Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Disappointed. That’s how I feel after playing this level, and that’s also how I could end this review. Instead, because Jake is a cool guy, I’m taking a deep breath and writing something longer than usually.

Completely Generic Rocket Turtle Chase Level is an easy and short stand-alone singleplayer level. And this is basically where its problems start. Have the word “short” next to the word “stand-alone” and “easy” – you usually get something that you totally don’t feel satisfied after playing. Don’t forget to also add “completely generic” as the title itself says, and in total we have a catastrophe.

Everything’s started just okay. My rabbit appeared in a small room from where he almost instantly warped to some other place. I understood it’s obviously a typical making-rocket-turtle-work system, so it’s okay, even though could be covered with layer 3 to make it look less out of place. Anyway, right after that the boss music started to play, a life bar appeared and I quickly found out that I won’t have much time to think. I took a look around and noticed an airboard, 2 RF missiles and – a bit surprisingly to be honest – the Rocket Turtle itself, hanging in the air in a small sealed out room below me. Two blinking arrows seemingly wanted me to get the airboard. I didn’t want to argue with them so I took the thingie, as well as RFs, and started to follow the turtle, activated in mid-time. The first thing I’ve seen on my way then was a trigger crate. “Hmm, either the airboard isn’t necessary or I will come back here later on”. Remembering that it’s a Rocket Turtle chase, I found the second option rather improbable. The boss was starting to get away anyway, so I decided to start the level from the beginning. This time I left the airboard where it was and only took the missiles, use of which appeared to be obligatory to jump off the room. “Quite a nice idea – the level has two ways to beat it” I thought. However, in wrong hands even good ideas can lead to creating crap.

I lost my hope. I didn’t see the main enemy for quite a while, as he floated out of the screen when I was RF jumping (I kinda suck at it). The crate wasn’t too useful, it seemed to just create a platform which let me pass a spike trap without getting hurt. With an airboard, this one wouldn’t be a problem at all. I probably wouldn’t even notice they’re spikes if I had it, as even without it I had no idea they are, until I got hurt by them. Okay, the tileset hasn’t really got better tiles for spikes so I just ignored the fact. I just cotinued to run the only path there was, killing some enemies on my way. Nothing seemed like seriously trying to kill me, the enemies couldn’t do much harm except for two bees (bees in a spaceship level) and a floating lizard which probably could hurt me if I was more into the chase. But I wasn’t, the turtle was surely far away already so I just wanted to see how does the level look like so I can do better on my next tries. I collected some ammo, buttstomped a next crate which again wouldn’t be needed at all if I took the airboard, avoided getting hurt by Schwartzenguard’s spiked chainball, and got sucked by a tube which sent me to something looking like an arena and lolwut, Rocket Turtle is here, immobile. That’s when I found out that this level won’t be as much fun as I’d expect of Jake or any XLM member.

I played this level multiple times, hoping that it’ll appear to be good. But it just wasn’t. Playing with airboard was always easier and more rewarding than playing without it. Choosing different difficulty levels didn’t change much. There was only one visible difference between easy and normal – there was also another one as I found out checking in JCS, which was adding one way events in a wall so a player can shoot through it with seekers. The only way to find it other than JCS is by accident. Hard difficulty setting is adding an almost harmless Schwartzenguard at the beginning and… you won’t find more differences as a bug takes place. The boss stops at one spot before reaching the arena and stays there waiting for its doom. JCS says there are also two more Schwartzenguard bosses at the arena (making a total of four) and some area fly off events at the top of it. But who cares, there’s no need to go to the arena. By the way, when it comes to it, it’s also very, very highly airboard biased, with collapsing scenery as a floor and only two boll platforms to stand on after everything collapses. And what if you fall? I guess I could say you fall into a pit, if there was an actual pit event. There is none. JJK [Edit: This bug got fixed in the re-upload].

