Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Pretty great track! I like it!

Let’s face it, how often do we all still play the game? Most of us outgrew it to an extent. Doesn’t mean I will stop JCS’ing, but it means my levels will be a rarity.

Anyway, it’s a very nice level. I liked playing it during the JDC event. Loved the mines, even if they are a bit impractical.

Gameplay-wise, the biggest flaw is probably that some of the carrots can be camped, at least in standard battle. In Team Battle, especially between clans, in theory these campers should be flushed out easily.

The eyecandy is lovely. However, it is a bit confusing for the first few moments that the spikes and thorns don’t hurt at all.

One of the few rare times – or even my first – time that a treasure hunt level absolutely amazed me. We have much fewer uploads recently to J2O, but those that are uploaded have a tendency to be good!

EDIT: You can get stuck at 48,66 under the platform near the sucker tube!

Wait no reviews for this? Even if the level itself is a complete gimmick, it has such creative coding, and all appears to work fine. Eyecandy is nothing special but more than sufficient, and pickup placement is alright too. Layout works well with the script – but is also very dependant on it.
Still a 9/10, purely for the creativity of the script. Download recommended!

Edit: Can’t post it as a quick review for some reason despite it originally having less than 350 characters. Raise that limit for fairies’ sake.

[]

No review yet? This level really deserves one, it is great. No need for many words. The eyecandy is amazing, and the level fun to play at, despite the low amount of ammo.
No bugs too, which is always nice.

Great for duels as well as bigger games, give it a try!

An amazingly awesome little bugger, especially in that JDC event. Not perfect, but it is as close as it can get when factoring in the concept.

I assume (did not check, so I’m not certain) he used FawFul’s Wicked Woods level as a base, then he deleted all tiles so he could start anew, while being too lazy to think of a new levelname.

I’ve done this before as well because of backgrounds / animated tiles so you don’t have to make the animations yourself, especially if the standard background was used, no one notices / cares. I

Hm. A full review.

Story: Nonexistant. Just two Diamondus levels. No points, thus 0 / 0 .

Eyecandy: Well, very few EC. The levels however, did meet what they were intended to be; namely that they remind me of the official levels, but with JJ2, you should not forget that the official levels are BAD, both eyecandy- and gameplay-wise.
5/10

Music: Hrm. Seems like remixes of JJ2 music. A fine choice though, but nothing non-JJ2, therefore.
A bonus because the orginal JJ2 feeling is intended after all, and the music helped accomplish that while not being vanilla AFAIK, though, like the orginal JJ2 music, I did not notice it after… about three seconds despite not turning it off.
8,2/10

—-Gameplay—-
Level layout: Fine. Though 1.23, I’d like to note the levels were unplayable with Lori.
Otherwise, the levels worked OK.
I disliked the lack of secrets however, which were abundant in the orginal JJ1 and also in JJ2 (though to a lesser extent) but almost completely absent here, and those which were there, had only Extra Lives.

Oh, and I did not find a save spot in the first level. Dunno if that is intended or not, though, but again, I felt it had to be mentioned.

7/10

Enemy placement.
The enemy placement was OK. Some enemies were played quite creative, but most did not form a real threat. However, absolutely no difference between Medium and Hard, which is an obvious flaw.
Also, the witch was easy to kill with the Seek ammo and some RF’s because the witch area was way too open.
6,6/10

Pickup Placement:
Pickups existing were fine.
However, the variety was absolutely lacking especially in the ammo department. Also only one PU, the Bounce PU, in the coin warp.
Also not much creativity with gems and stuff except for the gem stomps near the Save Point in the second level.
No creativity with secrets hurts again.
(and again, no difference between Easy and Medium)

Oh, I’d like to say that I had way too many lives after I finished the second level.

4/10

Replay value:
This point of my review talks about if I want to play this level again after having played it once.
Lack of creativity, secrets and lack of difficulty levels too, hurt badly in the final part of my review. Really badly.
I’m sorry to say it, but it are levels I played once and deleted it afterwards; which means the replay value is perfectly zero…
1/10

31,8 / 60 divided by 6 is 5,3 / 10

DR: You can either download it once and delete it afterwards, or decide to not download it at all. Or just play the orginal JJ2 levels.
The exception to this rule being that if you love the vanilla JJ2 levels, then this is certainly worth a download as it is pretty much equal to those in quality and playability, except for the lower amount of secrets (which is made up for better enemy placement though).

