Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

This remade level truly competes for the title of the best standalone single player level ever made for the game in my opinion. The visuals are top-notch, although sometimes probably even too excessive, the gameplay very versatile along with the scripted features that make it even more original. The musics are well chosen too. Download recommended.

Judging this level from a competitive point of view, it is a solid level that offers a fresh new layout.

Update: The latest version fixes the major gameplay flaws so I’m updating my rating appropriately as well. Good job FireSworD!

This level has a very original layout, yet it is still fun to play in competitive games. I like the way the bases were implemented especially. The level should be somewhat balanced as well. It contains 2 full energies, but they have a long spawn time, which ensures that players cannot survive too easily. It works well for games of any size too.

It’s been a while since anyone released any single-player with an actual storyline, and especially a long time anyone released any episode as big as this, which inspired me to write a full review for this.

Well, actually the storyline is kind of confusing at times, partly due to the broken English used in cutscenes and dialogues that are a big part of this episode. The cutscenes and dialogues are mainly done with Angelscript here, and although they are mainly just still images and text, there are nevertheless some cool effects. However I think they could have been done better with a bit more effort put into scripting, such as defining which character to display in the cutscenes. Right now it seems a bit goofy that they are all displayed, and our main character is called just ‘Player’. Also some of the text is hard to read in the limited time since there is simply too much stuff in the background.

But basically, the story begins with our player waking up at home just like any normal day (I don’t know if there was a preceding episode to the storyline?), and goes to the nearest police station to look for a ‘Secret Room’, and after that things start to get twisted (not spoiling you more).

The levels do look mostly okay. Sometimes I’d expect there to be more detailing though, and sometimes there is too much since often the tiles that are meant for the fore- and background are used for the sprite-ground, and vice versa. Also sometimes the gameplay gives me the feeling that this could very well be something of various hotel-levels turned into single-player, since the gameplay is often about going up and down building blocks in an urban environment, indoors and outdoors, or just running straight by a linear corridor.

The number of levels is more than a hundred, but a big part of them are cutscenes and savepoints, and then the rest of the levels are cut into parts whenever you reach a certain goal. Not sure if the cutting was really necessary although the idea works nicely as checkpoints.

But the gameplay has also got it’s action-part, and that is definitely the best part about the episode in my opinion. It can be riding various vehicles or running away from evil police soldiers, or crawling in tight air valves. Actually this episode has a very violent theme, and the levels are filled with blood, fire and dead rabbits. At those points I notice potential influence from various FPS-games such as doom, especially at the levels with more creepy atmosphere and creepy music.

Talking about music (which I know isn’t very essential about the levels and was an optional download), I think this episode uses some of the most terrible tunes I’ve heard since a while, since some of them are of type chiptune, and very poorly composed ones. (I can imagine Angry Video Game Nerd raging while playing this :D)

Another annoying thing about the gameplay is the blaster that was made reloadable, because you can hold at most 15 bullets, which is used very fast with maximum fast fire. Then, you will need to press R everytime to get more ammo for it which seemed just kind of pointless to me, and it felt that it was rather done because it’s “just cool” like this. It happened a few times that I’d shoot myself into a death pit by seeker-recoil after my weapon automatically switched when my blaster got empty.

Some of the more passive levels, like elevator rides and the like could have been compressed a bit, since there wasn’t even anything to look at since the visuals were just generic. However, the levels and the storyline got more and more interesting as I progressed, and there was nice unexpected turns in the storyline. At the later levels you could also find yourself dying by rather unexpected events as well, such as sudden police-ambushes. Also at times it really took me some time to find the right way to go in the levels (I think I was just being lucky to find some of them by accident). The biggest pain was one of the last levels where you need to look for a very well hidden switch that I couldn’t simply find without looking at JCS, since there weren’t even any hints.

