Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Not having to jump is bad.

CTF Release Review 02: Myriadus.

Introduction to Myriadus: this level, was made by LRK, who is in OLC. The level is made with the Beach tileset. I can also say that the name is very weird.

Gameplay:
I’ll start off with the flow. I ran from base to base, and I did not even had any problems with it. The flow is so good, I did not have to jump at all. The level’s layout is LRK-like, but it’s good. Not too high, but it has a high width. The level looks huge, but actually, it isn’t. The spring placement was good, like I already said with the flow. I can run from base to base without any problem. The level’s one ways were useful, and I like it. I found a bug at 128,134, there needs to be a Float Up there. The level has a trigger system, which is good too. The level’s coin warp gives you the RF power-up, and I will tell more about it later. I can say I like the level’s gameplay.

Eye candy:
the level uses basic Beach eye candy. The rain on the foreground is something I’ve never seen before, irl it’s strange that it rains on a Beach, because you won’t go there then. The water in this level is made well, it looked good. The level has good eye candy in layer 3, and layer 5’s eye candy is also good. The level even has some eye candy in layer 6, and layer 1 and 7 contain the rain that make me say that I like teh eye candy in this level. The tileset is used very well too, and like I said, there is alot in the layers, so the layer use is good too.

Pickup placement: let’s start off with the ammo. The level has a good ammo placement. most ammo is on the ground/close to the ground. There are crates with ammo too, which let you get enough ammo after you’ve just been killed. The level has 2 +1 Carrots, which are good placed. The other level with 2 +1 Carrots had them just next to each other. The Power-up placement is good enough. There is Bouncy at the left side, that you get with gun 9/Bouncies. There is Toaster at the right side, that you get with Gun9. And there is RF in the coin warp of 20 coins. The coins are placed well too. There is TNT too in the level, and you can get the two power-ups at the sides of the level with TNT too, I forgot. No seeker power-up this time, which isn’t bad. It can be good that there is no Seek PU in a level. I think the RF power-up rocks in this level, and that’s why I think you can only get it with the coin warp here.

Others: this level is original. The music fits good with this level. There are some original ideas such as the water, the RF PU in the bonus, and more. The level can be fun to play in, because of the ammo you can get after you just died. The rain in this level makes it even more original. I can’t say alot more about this level.
Host: Sure.
Download: download it or you’ll miss an original level with the Beach tileset.
My final rating is 8,0. I would give it 8,1 if I could, but I have problems with that.
Edit: I can give 8.1, so here you have your +0.1.

Yay! When I playded your first cartoon episode i wish that you make part 2
But it’s unfinished:(
(When jungle rabbit 2 is ready?)

First of all I’d like to thank LRK for asking me to test this level. I like the general atmosphere of Myriadus the most. It uses an original concept with the beach tileset – rain is used in the foreground. We’ve all seen levels using rain but the music which is taken from Donkey Kong Country 2 features the sound of wind and the subtle sound of rain when it hits upon the ground is what really makes the atmosphere of this cool and unique level. Although the rain tile was taken from one of the ships as LRK informed me; the rain does not look out of place, perhaps maybe a bit big though, but looks superior to what BlurredD did with rain in one of his recent levels Anarchy Inn. :P

LRK used the same style for making the layout as he did in polyglotics. A style I am not particularly fond of but it works, very balanced. It’s basicly very linear, huge platforms, the flowing is, as with all of LRK’s levels, excellent.

My first impressions on the eyecandy (not including the rain) when I first saw the level was very, very bland. The background looked horrible, although the layer 4 eyecandy was improved since the last time, the background still looks dismal. Use of water at the bottom left, can’t swim in it but looks a little nice, like it’s a large puddle of water. The placement of alge on the wooden structures was surprisingly well done and almost makes up for the dull background.

LRK placed the ammo well, all I can say really. Some of the placement of other things were interesting, in fact, the two +1 carrots were placed on opposite sides of a platform is one of the best reasons to try this level online. Download it now!

You should write a review on it after. ;)

-fs

EDIT: Ever seen a Hurricane DS? Oh, and Cooba, you will have to jump around to some extent if you’re going to play this, unless you’re one of thoose people who believes obstacles or little challenges in competetive CTF levels make them better you may want to redefine your way of looking at CTF levels.

Crystal Clear
This is the first level of DarkSonic in a very long time, and the first review of my hands in a very long time. I’d like to review one of my old pal’s levels again, so let’s start with this one, Crystal Clear, which I beta-tested. Hold on.

EYECANDY: 1.75 out of 2.5
Let’s begin with the visionary things. DarkSonic used the Mezmerize tileset, which is – as he says in his comment – a bit overused, but that doesn’t really bother to me. I don’t really like the tileset at all (I’m more of the natural type) but that’s not a fault of DarkSonic so I wouldn’t lower my rating for this. The eyecandy in this level is decent, and combined with the diamond-like music file, it breathes out a nice atmosphere which I like. Most of the tile placement is neat, however the background could have been better, I would have used the blue one instead of the green one. Now the contrast between the background and the wall near the base is too low.

