high-pitched blips that copy the same pattern are a lot more appealing to me.

All in all this is a chaotic mishmash which fails to stay coherent or ear-pleasing, to me. There are some nice ideas in it, such as the vocal samples and the high-pitched blippy Tubelectric theme, but overall it has too many annoying parts for me to like this or consider playing it again.

This is just an intro sequence. It requires some levels.

[Rating (1.0) clearance. I admit that Gus didn\‘t make it too clear, but this is supposed to be the intro sequence for \Tomb Rabbit\. – Cooba]

When reading the title of this level I was afraid that it would be a clone of MULCH, but it’s a little larger than that. Only a little though; it’s still rather small level.

The level layout is rather interesting and while not entirely original, it is certainly a strong point of the level. Basically, the route from base to base is U-shaped, with parts of the level unlocking as you go. This is done via trigger zones, so it might be a little confusing playing in this as the level is different for everyone.

The level is divided in two halves; the top part contains the bases and carrots, the bottom part contains the powerups. Though both teams can eventually access all of the level, the blue team gets to access the bouncer powerup first, while the red team first encounters an Electro Blaster powerup, which is a little unbalanced. Consider putting in two powerups that weigh up to each other, such as a bouncer/RF combo, instead.

Additionally, the level contains two 1-heart carrots, which I think is a bit much for such a small level. One carrot is really the limit for levels like this. The amount of ammo placed in the level is okay, maybe a little too much, but nothing problematic.

Gameplay problems aside, there’s still the eyecandy. The level uses JJ1: Battleships and for some reason I always find levels using that look somewhat the same. “Small Symmetrical Space” is no exception from this rule and adds a few not-too-serious tile bugs, which are however amplified because there aren’t many tiles in this level to begin with :P

I can imagine having a few short rounds in this level for fun. Due to the small size it might be fun with a lot of people, though that’s more the result of it being small than of the level design itself. The level itself is nothing special, with mediocre gameplay and eyecandy, and I wouldn’t really recommend download it.

Fawfull: The tileset was made far more by other people than you.

@FawfulCC: Christ man, music is for listening. Try listening to it.

Once again I am quite wary of not only this pack (which barely made a 2 and has zero satisfaction) but also its sole review which for whatever reason decided to comment more on the eyecandy than the gameplay. This speaks volumes in more ways than one, and perhaps one of the reasons I don’t trust JJ2 reviews anymore. I run from A to B and its boring? Really? Great, no really it is. No no don’t go on, I’d MUCH rather hear about the terrible eyecandy, since you know it’s not like I have to PLAY this pack or anything.

Which is actually quite true, there are long stretches throughout JJ2 The Movie where you are not doing anything at all.
In an attempt to make the pack feel more like an actual movie, level designer Krinya forgot the fun and the pack suffers because of it. For example, there is a level consisting of nothing but Jazz falling. This nearly sounds like a half hearted joke, so I will repeat that line again with more emphasis: One level in this pack consists nothing more than of Jazz falling for nearly 45 seconds in front of a bland background while you sit and watch. No measures where taken to make this concept fun or at the very least engaging. Some form of obstacles would have been nice. There are many more instances throught this pack that require minimal work on the players part such as the downhill-roof slide in the first “scene”.

The levels consisting of gameplay are no better being extremely linear and discouraging exploration (the hologram castle warped me to my death just because I felt like exploring a tower a suicidal person jumped off of). They offer little challenge, variety, and half the time I was merely going through the motions not even knowing if the path I took was actually going to lead to the exit. It also feels like the levels were designed with the intention of being a part of a mobile phone game for an extremely low-end phone as there tends to be no more than one enemy on-screen at most times. There are also a few instances where the faulty level design got me stuck without having any plan of getting me back out, a sign of a lack of beta-testing for sure. Theres a “maze” puzzle early on that seems to really nail down the feeling of pack, allow me to describe it to you in case you have yet to play the level. Jazz must retrieve a remote which is in a tiny dirt maze of sorts. The remote is safely tucked in the middle and is easily accessible. There is a burning oil barrel at the top of the maze which requires more effort to get to and does nothing but hurt the player. Forget telling Krinya to spend time on the eyecandy front, Sonicnathan, more time needs to be spent on making levels worth playing.

