Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

This download has no use whatsoever as the level requires a private and, as things appear to be at the moment, not-to-be-released program in order to be played. Even if that were to be ignored, the level design is subpar and eyecandy nonexistent.

I just wanted to mention I finished this level as Spaz without much trouble and I didn’t even have to wall jump. The only impossible obstacle on my way was the stupid box you put Spaz start in – after removing it the level is perfectly possible though. I’m able to repeat and record it if there’s a need to, but I hope my word about whether a jj2 level is beatable or not became trustworthy enough by now.

Sorry for saying it so late, I actually did it a day after you uploaded this level but then I suddenly forgot about it.

Many bugs, low originality and difficulty level which didn’t bring me even close to death. Eyecandy and music choice are good but don’t really make up for kind of annoying gameplay with many hidden or generated enemies. It attempts to be non-linear but still forces to find certain passages, or visit all of them. Nothing special, just an SP pack.

I wish I could see this, as well as the previous episode hosted. I even wanted to convert that one to LRS so it can be put on ZB, but it looks like I forgot it in the end. The levels seem to be of Survivor quality and feature a lot of awesome ideas, so I can only suppose it’s the CTF-biased community that lets them slip of the downloads list.

Art levels appear very rarely and usually are in no way similar to this one. Afaik it’s the first one of its kind and mainly because of that deserves attention. The level is nothing special when it comes to gameplay, but the idea is really awesome and well executed.

As it usually happens with newbies, a good idea with bad performance. The level isn’t of a very good quality, with average eyecandy and poor gameplay, however it contains some original ideas (I liked the armory). The RPG part is made lazily though, with not enough story, buggy level up system and a really small amount of actual role-playing.

Not bad graphics, but not enough tiles to make a level. No slopes, event tiles, animations or a textured background. Could be nice if it got extended though.

If this level was meant to have any purpose except fooling newbies, it doesn’t serve it. It’s made in a nice tutorial style, but if you’ve ever played like the 3 first levels of the original episodes with every character, the only new thing that you may find is Lori’s ability to go through things with her spinkick – the skill isn’t explained well enough though, and a newbie who didn’t ever hear about it has nearly no chance to perform it.

• Uppercut block destruction – shows that Jazz can uppercut block, so damn special, at least not bugged like the other ones though.
• Sidekick/spinkick block destruction – fail. Supposed to be Spaz and Lori only, but Jazz can pass it with an uppercut.
• High jump test – supposed to be Spaz and Jazz only, but Lori can pass it very easily with no special skills – just running and jumping.
• Double jump test – total joke, supposed to be Spaz only but Lori and Jazz can pass it with no special skills.
• Sidekick block destruction – the pit is wide enough to not let Lori spinkick the blocks, but Jazz can just uppercut them.
• Copter test – joke again, Spaz can beat this level damn easily.
  In other words, I don’t get how can you even call it a “character test”. The author managed to fail on almost everything that was possible to fail on. No one can learn anything good from this level, except maybe wallkick, warpkick and other Lori stuff, however imo just asking any advanced player is a better way to go.

Btw, the eyecandy (which I wouldn’t even mention if not seemingly high standards of this community member, judging from his reviews) sucks. It’s nothing different than the most basic Top Secret tiles and pipes in the background. The level makes use of two layers. Some of the most lame test makers out there are able to use this tileset in a more original and visually appealing way.

They often create better levels too, but that’s another thing.

@ PJ: Honestly, I may not know the exact definition of “skills”, but I don’t think it’s like you can call discovering the existence of the PU (no chance for it if you play the level in battle mode, low chances in offline/not serious games – you’ll basically only find it via JCS, SP cheats or if someone tells you), training the level offline a lot to find the proper spot, memorizing it by heart, and being lucky enough to hit the shoot button in the right gametick (there’s one or two I think when you can successfully get the PU) during the game as being “skilled enough to get it”.

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.

SE dying a lot in SP = SE giving a high rating

On the other hand, I didn’t enjoy surprise enemies, enemy generators and very large amounts of seekers in this level. I was able to shoot almost every enemy on my way with seekers. Also the boss fight was way too easy imo.

Nice and original, however kinda repetitively looking use of the tileset.

Sykio, whoever told you to upload this, he was joking. Seriously.

The fun factor of this level is questionable, especially after you find out that the best tactic you can use is to pwn the first spawning monkey without entering the boss arena until it drops 10 fast fires and enough carrots to stay alive when you’ll decide to start the fight with the boss itself.

If you know me, you probably also know that for God’s sake I shouldn’t review tests, as my rating at those is highly based on the difficulty, and I need a really insane difficulty to like a test. As for this one, its difficulty isn’t high enough for me, however I was surprised by it anyway. Due to the look of the level I was expecting an obstacle race, and yet I got an actual test, however using some cheap tricks.

Anyway, not going to review, instead I’ll point out things that are imo bugs of this level:
-Lori can immediately get from level 1 to 3 via wallkick.
-The wall jump test (level 8) doesn’t actually require a wall jump. It can be easily passed with a golden jump.
-I beat levels 3, 8, 10 and 15 with Jazz, levels 4 and 14 are very probably beatable with him too.
-I beat levels 5, 7, 8 and 15 with Lori, levels 3, 4, 10 and 14 are probably beatable with her too.

That’d be everything. By the way you can also add me to the HoF, however I don’t really care that much.

Sorry, but this is well uhm, a gradient and a text. I lack of, like, images, art, or anything else that’s at least a bit more complicated than 5 clicks in Gimp or Photoshop.

• artificial ways to extend the game time
• not much creativity
• despite what you say, a bit too low difficulty level
• only one kind of food and ammo

Quite a nice level of this kind. I see a lot of lacks though.

The only pickups are food, but it’s impossible to get a sugar rush. And even if it’d be possible, there are unfortunately no enemies nor an end boss. Too much sucker tubes, especially since they don’t use tubes tiles. The level could be yet longer and more ideas could be there. The eyecandy, while not bad, could be much better. Also the music, while it’s one of my favourites, doesn’t really fit the feel of the level.

Overally, a lot of things should be improved, but it’s not a bad level-which-plays-itself too. I can’t rate high, but I recommend downloading it.

Oh well, I must agree it’s more than I ever expected from a 256×64 level which takes only about 1/3 of this space. But that’s surely not enough for me to call it a good one. The eyecandy is nothing special, as well as the gameplay and the pickup placement. Everything is just average. Much too short and easy to get a DR.

@tropiCCo: I’d only like to notice that those tilesets are from 2004 and 2000. And personally, I like the one from 2004 more than WP. Also, if you’re thinking this way, why are you giving it more than Heaven or Egypt got? Do you believe it’s the best tileset on J2O?

I’m not going to review since I know I shouldn’t.

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!