AMMO: 2.0 out of 2.5
DarkSonic did, in my opinion, very decent ammo placement in this level. The single ammo is placed in many forms, also is Fast Fire located at some places. The level has one Full NRG carrot in the lower side of the level, which involves the bottom of the map in the gameplay. The three Powerups are chosen as kind of usual (Toaster, Bouncie and Seeker) although they are all placed inside sucker tubes, which adds some originality to the map. The Toaster and Bouncie can only be reached by weapons, the Seeker also by sidekick (it’s in the top of the level)

LEVEL STRUCTURE: 1.25 out of 2.0
The structure contains the biggest problems of the level. Most of the time DarkSonic picks a symmetrical layout for his level. In this one he used a semi-symmetrical layout but his formerly squared-off style is still visible at some places, however he improved a lot. The walkways however are sometimes a bit too narrow and combined with sometimes hard to see objects it can be frustrating to move around quickly. The sucker tubes to leave the bases are the only way out and can be used for camping. A part I really dislike are the blocks below the bases which are one-ways. The structure is not bad, but could be much better.

GAMEPLAY: 2.0 out of 3.0
The gameplay of this level varies from point to point. In some ways it’s funny to play this level, mostly thanks to the good ammo placement and the – as above said – excellent choice of music. The eyecandy can be annoying a bit at frist but when you get used to it it’s not that bad. A thing that kills a perfect experience of gameplay is the somewhat annoying structure, which takes away a big part of the flow.

RATINGS:
This comeback level of DarkSonic is perhaps not as good as it should be, but it’s really not bad at all, and I expect better things to see in the future. For the next time you could use a more open structure and, perhaps, a better tileset? For now, a 7.0.
Score: 1.75+2.0+1.25+2.0 = 7.0
Download: Yeah, it’s kinda funny.
Host: Not really, perhaps a single time.

Greetings,
- ChippieBW

That submarine thingy is cooler than Agama’s tilesets I’m maybe going to use this idea in my next episode I’m not going to make taht tweedle episode
(Unsupported rating (10) removal. It’s nice that you like being a submarine, and it’s nice that you have an episode and all that, but could you review the level? 10 is an extremely high rating, so it would be nice to see some explanation of why this level gets a 10. ~Violet)

Great WORK!
(Unsupported rating (10) removal. Please read the J2O rules. ~Violet)

Great WORK!
(Unsupported rating (10) removal. Please read the J2O rules. ~Violet)

badger: Did you remember to select the version from the Options window? I just tested the character selection, in both versions, and it worked OK.

Really good. Almost as good as BlurredD’s level pack of survivors. The place goes boom like BulrredD’s one. Good eyecandy too and the music also goes with it really well. You used really good tilesets. You deserve a really high rating! Check out the articles section if you don’t know how to play survivor or ground force.

Download Recomendation:YES!!!!!!

Edit: Since I played it a bit more, I’ve decided to raise the rating because you spent a lot of effort with ALL the levels. It even has more room at the beggining. I found only one minor problem with some of these levels as well: When you’re starting the level off, make sure you remember to get the coin, or you won’t be able to end the level unless the server has controller or something

More Edit: Playing with some other people which I’ve been doing a bit, has increased your rating even more! I could tell that other people liked them a lot. In fact, your levels are better than BlurredD’s one. BlurredD just has so much more levels. He has 25 level and you have 6. But you do your levels in quality, not quantity. Thats what I like about it so much.

My first level was much worse than this one, though. It might be called the worst level ever.

O forgot to tell you. When you test it it needs to be hosted in Treasure. So don`t test it as single player. Thank you.

A lot of my would-be first lvls are single player, but then I realised it was too hard and I quit lvl making and only restarted 2 years later. :D

I deleted all of my old, unfinished SP lvls, but they were mostly worse than yours, LBK. ;P No background (it was all black, making the screen go blurry) and I assumed that poles, vines and spikes worked by themselves without any events on top of them, lol. :D

