Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Ah, it’s always nice to see new additions to J2o’s already very extensive single-player section and this particular one is a level made by Bjossi, a new-comer (I presume?) to JJ2, and uses the tileset D4mn.

The Lava Cave, is Bjossi’s 3rd level. It’s uploaded completely by itself and there is no story whatsoever nor does the player know what to do, apart from getting to the end of the level, obviously. This is ok, but most players like their single-player levels to come in packs and also have a story. That way it won’t feel boring.

The level is quite large and one can immediately see that the author likes big, empty spaces because I would estimate that 60% of the level is…air. There are numerous platforms, bridges, cliffs to walk on and they are very well placed, giving the player a feeling of distance between one place and another. But, apart from that, there doesn’t seem to be much to walk on. However, I can’t see why it matters because the level design is so good that one won’t ever notice the in-efficient use of space in the level. The springs are placed in decent manners and so are the poles, although there seems to be a little too much of them. Variation never hurts. I would recommend using float-ups, more suckertubes, or simply more places for the player to run on.

The enemy placement is one of Lava Cave’s strongest points. Although few, they are placed so that you can almost never avoid shooting them. This adds to the difficulty, but there are simply TOO FEW of them. Also, add to this the fact that there are way too many carrots, way too much weapons and a way too easy to reach bonus warp, an experienced jazzer will be able to complete this in 5 minutes without getting hurt once. The Lava Cave is far too easy to make it fun to play. Add more spikes, more enemies, boulders and perhaps more challenging situations where you have to do more than one thing at a time. For example, you’re running. Suddenly you hear a rumble. Realizing a giant boulder is racing towards you, you sprint towards the nearest cliff. When you arrive at the edge you discover the bottom is full of deadly spikes, and the gap is too wide for you to jump. You notice the swinging vines above you. Climbing onto one of them, the boulder rushes past you. But then the ravens come, swooshing down from above forcing you to jump onto the other swinging vine in order to get to the spring and onto a platform where you can fight the ravens more easily. THAT’S something which people want to see.

Not only is the Lava Cave too easy, the eyecandy is far too average. Although there’s nothing wrong with it, I couldn’t spot a single thing of originality. It’s just plain BORING. Use lighting effects, put more stuff in layer 3, use ALL available tiles in the tileset (I noticed you didn’t use the skull) and be creative! It doesn’t matter where you put it or how you put it, just make sure it looks nice.

The Lava Cave is a very good level for such a new level-creator and therefore I’ll be much more lenient. Let this be a lesson for everybody. Good level design will not make a good level if there is not enough eyecandy and challenges.

A 6.7. Wish you good luck next time![This review has been edited by White Rabbit]

Wow!
City + Town + Sewers + Subway + lotsa backgrounds = great tileset![This review has been edited by RSPSS FR]

again a verry nice tileset from disguise i give a 8.5 for this

1 good eyecandy
2 nice layers (like layer7 and 6)
3 no animated tiles, but i don’t care
4 nice trains and cars

Over the lvl: Verry nice lvl with a verry nice eyecandy

a mega 8.5 from me :)

Awesome tileset. I’ve never seen anything like it before! It has heaps of tiles and you will, I hope, never have to use background layer 1 again because you can have practically EVERYTHING in the sprite layer, leaving you with more space to put even more eyecandy!!! :D Mega Megatropolis has got two themes, one country and one city and puts them together so you can make a lvl with a city and some nature together. The eyecandy is exceptionally good, and some of the small stuff that most ppl doesn’t notice are excellent. My favourite are the trains. :) Too bad they aren’t animated, but the tileset couldn’t get bigger, which is obviously not Wisety’s fault.

The tileset’s size may scare away some, maybe even veteran, lvl creators (I’m still reluctant to use this tileset). In the hands of an able and inspired lvl creator, Mega Megatropolis could be used to create awesome lvls! I just wish that maybe you had organized the tiles better or even wrote some kind of Beginner’s Guide to Mea Metropolis but I don’t think I can take away bi chunks of the rating because the tileset is so hard to use. Good job, Wisey. 9.2.

This is a more than worthy last-tileset and even if you don’t want to make lvls with Mega Megatropolis, you should, I’m sorry, you MUST still DL this because you will be stuck for ages trying to DL this beast on JJ2!!!! :-D

EDIT: Raised my rating and added more comments. I didn’t feel like such a great tileset creator like Wisey should have a measly little 8.7 for his grand finale. :-D

Yeah, it’s Townsville ][ at night.