What Ron said, mostly.
However, some minor notes, I got stuck sometimes, I didn’t trust the Jungle level after the Castle level, which ended up in me using JJfly most of the time.

DR recommended, but that’s partly because of a lack of good single player episodes recently.

Edit: Secret area’s and a coinwarp added. Upped the rating a bit.

That’s easy to fix, Ischa. Change filename xD

I’m suprised no one wrote a full review for this yet…

Story: None.
0/0

Eyecandy: Wicked and awesome. No tilebugs, everything works, great text signs. However, the gems in the walls aren’t animated, and no gem pickups either…
9/10

Music: Free points for everyone.
10/10

Gameplay
Flow: A good flow. The pits were hard to detect, especially the first one, but after this first one it became easier (and if you fell in it, you will not fall in the pit again because you know how the level author marked pits after the first ‘incident’). I could easily jump with Lori from island to island and no character seems to have problems with the pits though Jazz/Lori might have an easier time because they can simply copter over those pits without worries.
Also, where are the secrets with ammo/gems? Not existing, according to JCS, which is a pity.
9/10

Pickup Placement:
A bit few, but the pickups existing were very well-placed. However, there was (almost) no difference between Easy and Medium which I consider a flaw – I used JCS to confirm this…
Also, very few gems… but gems should be placed in single player and ESPECIALLY if you use any kind of Diamondus tileset!
No secrets with any kind of pickups … it doesn’t help.
8/10

Enemy Placement:
A good combination between easy-to-kill and hard-to-kill enemies due to their placement. In combination with all the pits it was quite a challenge, and the boss fight is quite difficult because you’re fighting above a huge pit and if you did not notice the Full RNG, you’re screwed there.
There were a bit more enemies on Hard than on Medium, but the difference was minor and almost unnoticable.
8,5/10

Replay Value:
The overall difficulty made me replay it twice, but there were absolutely ZERO secrets to find, so replaying was nowhere near as fun as the first time playing. This level is more difficult than most other levels uploaded nowadays, which adds to the replay value, though.
7/10

50,5/60 / 6 = 8,4/10

Penalties: Zero

8,4/10

DR: Yes. It is a great level with very few flaws, though replay value is a bit low because of lack of secrets. However, if you aren’t experienced with playing, this level is very challenging, and might bring you on the verge of a game-over.

Full review after playing here, which is obviously more accurate.

Eyecandy: The eyecandy is very good. Everything works and Loon used some interesting tricks with the background. In singleplayer there is a huge layer 8 tilebug, but I don’t really care considering it (somehow) does not appear in any form of multiplayer.
9,5/10

Music:
Great choice. It fits the level very well.
10/10

—-Gameplay—-
Flow: I had absolutely no issues with the flow. A few RFtricks scattered around, and there is no bias between Jazz/Spaz/Lori though I found not much use for the Copter (but that’s normal in duels, anyway). Base placement is allright.

9/10

Pickup placement.
Most pickups are well-placed. However, upper C and Seek PU are in close proximity to eachother, just like the lower C with the Bouncy PU. Both tend to be campy, but the Seek PU more because it is placed in a deadend, while the bouncy PU can be taken from the other side and then you can run to the warp. But at the Seek PU, a good camper can get a decisive advantage, especially if he just killed his opponent. However, he can’t keep camping because this level has two C’s.
7/10

Replay Value:
It is a good level. Everything works and this level is fast-paced (except that upper left spot with the Seek PU) once both players have all PU’s and have an aggressive nature in the game.
Still, lack of real orginality in this level and especially its flow shows through at moments. It is just another assymetric CTF level well-suited for duels, but it is a good one nonetheless.
7,5/10

43/50

Penalties: Zero.

8,6/10

DR: Yes. Like most entries to the Duel level tournament, the level has a high-quality, and no really serious issues.