My unofficial rating of this lvl would be 3.5 or something. :D

In this pack, Nobody attempts to offer a simple JCS.ini version for users who are unexperienced with JCS, in addition to a complete version with everything left in, including broken stuff. The complete version seems good enough, but the basic file (named JCS.ini to confuse people) has a few problems.
The main problem is that it leaves in a lot of broken events and parameters, like Dim Light. It also removes events that do actually do something, like Fast Feet. The removal job is often quite poor, leaving scraps of information in the .ini file, and Area ID is only half renamed to Rocket Turtle Path (the thumbnail name being “Path ID”). TSF users are also out of luck, as the basic file included here does not include any of the TSF events. The full featured file does have them, but isn’t the whole point of this upload allowing people to use a more basic .ini file?
Documentation is also somewhat poor. The readme, which manages to spell “beginners” wrong, refers to the contents of the .zip as the following:
JCS.ini (described as backup, actually the main file)
JCS-1.23.ini (described as main file, doesn’t actually exist)
JCS-FULL.ini
JCS-TSF.ini (described as basic event list for TSF – unfortunately, it’s not included)
Considering this is for unadvanced users, you would hope that the instructions would be well done, but even here the author fails, instructing you to perform the same task multiple times, and generally confusing me as well as countless new people. I reproduce the conflicting orders here:
Extract one of them to your Jazz 2 folder.
Delete the old JCS.ini
Extract one of the files to the Jazz 2 Folder:
(list of files)
Rename that file you extracted to JCS.ini
All in all, a good try, but it doesn’t quite manage to live up to expectations. The basic file leaves too much in and is poorly cropped, the main file is poorly edited, and I’m not even sure why there’s a backup file in there. Not even a trigger zone!

This episode was something of a disappointment. Gone are the interesting ideas from the previous episodes, instead there are only four single player levels and a boss, mostly without interest. Now that the sparkle is gone, the levels must stand on their own, and they are revealed to be short, and often uninspired. The eyecandy varies between levels – Technoir looks good, while Medivo is positively ugly. There are no “next level” bugs this time, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that yes, this installment feels heavily rushed.
So, these are ordinary single player levels, but what kind? The “shoot shoot shoot” kind. Jazz runs through a series of passages generally unloading his blaster at each new villain, few of which are placed in very interesting locations. There were a few well done areas, but for the most part these were quite generic and without interest. Perhaps next time the fun will be back, and maybe the author can even introduce a plot??? who knows.
Download recommendation: Mostly a yes, but if you liked the last two installments a lot, you may not want to download this one, where the bonus level is not even remotely enjoyable.

23,000 miles away is one of those rare sequels that seems to be better than the original, encompassing all the best features of the previous episode – decent levels, lots of secrets, inventive ideas and no storyline at all – and adding them into new tilesets and new levels. I was a bit worried by Tubelectric, which was short and uninteresting, but the levels got bigger and better from there on out. The levels in this pack are still probably a little shorter than your average single player level, but there are several, and they all play well. Significantly fewer bugs than last time, and better eyecandy as well, though there were still some dull aspects.
This is just good in general, so it’s hard to find complaints, but I do have three. The levels are a little too short, some of the secrets (containing major stuff like powerups and shields) are a bit too easy to find, and there’s a general lack of story. I saw no real reason to be playing these levels otehr than the author having fun with different tilesets. Oh well. The levels could also use some more food and gems.
EDIT: Oh! The wrong Candion conversion was included in the .zip. Bad. Rating decreased to 7.9.

Huh. What we have here is a very nice single player pack, and it’s only part one. The levels all have their own individual style, and feel more or less like they belong in that tileset. Lagunicus has a lot of caves, Dreempipes is more trigger based, Diamondus is simple and flattish, etc. However, none of the levels are really all that remarkable, and there’s no apparent story, so this is not too much more than a collection of decent single player levels, all using JJ1 tilesets.
What the author lacks in level design ingenuity, he tries to make up for in flashy special effects. Strange sucker tube arrangements, fun secrets, dropping bombs, and even bonus levels add to the replay value of this pack, which alternates between normal gameplay and interesting diversions.
Unfortunately, the levels are not perfect. The eyecandy is not bad, but a lot more could have been done with the tilesets, causing some parts of the levels to look rather bland. There were also a number of tile bugs that I spotted – for examples, the slopes aren’t masked correctly in Lagunicus, and everything looks wrong underwater in Dreempipes. The last level incorrectly links to JJ16.j2l, instead of the boss level included. So there are a few problems.
Still, this is fun enough to play at least once, and how many good single player levels have you seen uploaded lately? This should help the wait for TDI2, or TR2, or FSP, or whatever sequel you happen to be waiting for.