In the end, I found this to be a fairly entertaining episode. Definitely more entertaining than any usual single-player episode with the idea of ‘just playing’, but the gameplay-flaws and other small details I mentioned prevent me from rating this too high. It still has potential to be the best single-player release of last year.

So, well done and thanks for releasing this!

EDIT: Quite soon after I was finished with my review, I realized that I overrated this episode, so I tried to modify the rating to be more of a match with my criteria. Actually in general I feel that I have been too generous towards the releases I have reviewed recently, so I will pay closer attention to the quality of the uploads I review in the future.

Nevertheless, I still find this single-player release to be one of my favorites from last year, but I should advice other players that it isn’t anything especially original, although a lot of effort and experimenting probably went into the designing of the episode. You may still like it, if you are thirsting for new single-player adventures like me.

This is a fairly fun single-player episode, although it’s nothing too special. The levels follow the oldschool formula of level creation and even use mostly just the basic epic-tilesets. The episode was visually good though as well, sometimes maybe a bit overdone since it was hard to see where to go actually. Nevertheless I liked these levels.

This is a well-crafted and decent-looking old-fashioned short single-player level that is actually fun to play. The levels were hardly any challenge for a veteran player like me even in turbo mode but I still enjoyed it. I had fun exploring the secret areas. The levels used a few slightly original concepts as well, especially in the last level.

rekt

This is a nice horizontal level that is the only multiplayer-level that uses the “train”-concept, as far as I know. Although the concept isn’t actually much more than a visual theme, it also influenced the level design which should be interesting for many players since doesn’t let players dominate too easily by abusing vertical positions.

Finally someone does the tweedle boss properly. This one was very fun to play actually.

By the way, are the cheshire cats supposed to deal any damage? Because apparently they do not.

It’s me, Mario!

There are no obvious grammar errors here. Couldn’t probably translate anything better myself. The only bad thing I have found is that the team color names are too long for the HUD and thus parts of the team scores are covered by the flags. Abbreviations could have worked there, but I however expect the HUD to be a little different in JJ2+ 5.0.

Well, this one is a fairly interesting attempt at making a remake of one of the classic CTF levels from the beginning of times. It comes with two versions; One that is basically a typical CTF level with classic open bases like in the original level, and the other one being a more typical level author-wise.

So how well does this remake pay tribute to the original level, one may ask. Well, in sense of level designing it is indeed quite different than the original and most of the original level’s awkward flow issues are gone. The use of a different tileset and a completely different and creative theme makes the level look like it’s own for some parts, but the most important dw trademarks are still there, such as the basements, the cramped carrot box and the seeker power up area. Angelscript has been used to some extent as well; A player entering the carrot box will receive a time limit until which the player must exit the box, or receive penalty in death.

I personally do think these changes are good and refreshing for the base level, but I have yet to see the level in proper competitive play to solidify my opinion about the level. The amount of eyecandy in the level is massive, which is supposedly used to cover the otherwise rather bland looks of the original level. While I do appreciate this, and I do agree the level looks more interesting this way, I still think it could have been slightly scarcer in a few places, especially the ones with lots of foreground eyecandy.

FireSworD as the author did want to make the players less dependant on the control of the seeker power up in the level, which resulted in him adding RF- and Bouncer power ups into the level, to spice the gameplay up. I will be looking forward to competitive play to see how it works in practise, but for now it seems good enough. I am personally quite undecided whether or not the “one spot concept” in the first edition of the remake is good in practise for a level like this, but at least the edition with classic CTF bases should be a fun level to play.

Download recommended!

Trig v2 is just as fun to play as the original, but feels more balanced, like it’s supposed to. Download recommended!

Here’s a very useful add-on tool for those who like to script things. Helps you avoid those typos, flaws, etc. in your script that are sometimes not-so-easy-to-notice. This patch guides writing the functions themselves as well, without the need to peek into plus-angelscript for details all the time. There’s also auto-completion!

Welcome to the league of (D)raven.