Cool, though. I really like this set.

Good Stuff:
- eye candy
- variation
- color
- theme
- music :)
- background
- layering (personally, I prefer rain in the foreground, but that’s just the demo level anyways)
- depth/dimension

Bad Stuff:
- pretty much the same as the daytime version (well, I guess that’s not a bad thing)
- bricks can become distracting, especially the large ones.. maybe they should be smaller and/or darker.

Hey, this tileset rocks! Great job, Disguise![This review has been edited by Biohazard UOI]

Cool!

Good Stuff:
- choice and application of transparencies
- detailing and gradients
- layers harmonize well

Bad Stuff:
- needs more variety
- somewhat dull-looking

This set has wonderful eye candy for what it has, but it needs more stuff in it! It seems that this tileset was begging for some kind of intensity. What I mean by that is that this tileset is very suspenseful, but has no climax. There could be something included that frightens or surprises the player that would make this set much more intense (i.e.- skulls, flames, or faces). This reiterates some of what Blackraptor was saying at the beginning of his review. Other than that, it has awesome eye candy and tone.
Great job, yo!

I see what you are doing… you’re releasing a pack level by level. Well, you shouldn’t do this, just to tell you. You should make all the levels you want in this “episode” and than release them all at once. Level packs generally get rated higher and downloaded more if you release all the levels at once, trust me on this. Are you making each one of these levels in one day? It sure seems like it, but they’re too good to be made in one day. Anyway.. the item and enemy placement was good in this level, and the eyecandy was a lot better than in your other levels, too. Keep up the good work, and you should just release the whole pack at once, like I said.

Never make tilesets 1.24 as it can easilly be avoided. Now only 1/4 of the people who could review and use this can.

Pretty good.

Good Stuff:
- blue bricks
- background layers
- kept well with color theme

Bad Stuff:
- most of the ideas are ripped from Medivo
- sprite layer objects look flat
- lacking some elements of gameplay (warps, lights, float up scenery, etc.)

This would be a lot better if it were expanded. In that case, I might give it an 8.5 or so.

hits self on head

Of course! I edited the level! Sorry, guys. I always thought a level made with a 1.23 tileset could work in 1.23 even if it’s made with 1.24.

Labratkid: This IS 1.23. BlurredD compiled it in 1.23. Everyone can have it, normally.
[This review has been edited by Waz]

Seeing that the level has been reuploaded, you can forget what I said and just re-download the zip file if the example level you have only works for TSF.[This review has been edited by BlurredD]

This is TSF, not 1.23. (I do not have TSF installed.)

yay! im first person who reviews this. and this is my 50th review so its gonna be long.

tilesets eyecandy:Very well i think that the theme is haunted castle.it has some good things in it, like pillars , gargoyles, curtains etc.

masking: masking is very good.´those gargoyles are masked well, and so are the pillars.

tileset use: tileset is easy to use.

overall:8 download recommedation[This review has been edited by snooz]

Event placement: event placement was really good.there were right amount of goodies, and ammos.goodies, and ammos were placed very well,

Gamplay:very good!levels gameplay were designed well.

eyecandy:eyecandy was also good.there were couple of eyecandy bugs, but they dont matter.

overall: 8.7! download recommedation!

Interesting, a story line. That might have raised my expectations too much, though. Let’s see what I truly think.

GAMEPLAY:

This level wasn’t what I expected. That could be a good thing. Or not. The level is a little different for a CTF level. But it takes the idea from the assassination concept (mainly with the spy ability thing). But that’s alright since the whole idea hasn’t really been used in CTF (the closest was the JTF thing or whatever it was called). The ammo place at the start wasn’t covered with third layer, but I can live with it (I suppose). But after getting to the actually playing area, that was when I was truly disappointed. The level wa much smaller than I expected it would be. The flow wasn’t terrible, but the general narrowness, the hidden pole, and some of the springs surely didn’t help. And there may be a flag bug issue with this level.

EYE CANDY:

I suppose it’s good for the tileset, although I’m not too crazy about it. Some tiles in the tileset I’m not too fond of (for example the leaves), but that’s OK since I shouldn’t be rating the tileset. But the tileset you choose to use is an important factor in the end. I would also like to add that the level is a little bit too dark for my taste, though I won’t take off too much for that.

