Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

This is a very cool piece of JJ2+ history. As the description mentions, it’s been now superseded by JJ2+, and it certainly doesn’t do any good that one of the highest rated downloads on the site is named “DONT DOWNLOAD THIS”, but you may want to download it out of interest to see baby steps of JJ2’s most important patch.

This is an excellent patch but was made obsolete by JJ2+ long ago and the fact it’s still among the top rated downloads on the site can only be misleading.

I’m sure this was a useful program back in the day but nowadays it’s inferior to OpenMPT. If you want to listen to J2B and PSM files easily, I’d suggest downloading XMPlay and its OpenMPT plug-in which supports both Jazz Jackrabbit music formats and many more.

This file does what it promises but doesn’t promise much in the first place. For the average downloader it’s fairly useless.

Few levels incorporate instant death into their design as competently as this one. It involves high level of the psychological factor and is very fun to play. However, I find that gameplay becomes repetitive and mechanical after several matches. Only a small linear portion of the level is laser-safe and that’s where most of the game takes place.

DOM: Far too many CPs and start positions immediately next to them. I like seeker PU placement but even that can’t protect a CP from hordes of players spawning just next to you.
CTF: Blue base has 3 PUs including seeker. Red base has one that is risky to get. 2 blue-biased full NRG carrots. Full of random warps. This level is practically bblair.

There is nothing interesting about this test. It’s just generic. At many points while playing you’ll likely ask yourself “did anybody actually test this?” and the true answer is “no, probably not”. This upload was edited dozens of times and no version ever was completely beatable. Currently you can’t pass level 23 without an extreme wall jump.

These levels have an unprofessional vibe to them, largely due to poor layer usage, music choice, fairly random layouts and flow issues, but other than that many of them are quite fun and playable treasure hunt levels.

These levels vary vastly in quality. Dark Awakening and End of Hours are quite decent, whereas the rest are barely playable. Both of those two still feel quite claustrophobic though, and not very suitable for fighting in.

This level is more of a race than it is of a treasure hunt, and not a fair race either, because you have to know precisely what to do. Breaking into the vault always determines the winner, and that happens within half a minute of a match. The reward is too disproportionately greater than anything else in the level.

This level is very enjoyable, especially in the collecting phase. Gems are placed almost perfectly, quite time-consuming to obtain, letting every player get a few, and there are many green and blue ones, making the effort feel like it paid off. Unfortunately the layout and ammo placement are less suitable for fights. Also, excellent atmosphere.

The best treasure hunt level made so far, with a good layout, considerate ammo choice, well spread gems, varying environments, and decent eyecandy. Perhaps the exit could be more memorable – the level completely unnecessarily uses additional bonus signs for eyecandy, making the right one less obvious. Initial gem placement could also be better.

One of the worst treasure hunt levels I’ve seen. Its size, along with the fact it’s underwater, demands at least 10 players. However, its linear one-way layout is suitable for perhaps up to 3, any more and all starting gems will be split between a few players, settling the result of the match within seconds. The eyecandy is quite impressive though.

Edit (May 24., 2015): Most of the flaws discussed in my original review included below have been taken care of. Some perhaps extensively – the spike ball challenge room became somewhat trivial, with safe spots, hardly any actual spike balls, and respawning seeker ammo that you can collect for many minutes and use against all enemies from that point on. The boss on the other hand might’ve become overpowered; the second phase of the fight seemed fairly random to me, with my victory depending mostly on the order of moves he decided to use. I also encountered some other minor bugs I didn’t see before but won’t bother to list. Overall, however, the changes are a major improvement, the level has consistently good quality and a variety of gameplay concepts, and it’s now fun to play.

Aforementioned original review (rated 7.5) available below for reference and historical purposes:

Decent, but with tons of flaws.