The climate is dead. Don’t get me wrong here. I totally don’t mean anything positive. I mean the climate is nearly nonexistent. While at the beginning it looks okay, later on gets only a bit broken by a fencer, and okay I can understand monkeys in space as well as copter lizards but hell, bees and crabs are there as well. There are two (three on easy) types of pickups in the level and zero secrets, being both a gameplay and climate issue. There are some places in this level where the only objects you will see are you and the boss you’re supposed to chase. Those wouldn’t be any bad if the level really had a climate of an abandoned spaceship – bad it hasn’t, thanks to things such as crabs on flying platforms. Eyecandy is doing a better job, at least on the playable layers (which are 3, 4, 5 and 6 in this case). However inside of the walls it feels rather bland, the background parts of it look very well. The thing gets worse on background layers (7 and 8). The stars look rather cramped and artificial. Also, applying to all the layers, nothing untypical was done. It’s all as generic as possible, no interesting tricks were used to make a player remember this level for a long time after playing. It’s just another SpaceshipsBL level, with the difference of using a Rocket Turtle, what is still rather rare.

It’s empty, it’s short, it’s generic, it’s crappy. I don’t know what kind of an impulse caused Jake to upload it, but let’s hope it won’t happen anymore in the future. I must say I was almost sure that Jake can create good singleplayer levels before, now I started to doubt it. Sorry, this is nowhere close to today standards. The end.

You need to include event 255 in the bottom right corner or your death pits don’t work. Also, on hard mode, the rocket turtle stops at the bottom right corner of the pit with the second trigger crate, which allows the player to just sit there and kill him. Despite the bugs, I found the level fun, and I liked that the airboard was optional.

Yes, I feel that carrots would make the level too campy.

No carrots?

Yes, but this is on a smaller area at all times.

Assault?

Agree with Laro, fun level! B)

First of all, welcome in xlm!

Original name, good tileset, good using of the tileset.

Some things that aren’t natural. The eyecandy with islands you see 2 sealayers. That it what I didn’t like.

Eyecandy:
Good enough, only that thing what I just said is wrong in my opinion.

Gameplay:
Good, well, I see sometimes deadends, but whatever, I really don’t care. Anyway, some roads are long, make more platforms, so you have more ways to get out.., or else RF is going way to overpowered.

Layout:
It looks good, you placed tiles like cannons and treasures. Well, but some more layer 4 eyecandy and more layer 3 tiles would be nice, just too make it full, not too full, because then it will be a piggery. Well, but that isn’t in this level.

Ammo placement:
Sometimes too many of them, but well placed.

This level works good at:
Well, it is for duels and 2v2 too big, but higher then a 2v2 it is sure recommended! Good for Zeal Alpha.

I’ll hope to see more of your levels in the future, all made by the xlm mark ;).

~Looney

The Swimming Island is, as I see, Jgke’s XLM’s tryout.

The name ‘‘The Swimming Island’‘ is descriptive enough for this level, the tileset was a good choice for this level too.

The Layers 5, 6, 7, and 8 are good but I find it unnatural that layer 6 and 7 are moving, the rest of the eyecandy is good but there could be more layer 4 eyecandy, atleast, at some parts.

I don’t like the large group of ammo ammounts, but for games like 4vs4 they are usefull, the 2 carrots fits big matches too, but not for duels and 2vs2.
I think RF rockets are too overpowered but it could be just me.

I cannot rate it down, you took animations and layers from Blade’s example level, but we all do that.

Should I recommended this? Well if you like 4vs4 matches or bigger then it worth a try! The level size is perfect and large ammo amounts makes it a very good level for big matches.

Goodluck in XLM.

This level is quite overrated. I know people nowadays only want to play simple levels instead of quality levels, because this is really like that. it is way too horizontal and the top is air mania. in the Car position it’s chaos due scenery and bad flow. the tubes force next to C force you to bump over springs, and the bounce power up area = camp.

Hi! As I promissed in Review Exchange i will revire this level.

First of all i wish to say that it’s nice, NO bugs and quite fun actually. Here is the review: You start at the top and get RF’s to attack the bases, but after deaths, they are useless, though. You get the flag via a green spring.
There are some ammo like Bouncers, RF, seekers, and Electro, there is an MCE with some coins kinda in the middle, which i like, There is some food, on the middle there are 3 or 4 things to eat, and a Full NRG somewhere..