CARROT AND AMMO PLACEMENT:

I saw a +1 carrot and that was enough for me. I’ll just move on to the ammo placement, which is really more complicated than you think. This level has a JAIL mentality that the weapons for each team are balanced. I can’t just tell if they actually are right away, although more problems arise with the fact that players can sometimes shoot through triggers (and I don’t just mean with bouncers and electro blasters) and other spy ability issues. So ammo distribution is a giant question mark. Choose your team at your own risk.

HOST THIS OFTEN?

If you’re bored enough or if you like seeing stuff that’s almost new then maybe host this once. It’s different, sort of, but not necessarily in a good way. I’m rating this a 7.

And some advice: use the @ at least three times in your text strings so that the text it isn’t covered up by the flag count in the top left corner.

The edit: After thinking about it for a little while, a 7.0 does seem a little low. Overall, the good stuff cancels out the bad stuff and the bad stuff cancels out the good stuff, which somehow makes the level average (I wonder if that made any sense). So anyway, 7.5 is my new revised rating, just because I’m nice.[This review has been edited by BlurredD]

Joy.

Crystal Struggle

GAMEPLAY: Lacks flow and I got lost. And slow tubes.
EYE CANDY: Somewhere between average and slightly below it.
CARROT PLACEMENT: Too lazy to find (assuming there are any).
AMMO PLACEMENT: Too many barrels. Some ammo out of the way. A Shield?
HOST THIS OFTEN? Nope.

Flagtopia

GAMEPLAY: Narrow. Lacks flow. Doesn’t look too balanced.
EYE CANDY: If anything, annoying.
CARROT PLACEMENT: A +1 carrot near each base. Argh.
AMMO PLACEMENT: Unevenly distributed.
HOST THIS OFTEN? Probably not.

Overall review: After seeing these two levels, I noticed you have a long way to go. There are a lot of things that need to be fixed. Like in Crystal Struggle: don’t use so many barrels, add tiles to indicate warps, avoid using a shield, use faster tubes (20 is a good speed), and work on the flow (i.e. with more springs and inclined tiles). Also, think twice before putting airboards in your levels. As for the Flagtopia level, avoid using quick-flashing animations, like the one in the middle, since it will annoy a lot of people. Try not to make it so cramped in places and avoid using ammo crates too often. You should also balance each side more and spread the ammo out more evenly. And most importantly, make a border of at least 2 (recommended 3) tiles around the level so that players don’t receive the flag bug. In general, avoid dead ends and be more careful of what ammo you use and where up place it. I probably didn’t mention everything. Anyway, I would’ve given this a lower rating, but I did see you put some effort into the levels so I’m giving this a 6. But try harder next time.

Wow. Here’s something very new. If only more levels could be like this.

Eyecandy: Very good
The eyecandy is great. Very interesting. There are birds that fly by, good layer adjustment, nice background… nothing to complain about here.

Gameplay: Good
Gameplay is good. It’s easy to get around the level, but the level is very small… but since it’s meant for 3 on 3’s, it’s okay.

Bugs: N/A
Well, there is a bug. If you are on the red team (the bad guys), and if you select the bouncy bullet warrior guy, than you teleport right to the enemy flag as a starting position. This is a bug, I guess. But this is the only bug I found.

Ammo placement: Very good
Ammo placement is well balanced, and there doesn’t need to be much ammo, because each class starts out with ammo.

Everything else: Very good.
Very good. I don’t wanna write a long review, but this is really good, and I hope Trafton rights one of his super-mega reviews, because this is the kind of level that deserves one.

Guys, please transfer your reviews to the new version so this can be deleted. Thanks.

Pros…
1.) Decent size.
2.) Eyecandy isn’t too bad.
3.) Showed effort.

Cons…
1.) Very bad gameplay.
2.) Hard to navigate around.
3.) Little space to jump.
4.) Awful weapons placement.
5.) There’s a shield.
6.) Very confusing layout.
7.) Bad eyecandy.
8.) Etc.

There were more cons than pros, but these aren’t bad levels. They just have very bad gameplay. There isn’t a good “flow.”

Good things:

levels length

bad things:
gameplay

————————————————————
overall:6.2

(Excessively lazy rating removal edit. ~Violet)[This review has been edited by Violet CLM]
(Rating RESTORED due to date review was originally posted. ~Violet)[This review has been edited by Violet CLM]