Dah review. A simple review this time…

Eyecandy: Is allright, but nothing spectacular. However, no bugs or whatever and it works.
8/10

Music: Fits quite well, and is not annoying and I never heard it before.
10/10

___________Gameplay:
Flow: Well, everything works. It reminded me a bit of SILWI but I think it is a bit better especially for duels, but the pit can be crippling if you’re not careful. But well, without ruining the concept there is nothing which can be done about it. The level is symmetrical and thus balanced.
7,5/10

Pickup placement.
Very balanced, because it is symmetrical. The Ice PU’s can help you shooting players down easily which is a rarely tried but working concept. The C can be shot down, which can be annoying. Fastfires are a bit weirdly placed, I don’t think someone is going to collect them there unless the E is definately not near you.

8,5/10

Replay value:
It is like SILWI but a bit more complex. It is probably also a bit better but the pit can be annoying especially for Spaz users because it kills, and therefore the non-pit version is more suited for ladders and duels I think.
7/10

41/50

Penalties: none

8,1/10

DR: Yes. This level does not suffer from any serious issues. It has a solid gameplay and Laro ‘played safe’ with this level.

FFS, how to review this.

First, I’ll say that I’ve played both of these levels online using the ingame download function everybody knows (I did not download it at J2O). I’ve duelled Jake at TRF and it was quite an intense duel (lost 6-10 btw). I played the other level in some open servers recently.

Tyuka’s Realm Forsaken:

Music:
Sheer awesomeness. I’ve no other words for it.
10/10

Eyecandy:
It is great, almost flawless while unique. It goes very well with the music, even better than most other levels.
10/10
_________Gameplay:
Layout: Quite balanced and the base concept works. There aren’t any campy places and this level is, due to the relatively fast carrot respawn and the fact there are two small carrots, a very aggressive one… camping means your opponent regains health, and both C’s are in uncampy area’s. It is however, possible to camp the RFPU, though it isn’t useful in duels.
There are two RFjumps, one of them is avoidable with a Lizard Copter (while not too difficult), and one of them is almost impossible with Jazz/Lori and still hard with Spaz.
9,5/10

Pickup placement:
Almost perfect, though Bouncers/Seekers are laggy weapons, if this is played on ZD. There is a Bouncy PU, which might lag if shot in the tube, but otherwise Bouncers are very useful in this level. There is a patch of Seekers in the upper left corner (no PU, which is a good thing). The main downside but also upside is that ammunition is very grouped: usually there is only one place in the level to get a certain kind of ammunition. This could be horrible, but in this case it doesn’t matter: The level is small and very uncampy (though the RFPU is campable if the other player has no RF PU, but you might end up being blown up in some cases)
9,5/10

Replay Value:
Hm, what to say… Seeing the level made me speechless, playing it was awesome. It is certainly one of the best levels I’ve ever seen.
10/10

49/50

Penalties: Zero

9,8/10

The other level? If you insist. In terms of liking it/disliking it, this level is totally opposite to the previous one. So here it goes, for ASH or whatever it is called.

Music: Not so awesome, and a sheer contrast with TRF.
It hurts enough to mute it, something I hardly ever do…
5/10

Eyecandy: The tileset chosen made me refuse to take this actually even serious. Feels pretty bland, even worse than the Forest tileset for example because of lack of detailing in the tileset (and being downright unnatural)
5/10.

_________Gameplay
Flow: It works, but the base placement makes this a VERY rushy level, especially taking the two Spaz-only RFjumps into account. It makes the PU’s bloody useless being too far from the bases, (takes too much time to get them)… I actually think it is impossible to retake control back if you lost it. It might also end up in a cat-and-mouse game in the outer circle of the map…
4/10

Pickup placement:
You don’t need them with the bases so damn close to eachother… the PU’s are placed close to eachother but one camper is enough to kill you if you want to get back to the base area.
4/10

Replay value:
Playing a serious round here is a total fluke…
4/10

22/50

Penalties: none.

4,4/10

9,8 + 4,4 = 14,2 = 7,1

DR: Yes, the first level is downright awesome… without a doubt. It is a great level to play at, especially in duels and I think it is the best entry to the duel level tournament until now.
I’ve heard the second one can be either found great or be disliked, with me being in the second group of disliking it. Therefore, you might like the second level WAAAAY more than I did.
On the otherhand, you might find it pretty dissappointing or downright horrible like I did.

A full review.