Another thing is the underground, which is quite small, and has bouncer and seekers, a Bouncer PU, and the rooms are connected by tubes that get you out to the surface, which is quite flat The flow of the level is ok, i did not found anything that might reduce it’s fun radically, there are some sucker tubes in the middle, which i tried near the blue base and the red, and both got me out.

Anyway, the eyecandy is good: 9.3
Ammo placement good but after sometime it becomes useless though 9.1
Food: well onle candy, burger ,fries and a fost drink. They are respwning but their number is quite small: 8.8
EDIT: found a Thing in the wall…
Carrots: 1x FullNRG and a respawning carrot on the wall… : 9.0
Music: good: 9.4.
What’s with the coins? anyway ti’s a MCE event so i liked it.
Score: 9.3+9.1+8.8+9.0+9.4/5 = 9.12 aka 9.1 with DR

Okay this level isn’t that bad, but it isn’t that good, and certainly doesn’t deserve the #1 spot for best CTF levels. In a nut shell, the visual aspects are okay, and gameplay can get stuffy and repetitive at times.

One of the better new levels lately. We had a lot of fun 2v2ing and 3v3ing in it. It looks horrible to duel in though (since you can basically just idle forever in the powerup corners in order to never die)

I promised to review so here I am. Level looks nice. Eyecandy is good, and game play is too. I would like to play this level in Duel Tournament v2.0 . Eyecandy was bad, imo, but you fixed it, and now looks a lot better. Keep making levels and you will get better and better and … :)

I promised to review so here I am.

The layout is almost fully symmetrical and easy to learn. It can be splitted into 3 parts, which are the top, the path and the underground.

The top was made mainly for two reasons: obtaining an RF PU and attacking the bases, placed between the top and the path. After obtaining the PU once after every death, it starts to be quite useless, though. There’s not much of ammo there and capturing a flag is much faster with use of a single RF jump from the path. Otherwise (from the top) I’d need to jump on a green spring above an obstacle, and wait until my rabbit will be down there to take the flag, what consume too much of my precious time. The spring should at least be red, so the waiting time could be slower.

To each of the bases there’s one entrance and one exit, but as I said, it’s possible to enter through the exit and also, thanks to the springs added with one of the edits, it’s possible to get out through the entrance. Before the edit it was also possible though, again with use of RFs. Personally, I hate these springs. They take out the whole fun.

The path is an almost flat surface on which players can find RFs, Bouncers, Seekers and Electroblaster ammo – all the types off ammo which the level include, making it even more useless to visit the top or the underground. There is also a Full NRG Carrot in the middle of it and a single slowly-respawning Soft Drink, probably placed just as a decoration.

In the underground there are two small rooms not connected to each other, with thin vertical entrances (the file preview will tell you more). Entering any of them in game is rather rare and there’s no real reason to. The things that can be find here are Bouncer PUs and Seekers, and after collecting them there are two sucker tubes to get out. Because of only one entrance, these places can easily become campy, and this time there’s obviously no way to enter using an exit.

The flow of the whole level is okay. I didn’t find anything decreasing it radically, not counting that green spring in exchange of red. To obtain any of the seekers it’s necessary to slow down though, and I found it a great idea. The rest of weapons uses the same thing but in a less noticable way, making the whole level a choice between a fast or powerful attack. The only weapon which is not really needed is the Electroblaster. I tried using it in game in a few ways, and the only thing in which it helped a little was obtaining the RF PU. It requires some aiming though, and doesn’t really matter, because getting some of Gun 9 ammo (starting near one of the bases) takes a similar amount of time as getting the PU.

Layer 4 and 3 eyecandy looks fine. Unfortunately, while there’s much of great things above the floor, the ground itself looks rather boring. In the deeper part only rocky tiles are used, and Blade’s tileset offers some tiles without rocks as well. Also, some useless pipes could work well.