The dialog during the city levels in scene-1 try to humorously mask the laziness in playing the same dull level repeated multiple times but ultimately fails. Unlike in Haunted Castle Manor where humorously pointing out bees don’t belong in an old castle was fun because the bees added to the gameplay, the minor additions to the second and third repeats of scene 1 do not. Not only that but the plot is completely inane and doesn’t seem to follow any sense of logic at all. Jazz despite signing up for a movie doesn’t seem to know the script. The director seems more concerned with killing Jazz for whatever reason instead of making a competent film. When Spaz shows up you really get the feeling this is some elaborate snuff film. Not to mention that despite being called “Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Movie”, the movie’s plot doesn’t seem to follow anything from the actual game.

As if the poor level design (which breaks simple rules such as “You won’t have paths leading to bottomless pits at the level’s bottom”) and nonsensical story (the broken english wasn’t even that bad, the problems lie mainly with a broken plot) weren’t enough, the pack’s eyecandy is atrocious. Ahaha, did I say eyecandy? I meant Eyesore, shield your eyes kiddies Uncle n00b has just set his review phaser to “scathing”. Rocks float magically midair, poorly done backgrounds, tiles that don’t even finish connecting to anything, a mentality that only uses tiles to barricade you onto a single path, a hologram level that actually hurt my eyes while playing (no joke), and the god awful concept of an “invisible bridge”. You can probably make a bridge using Top Secret 3, its been a while, but I’m positive. If you can’t, just make a walkway. Invisible bridges are the level equivalent of closing your eyes falling back and expecting a complete stranger to catch you. I may be over reacting, but still, it bugs me.

All in all JJ2: The movie feels a lot like an old pack I made back in ’04 but never uploaded called “Operation P.I.G.” simply because the pack was meant for my entertainment, and my entertainment only. As I am prone to do, the pack was made completely terrible on purpose set to the story of a rather bad essay I read in class about an invention that makes pigs fly. The only difference between Operation P.I.G. and this pack however, is that JJ2: The movie isn’t an elaborate joke (at least not that I’m aware of) and doesn’t even include all the tilesets needed for the levels while nonsensically including tilesets prepackaged with JJ2 and TSF. No less than four times and perhaps a bit more while playing the pack I had to stop and hunt for the next tileset JJ2 said was missing like I was running errands for a pregnant women who got a new bizarre food craving every few minutes. I’m not sure if any of you have done that, but rest assured if the stories I have heard are true it is not fun. But I did unzip the tubelectric tilesets that came with the pack just in case my old ones deleted themselves (Read: Sarcasm)! More time needs to be spent on fleshing out the world in which the level is set both gameplay-wise (this comes first- remember that.) and eyecandy-wise, and the plot needs to at least have some kind of logic applied to it. I really never felt like I was actually acting in a movie outside of scene 1, it really felt more like Jazz wandering movie sets on his own accord while cracking one liners as the director followed him around with a cellphone camera.
Even without fancy mathematical algorithms, I can tell this pack is worth a 1.7 and nothing more and perhaps quite a bit less.

Airship…

Gameplay

This level has not got the flow I expected. In some parts there is allmost no flow as there are too many obstacles and in some parts there is just a huge gap with nothing. Speaking about gaps, when you leave the schip at the bottom, you just fall in something white at the bottom of the level and respawn {pits)but these pits seem to make this level more one wayed. To my experience, it also seems the blue team has some advantage accourding to how this level is designed.

Eyecandy

You did great for whatsoever you can do great with this title set. It does not really have a great eyecandy. The background is quite boring with some clouds and some moving spaceships which you can only see at some places. There is not really a foreground and the level looks quite black.

Originality

There are some mentionable things in your level, you made an entrance to the spaceship by ‘climbing’ up an anchor and you made a bonus warp which has the amount of coins in a text message which looks quite good. In the bonus part there are some chests which contain…shields! I think those shields give you a too great advantage, as players have to shoot you about two times as much to kill you, even if it is for only thirty seconds. I also got stuck somewhere where you could climb over some ropes and warp when you would fall, when I got on the spring I got right in the roof without touthing other buttons. Your level has some great features but it’s quality is decreased with the bugs it has.

Gameplay: 6
Eyecandy: 7
Originality: 7

Final Grade: 6.7

Well I like it. Good job. Not perfect but I like the idea.

It is brilliant!
I really enjoyed this castle level.
this is the best, and longest single player level of thet I played.

it’s a bit hard, but not impassible, i did it, the 4. try, becouse i left some cousines.

rating:

good:
-backround
-layer 3,4 decoration
-enemys
-long level
-not boring
-texts.
bad:
- i don’t like when i need serch cousines.
- a bit of hard.

hm?!