Story: Well… there is barely any story. The two levels fit nicely together but well…
0/0

Music: Is allright.
10/10

Eyecandy: Well, it is nearly the most you could make of this tileset. However, though I dislike tileset rate-downs, this time I will do because you simply can’t go wrong at all with this tileset… you made however a few tilebugs which were easy to avoid because of the simplicity of the tileset.

On the plus side, there was some creativity with the Layer 3 usage at times.

7/10

——Gameplay——
Flow/general gameplay: Allright, sometimes a bit annoying. Well playable with either Jazz and Spazz, but Lori needs to golden jump sometimes. The level is fairly difficult… however, try next time using different difficulty settings.

Sometimes I couldn’t find the required trigger crates / trigger scenery, which was very annoying… especially if a lot is covered with layer 3.

After beating the second level, you start over with the first while you just said “I hope you enjoyed playing”… next time try using “ending” instead of the filename of the first level in the “Next level” string.

However, good things were the amount of secrets which also adds up to the replay value of a level, and that there were NO BUGS with the scenery which is quite rare if someone uses a lot of triggers.

7/10

Enemy placement: Allright. Sometimes a bit too few, sometimes a bit too many but they were well placed. There could be a bit more enemies on hard mode… there are no different difficulties right now.
9/10

Pickup placement: A lot was hidden in secrets… there could be a bit more ammo and maybe the occasional carrot outside of those secrets though (especially at easy mode).
8/10

Replay Value:
It is a level you might replay once after you’ve beaten it.
However, there is no difference between easy and hard here, but this level is despite that harder than most other SP levels.
There are a lot of secrets to find here. However, the tileset used, on the other hand, does not help because it is one of the blandest JJ2 tilesets around.
6,5/10

48/60

Penalties:
No different difficulty settings: -0,5

7,5/10

DR: Yes, but you might play this only once, if the blandness of the tileset is annoying you too much. It is a good level (the two levels are essentially one like the author said) worth playing though.

I wouldn’t say perfect but it looks great.
Gameplay is average at best, tho.

Full review is already written and rated an eight, but I’ll post it after I played here online so I can tweak it.

Another level I really liked in the Bash.

Music:
10/10

Eyecandy:
Well, the tileset has its issues. Sometimes it looks boring but Snooze tried to make the best out of it. The pond was an interesting expiriment… I actually think it turned out nice.
The caves were very nice.
The vines were placed awkward but once you realized they were there, they did not cause problems at all. A better tileset could’ve helped but I do not penalize on tilesets here.
8,5/10

Gameplay:
Well, it worked all pretty nicely. The warp, the fall-through-ground and the suckertube w/o being clear that they were there, made it a bit messy but again, once you got to know them you could use those at will. They’re NOT noob-friendly, but noobs who learn this map should be capable of learning them without too much hassle.
8,5/10

Pickup placement
Very well done, though I think the RF PU in the pond is a bit
too powerful because the map has long, open, horizontal paths where you can blast those RF’s through (even moreso as Jazz and Lori because they can copter and thus fire RF’s even when going upwards the slightly sloped hill).
8,5/10

Replay value:
It is a great map which can definately be in a mappool. It is very well playable with either Jazz, Spazz and Lori and not too difficult to learn if you have more brains than a monkey.
8,5/10

44/50

Penalties:
None

8,8/10

DR: Yes!

I’ve played all Battle level at the Bash, and this was one of the few levels I really liked to play in.

Music:
Easy points up for grabs as always
10/10

Eyecandy:
I liked it. The eyecandy and the way of using it really lived up to the name of the level.
Almost no tilebugs or whatever. It seems also the best that could be done with given tileset, so
9,5/10

Gameplay:
Everything felt allright in this medium sized battle-level. It wasn’t especially Spaz-biased or so (except the bottom-left corner).
The long food-trail in the left which lead to the carrot and two coins felt a bit slow at the beginning though (probably a few more sucker-tube events?), but I liked it otherwise; not many levels have something along those lines.
The two green springs with the Toast PU were usable in a good way if you know how. Not too bad :)
No bad things to mention.
9/10

Pickup placement:
Pretty much nothing to complain about. The fly carrot isn’t used too often but fits here well and really has some use if you know what to do with it and when to grab it (and how to get rid of it if needed, considering there was only one place with Fly Offs).
Can it be better with given layout of the level? Probably not.
9,5/10

Replay value:
Well… what to say. It felt better balanced than previous named and I can there are places were you would use either Jazz, Spazz or Lori.
9/10

47/50

Penalties: None

9,4/10

DR: Yes!