The background of the level is quite typical as for this tileset and looks really well as it is. I like using the same thing in layers 5 and 6 as it’s almost unnoticable while playing. The town in layer 7 does the job too. I only had a feeling that the textured background doesn’t fit the rest of that, but even if I’m right I guess it’s not your fault, but the tileset’s. Together with the playable part of level, well-used ambient lighting and good choice of music it creates a really great atmosphere, which lacks in so much of other JJ2 levels. This level is worth downloading even for the atmosphere itself, really.

Well, I don’t think you can win a contest with the atmosphere and placement only, though. Go and make it better in any way you want. And don’t listen to my hints, they suck.

*

Edit (due to the level edits #6 and #9001 – previous rating: 7.3):

After these edits, this is just another level, which is much better than the previous one. Lots of things changed. While the eyecandy could be yet more improven, it’s already much better now. I didn’t really expected that these pipes will look like this. They improve both, the outlook and the atmosphere, which now really rocks. This level is truly special in this aspect, and I still believe that even without any gameplay, this would be worth a download.

But the gameplay is better than before too. The Seeker ammo added at the top, as well as changing the spring color really made it pointful to go up there. Changing the underground also made it more visible and more often visited. Now players are finally running in the whole level, not only a little part of it.

So now, what I said should make this level perfect. Unluckily, it still isn’t. The fixes caused some new problems.

As I said, the Seekers were added at the top, making it a more useful place. They were added in a really wrong way, though. Their placement absolutely doesn’t fit the rest of the level. They’re not only on the way, so you can collect them “running like an idiot”, but they’re in really excessive amounts. Just going from left to right through the whole top a player is going to get 50 of them in no time.

The second thing is the fact that editing the underground didn’t really make it camp-proof. While it’s visible if someone’s camping there or not now, still there’s no chance a player will shoot a camper, and even if he wonderfully will, the camper can easily escape with a pipe, which will lead him almost exactly to the only carrot. The underground must be made better once more. And the Electroblaster is still lacking in use, what doesn’t take out any points, though. It’s rather a little hint from me for the previous point.

And, as I said before, the eyecandy can be yet better. It’s the hard part now, and making it “yet better” isn’t really funny anymore, but it can change the ratings a lot.

Oh, and a dog house disappeared with the 6th edit. It may look better, but the dog will be sad. I’m not telling you should make it back there. Just please don’t delete dog houses anymore, because they’re people too, anyway.

*

Edit (due to the level edits #9002 and #0 – previous rating: 8.6):

Everything changed once more. And again the changes are really seriously improving the level.

The first thing which is visible is of course the eyecandy. The first time when I saw the level before its 2nd edit it was repeatitive and boring, now it’s one of the best which can be done with this tileset. There’s a lot of varying stuff in and above the ground, the pipes are irregular and everything looks just damn great. It began to be a little confusing though, since impossible to get pickups, like gold coins, carrot or fire shield appeared there. Good that I was unable to shoot the fire shield or any of RF PUs which were stuck in the ground with Electroblaster or Bouncer. If it’d be possible it would suck. Also, the moving gold coins are a really cool idea.

Camping is absolutely impossible now and no tube leads to the carrot anymore.

Some more food was added. I don’t think it’s really possible to rush when playing a duel, but it looks quite well.

The RF spot still is there, making this level tricky in a good way.

It’s hard to say something more I didn’t say before. This level has just a great gameplay when playing, and a great climate when looking around and listening to the music, and so I feel forced to give it a 9+ rating. Good luck in the contest!

Great gameplay,good eyecandy,nice ammo
placement and no words to do about this
nice level for ctf games and duels :P.
I’ll give an a DR for you.
GJ!

~StarLORD aka Starcraft

Very little!
Cool. 8)
But I will lost everytime :D

For a level made in less than 24 hours this is really good. The originality is great, the eyecandy and gameplay are a little less.

As a Finnish user, I must say I lost your chllenge. Here is a comment about the challenge, in Finnish:
“Nauratti niin, että olis tullut kusi housuun jos en äsken olis vessassa käyny. Kyllä Jope osaa. (Eikös olekin Jopen biisi?)”
Not bad for 24h level. Altough there is tons of pickups, it isn’t any bad. As SlaYerRA said, GL to you too.

[Quick review ~cooba]

nice work Jake, gl in next lvls.