Interesting, but blinding. “The Deadly Light” undoubtedly refers to the background, which looks almost pure white, and is very rarely obscured. The level has so much open space that you are always forced to stare into the pain that is layer 8. Bad move.
So, the level has a lot of open space. This is because it’s composed of a lot of squarish platforms placed so they’re reachable, but not easily. This is not all the author’s fault, as slopes in this tileset are kind of missing, but it’s still annoying. If you climb up all the tiny platforms and make your way through the obstacles, you reach a 100 coin warp which can take you to a room filled with ammo of all sorts. However, why would you want to? The ammo respawning speed is so incredibly fast, so you should have an ample supply of that, and all the good stuff is at the bottom anyway. At the bottom right of the level lies four carrots, an RF powerup, some seekr ammo, and an unguarded Plasma shield. Simply put, there is nothing else in the level worthy of looking at compared to this tiny spot. Why should anyone leave it? What’s the point of the rest of the level?
Eyecandy is pretty dismal. The bottom of the level actually doesn’t look that bad, with wooden platforms coming out of the water, but the rest of layer 4 is minimal, layer 8 is blinding, and there’s no background eyecandy at all. The author did try in some spaces, and that’s good, but it often didn’t work out.
The level is also extremely buggy. First, there’s the awful lack of balance I mentioned earlier where everything of value is in the bottom right corner. Second, there’s the open level borders, with springs and stuff right next to them. Third, there is both a gem ring and lots and lots of freeze ammo. The first person to not like this level will shoot the gem ring, and the server will crash. Not a good combination. Last, the thing showing the position of the coin warp is actually a bonus warp, which will try to take you to the secret level if you shoot it. Was this level tested at all? I can only suggest that you don’t download it.

My first level was alot worse, it was made in somewhere early 1999/or late 1998. i dont remember exact day :P

Late review time. “Mystic Isle” by Moonblaze is an average tileset which attempts to look classic game style, but doesn’t really make it happen. Let’s take a look.

GRAPHIC QUALITY: Moonblaze uses an 8-bit drawing style, which I approve of, but which only works so well in cases like this. Some things look good – the vines and gems especially – but the main part of the tileset, the ground itself, suffers a little. Simply put, the ground is ugly. The grass isn’t too bad, though kind of dull, but the soil is a single shade of unknown-color, and that doesn’t work. It kind of looks like a resized version of Swamps, but not as good. I really wanted to see some sort of soil texture here, as a single color rarely works. Ironically, the next level setting lead to Colonius, which uses the technique much better.
Meanwhile, as I said, a lot of things look good. All the brown vine stuff is very nice to look at, and if the rest of the tileset looked like that, it would be great. The green wood, though, poles and sucker tubes, ends up looking like a simple gradient with no variety, and it’s all flat surfaces. Not too appealing to look at. Rocks are a mixed bag, and the wooden platforms look pretty good, though again a little too small.
Pros: Very nice vine stuff, wooden platforms not too bad, gems are cool.
Cons: Soil is pretty ugly, too many straight lined gradients.
Rating: 6.6

MASKING: High marks here. Everything is masked perfectly, and the author even was nice enough to create some cool rock-leaning-against-wall structures which the player can walk up and down upon. There are really only two masking parts I’m not thrilled with. The giant glowing white gem tiles are automasked, which could cause stucking troubles in some levels, and the big mask message messes up a lot of the background eyecandy tiles which could otherwise be used for fun stuff. I’m also concerned that the wooden platform tiles may be masked a little thin, but that’s not a big issue.
Pros: Mostly good, the leaning rock stuff is fun.
Cons: A few automask issues, and the wooden platforms may be too thin.
Rating: 7.8

ORIGINALITY/VARIETY: There is very little to set this tileset apart from any other nature tileset, and especially from others that Moonblaze has made. The gem stuff is kind of cool, but there’s little reason other than that to use this, as almost everything in Mystic Isle is available in Swamps, only bigger and better. Isle is designed for a certain level (or set of levels… whatever) in TDI2, but other than that, it’s not too interesting.
As for variety… well, the tileset does offer a number of things. Basic ground, tiny wooden platforms, cave eyecandy (with no tile support at ALL – you have to use layer 5), event tiles, and fun gem stuff. I am, however, missing slopes. The basic ground has no slopes, unless you count the tilted rocks, which would become really old after seeing even two of them in a row. Levels made with this tileset will feel squared off, which is really pretty annoying.
Pros: Decent environment, lots of cool eyecandy things, well-made background eyecandy, etc.
Cons: Bad slope situation, and little that is new or different.
Rating: 7.5

TILE PLACEMENT: Pretty much everything in the tileset is placed logically, though there are a few random eyecandy tiles which should probably be placed closer to their base. Having the hook inserted horizontally is also kind of weird.
Rating: 8.0

OVERALL: This is not a bad tileset, but it’s hideously overrated, and kind of boring. If you want to have fun with single player and weird triggers and in-depth storylines, this tileset might be good, but for most levels there are better options out there. Still, it’s well put together and has a lot of features. A mixed bag.
Pros: Cool stuff, not badly drawn for the most part, especially as it was done in Paint.
Cons: No normal slopes, some tiles look kind of ugly, particularly the soil itself.
Rating: 7.2

(Edit: Hi, Moonblaze. If you check my review you’ll see that I noticed your tilted rocks, and said that they would look really boring if you had several in a row. I’ll admit that I didn’t mention the bridge things, but you’ll also notice that I said “the BASIC GROUND”, not “NO SLOPES AT ALL”.)