Another full review:

Music:
Free points ftw.
10/10

Eyecandy:
Well, it is like Odyssey is used normally… nothing too special except those tubes which I found pretty orginal and a few other things rarely done before.
Not as many lights as suggested by Sean’s review though.
7.5/10

———- Gameplay ———-
Flow:
Again, unlike Sean, I hadn’t much trouble running from one base to another. This level feels Spaz-biased at times but is well playable with both Jazz and Lori and the most vital weapons are reachable with all characters anyway.
There are however a few campspots (one somewhere in the middle where you can sit in the wall, and the Toast PU which is also fairly obvious.
7.5/10

Ammo & Pickup placement:
Not too many flaws here either. What however does bug me, is the Toast PU placement which is nothing but a huge campspot with a toast powerup AND bouncer ammo, and to make matters worse, if you leave with the warp, you get almost warped into the full RNG straight away!
7/10

Replay value:
I haven’t played here yet. Let’s just give no points here for now.
I dunno if I want to play a serious game here though…
0/0

32/40

Penalties:
None.

8/10

DR: I dunno. It is a nice level but has a few issues.

@Hordy: Don’t make campy rooms with PU’s and place a Single Player starting positiion somewhere.

Full review, after playing it.

Music:
Well, that was allright. Fits the level
10/10

Eyecandy: Well done, but a few bugs in the background… It is very monotonous but that’s a tileset issue probably so no rate-down… it isn’t really PurpleJazz’ fault considering he tried to use every eyecandy piece as orginal as he could.
9,5/10
———
Gameplay:
Flow: Ah, by FAR not the best I’ve seen this year. Many levels surpassed this one. I got stuck into one-ways, bumped into walls, needed to make weird running jumps because Lori can’t double-jump etc. Jazz could uppercut but that takes more time like Lori’s running jumps (so Jazz should have to do those jumps too). Also, some places are very hard to reach with Jazz/Lori, which makes this level noob-proof (noobs use Spaz less often in comparison, while being unable to negate Spaz advantages with tricky jumping due to relatively low skills).

Only Spaz can double jump; Jazz can’t either. So only Spaz can play here properly. Lori’s weird jumps are faster than Jazz uppercut, while they lack the predictable course (possibility to turn away and slam bouncy in you face!). It isn’t about Lori’s disadvantage – it is about the Spaz advantage over both Jazz and Lori. It is true a noob who at least knows how to uppercut, will do better with Jazz than with Lori here.

Edit: With noob-proof I also say that are less competent players in general have there issues, and not only the walk-and-shoot TheServer/ZA noobs.

Edit2: I could no longer get stuck into one-ways.

5,5 -> 6,5/10.

Pickup placement
Everything was allright… the Seek PU has, despite the freakin’ warp is removed, still its issues. You can shoot it with unpowered bouncy, but it takes a very precise hit – which takes also a lot of time if you don’t have experience or when you can’t aim too good. If this map is intended for a lot of players, more fastfires would be nice as well…

EDIT: Warp to Seek PU removed. Still, Seek PU is hard to reach for those who don’t have a VERY good aim. In SP it is possible if you don’t have a good aim, but try hitting it with less than five bouncy spent, in three seconds.

7,5/10 -> 8,5/10

Replay value:
Zero. I’ve played it… and well… I really don’t want to play it again. Getting stuck feels really, really frustrating… considering I did it twice in only half a minute… well. Goddamnit.
The grim atmosphere, while looking allright, doesn’t really help either. It is all grey and dusty which is something I don’t really like to see too often in a server…

Edit: OK, the worst things are removed so this level are removed. But in fact, this is my personal like/dislike box; would I like to replay this?
3,5/10 -> 4,5/10

36/50 -> 39/50

Penalties:
None

7.2/10 -> 7.8/10

DR: This level isn’t made for noobs. So if you consider yourself a noob, don’t download this.

Edits: Main issues were fixed, so the rating is now upped quite a bit. Bumping into walls is still an annoyance though.