Here are all your favourite JDC classics and all 3 editions of the most widely known level by blur called Security Breach packed up altogether. That’s all you need to have a fun-packed CTF party. Download very recommended!

This level is a YOLO. Download!

Raneforus V, the tileset that has been barely used in general, has been used really well for the theme that the level here uses, the level that was chosen for the JJNet ladder’s mappool. The theme in ‘Canyon Grove’ is indeed well executed, although cause of the theme, the level’s name could as well be ‘Jungle’s Inside’(reference to ‘Jungle’s Edge’.)

However the level of course is more than just a jungle, as it’s more like a ruined temple in the jungle. The background consists of the tileset conversions’ classic JJ1 background tiles and it fits just well in my opinion, as it’s been all done in detail like the rest of the level. The tileset of course hasn’t been used to it’s fullest potential, as only tiles that were necessary for the theme were used. However, the amount of visuals is just brilliant and there is certainly no need for more of them, as it would make the eyecandy rather excessive and distracting if all the tiles in the tileset were used, even when they weren’t really needed.

Now, the level design itself is what completely surprised me when I saw it the first time, as it’s really ideal for CTF with still a lot of room to make various plays. The designing is partly the type of designing that I would expect to see from the legendary BlurredD himself. It may at first seem overly complex, but really, in the end it all just makes sense. There is a good mix of solid and thin walls/platforms, and there are many corridors where a player can hide, but with the wise usage of ammo the level won’t turn into a campfest either. There is also enough space to shoot, and yet there aren’t any too open areas which would increase ‘lag-dependency’ in online games. I really do like the design around bases especially.

One of the questions may be that; Is this level too big for normal games? Well, certainly not for typical 3on3 games and bigger. I tried one here and it played really well in my opinion, there was enough scoring and roasting. However, I’m not yet certain about duels or 2v2 games, as I’ve tried out neither of them, but at least the long spawn-times of carrots (25-30) should make them plausible.

One of the major concepts here concerns the ammunition, for which some AngelScripting has been used. The script will never let you have more than a maximum of 25 seeker ammo at once, which discourages massive seeker spamming in the level wherever you go, and forces to make wise use of them instead which is a good thing. The other part of the concept is the power up placement. In the latest JJ2+ there is the new type of ammunition; Fireball which replaces Pepperspray(Gun8) which all JJ2+ users should know by now. Since the Fireball deals damage value of 2 when powered up, it makes for an equal alternative for the RF power up. Since pepperspray power up deals always a damage value of 1, powered up or not, that would certainly be too underwhelming against the RF power up. As these 2 power ups have been divided among the team sides, the script prevents the disable of Fireball, which ensures fair games in all cases.

I’m now sure that this is my favourite level of PurpleJazz so far, as it shines of sheer brilliance in both gameplay and visuality. There are only a couple of minor flaws that I would complain about, one being the flow error at the level edges, requiring a player who comes from the bottom of the level to jump by the bases’ platform to get up to the spring that takes you to the next level. The other flaw being the slightly confusing use of One way events, since there is no clear logic which of the thin platforms have it and which not, except that it’s somewhat obvious under the bases and wherever springs make the flow. Well, I guess it also helps to counter camping with the seeker ammo. Also, whether or not this level works well in duels/2v2 is yet to be seen for me. But at least the level is ideal for 3on3 games and JDC Events.

Too long/Didn’t read/Summary part: Here is a very high-quality level by PurpleJazz that offers exotic gameplay in exotic environment(cheesily said.) Download this!

Yet another level using a battleships-tileset by rag, and that just tells you can expect high quality. The level is still very innovative with a good-looking palette which I haven’t yet seen for this tileset, and the gameplay isn’t too mainstream with the extra passages that become available for you when you obtain certain types of ammo. DL rec.

Oh yeah, and this is pure originality with scripting. It has been a big work as one can see. And the result is a really fun-to-play gimmick level that works for both battle and bank robbery with multiple custom features. Download recommended.