New weapons are nearly completely useless and, where they could be useful, it turns out the modified fireball can’t shoot upwards and bombs deal only 1 damage point to Bubba enemies, don’t explode on contact, and bug enemies up.
Many of the enemies are mostly really tiring to kill rather than difficult, especially the Bubba ones generally require a hit and run strategy that is very safe but can easily take half a minute to take down a single one of them.
Loads of bugs occur, besides the aforementioned bombs that have really bad effects on Bubba enemies, spike balls go through walls and all over the place, making otherwise easy areas completely random hell, enemies can spawn at the player’s position without any chance for escape, falling onto the floor without having activated a certain platform can get you stuck there, and Spaz can completely skip the most difficult challenge in the level, which then never ends, causing palette issues.
Said most difficult challenge inconsistently keeps progress over separate lives, unless you had finished it already, in case of which when you die it counter-intuitively restarts from the beginning, and is overall unfair, involving not as much skill as shooting while getting hit constantly in hope enough spike balls are destroyed before you run out of blinking time and health. I could believe it involves some skills or strategy but the spike balls can very well spawn directly above you and quickly fall down, or even spawn at your current position. There’s no way to predict that, if you’re unlucky, you’re simply going to die. On the other hand, the challenge room that precedes it is much easier but has issues too – most importantly, after you kill the initial wave, it runs out of enemies and you have to wait for several seconds before anything new appears. Generally exactly on your position, dealing damage even though you were well prepared to fight.
As far as I could tell, the coin warp requires all coins in the level, which is a bad design decision that means everything you collected will be useless if you didn’t find one single secret. The level also contains gems which it gives no special purpose to, so that’s a sort of a wasted opportunity.
Tweedle is perhaps the greatest disappointment. After the life-draining spike ball challenge I was convinced I’d face a hard to defeat final boss, but instead I saw a nerfed version of the first stage of Devan Shell, who later transformed into a complete joke of a boss that can be beaten simply by periodically pressing the down arrow, after getting him onto one of the platforms in the arena. Or well, that was the case before the recent update – after that, his first stage can actually be called significantly more difficult to kill with blaster than Devan is, but you can always just pull out RF missiles and still finish it within a couple of seconds; and the second stage didn’t change much, maybe just that I now have to occasionally press left or right too to aim the buttstomp better. Granted, he would fit in well with the entire rest of easy to kill official JJ2 bosses, but certainly doesn’t fit the spirit of the level, which aims to be more ambitious than the official levels.

As for the upsides, I really like how enemies drop ammo, and not just any, but the kind that’s actually associated with them, even if they drop so little and so rarely that it’s not extremely helpful. The visuals and mechanics of the moving platforms are really nicely done. The variety of enemies is cool, with the new ones offering original mechanics. Secrets are spread around well, generally offering hints and not being too hard to find. The scenery is somewhat bland but acceptable. I suppose with the exception of challenge rooms and the boss it’s fun to play overall.

I deliberately chose not to download this when I first saw it, knowing how newcomers tend to upload the most awful of things they believe are remixes. Ninja’s recommendation made me change my mind and I have to say I would have missed out if I didn’t, because this piece is altogether incredible. Hoping to hear more from this artist in the future.

This conversion set is far inferior to IC-IF Medivo, which adds more useful tiles and rearranges them for much easier use. The original Medivo tileset layout is awful and keeping it is redundant thanks to J2T Rearranger. The altered palettes vary in quality but the vast majority are way too bright or colorful to look pleasant.

Very short and bland. The level contains 4 pickups, neither of which have generators. It’s possible to get permanently stuck at the float-up section. Eyecandy lacks contrast and it’s easy to become confused. Not really creative. Presumably fairly average for its time though.

Some positive features and a nice variety of challenges, but not much thought went into level design, often relying on fairly random block placement. Some areas cause bugs and others can be beaten in unintended ways. Overall pretty average for a test.

Despite all of my hatred towards RF missiles, this joins the exclusive group of my favourite tests. The concept of having no time to rest within a single challenge is just what I like the most about JJ2 levels and it’s executed excellently here. And when you finally complete it all, you can feel the sense of achievement that hardly any test offers.

No Way Out is a decent concept and a decent level. Its script is oddly-written at moments, but it works fine and makes the level enjoyable. Rating: 8.

River Secrets is a decent concept and terrible execution. Both level design and the script are a failure. Occasional glitches bring the level close to unplayable. Rating: 3.