Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Come on guys !

Good music ,
Good Tileset,
G0OOOooooD level!

only a bad ting:
how pickups are in the level,
where they are in the level.

Hmmmm, what to say. The flow is really terrible. I’m not sure why somebody would design a level with such a confusing layout and some many walls. Argh it’s almost painful. The Weapon placement in unbalanced with many advantages to blue. The coin placement is unbalanced with many advantages to red. The powerups chosen were also bad. The only saving garce that I can find is the Eye candy. Sure the tileset was a horrid choice, but he got the level to look actually good.

Good:
The eyecandy was marginally ok, with a bad tileset.

Bad:
Weapon placement
coin placement
powerups
powerup placement.

Ugly:
Design flaws
Awful Flow

Conclusion: 6.7
A bit jagged with many design flaws.

Blackraptor made another CTF level…

GAMEPLAY:

In three words: unbalanced, confusing, annoying. It doesn’t look like there was much effort put into giving this level good flow and balance. Some of the same tiles in the sprite layer were used in the background which is usually a bad idea. And the warps to the right of the blue base are annoying. Here’s some advice: try to avoid placing one base much higher than the other one; it makes the level harder to balance. And don’t use so many poles.

EYE CANDY:

The eye candy isn’t that bad except for the same tiles used in the BG and layer 4. The level doesn’t look bad, but I would probably like it more if it used another tileset.

CARROT AND AMMO PLACEMENT:

There is a full energy carrot which can only be reached through a 10 coin warp. And on top of that, it’s much closer to the blue base than the red base. That further unbalances the gameplay. You shouldn’t be putting full energy carrots in a coin warp (unless if you do something like what Cell did in “One Silver Penny”). And even worse… there’s also a +1 carrot near the blue base. Let me move on to ammo placement. It’s not so good and I think it’s been placed just so that the level has some ammo in it. I’m not sure of what you planned on using the ice for. The powerups are, well, repetitive (at least with the bouncers). 3 bouncer powerups total (and one of them is in the coin warp).

HOST THIS OFTEN?

Probably not. 6.5 because this level needs a lot of improvement.

Blue Planet v1
Good level, lets start the review.
To the right of the blue base is a load of pickups, which is probaly
not make a problem in duels, due to collecting before battling.

Eyecandy was good, almost great..

The flow as a bit rough, but it still played good.

Weapon placement was good, and looks very cool in some places.
There was a coin warp that led to a bouncy powerup, and carrot, and had the text,“I am not your math teacher.” Maybe I’m the only one to not get it..

Coin placement was very well done.

Tile placement was perfect as far as I’m concerned..

Good level, just a bit confusing in some parts.
It’s diffrent, and that’s good. Download it.

Blackraptor’s latest level. Better than the last eight. It’s not horrible or great nor original or clichéd, but it’s decent.

GAMEPLAY:

The layout in this level isn’t hard to get around in, but a few tweaks could improve it a lot. The thing I dislike the most about this is it lacks balance. For example, at the top there’s a lot more space around the Blue base on the left side than the Red base on the other side. On top of that, Spaz can take a shortcut to the blue base by double jumping, while Jazz will be forced to use the route with the two poles. And one thing about poles: use poles as seldom as possible. And try to avoid putting them into one of the main routes to a base (though you can avoid at least two of them in this level, like the pole near the Red base). Also, try to get rid of some useless things like the tubes near pos 93,29. Think about making the level more strategic and stuff like that.

EYE CANDY:

Somewhere around average, I guess. There’s nothing I find appalling in the eye candy. But what’s with all of the Mirrow pics in the level? Secret obsession? Even Disguise didn’t use that many pics of him in his example level of the Mirrow’s Kingdom tileset. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone (except everyone that reads this review). You can keep it in, but it doesn’t add for eye candy much.

CARROT AND AMMO PLACEMENT:

I can’t really say I hate the way you placed the two full energy carrots. It’s a little boring, but it’s alright at best. Just like the ammo placement and the powerups (I suppose). I also don’t feel like analyzing all of it at the moment.

HOST THIS OFTEN?

If you somehow find this level fun, play it 24/7. If you’re like me, then don’t. 7.0 because I don’t know. Maybe I’m being “nice” again.

One other thing: I normally don’t mention things like this, but the music could not possibly fit any less then it did in this level. Don’t do that. Use better music next time (it’s better suited for Shadow’s ShockWave), and maybe some you found on your own.

For such a relatively new levelmaker, Blackraptor is quite good. This level is very good, though there are a few somewhat large things that effected my rating some. The first complaint is that this level may cause flag bug. The second lies within the music choice. The third is how the springs are used. Other than that, this is a really good level and I hope to see more CTF levels by Blackraptor. This is quite good.

EYECANDY
Tileset Use: “Mirrow’s Kingdom” by Disguise is not an easy tileset to use at all. It may look really easy to use but the fact is that it is not as easy as you would think to get really good looking eyecandy using this tileset. Still, this level manages to use the eyecandy in this tileset pretty well. The eyecandy is not anything extra-special but still looks “good enough.” The tileset which is used has some masking bugs, but this is not the fault of the author.
Tile Errors: There are not really any tileset errors in this level to speak of. I do, however, have a few complaints about the tileset itself. While “Mirrow’s Kingdom” is indeed a good tileset, it does have a few masking problems. Most notably, it’s very easy to get stuck on the slanted cieling tiles. This happened several times when I was testing this level (luckily, Controller’s self destruct got me unstuck.) This can not really be fixed by the levelmaker, but it is still a problem and is worth noting.
Creativity: The tileset was not used extremely creatively. It’s not easy to make a huge creative tileset expedition with this tileset. It just does not allow for it. Maybe a little too flatteringly, Blackraptor put in a heck of a lot of pro-Mirrow tiles. It made me wonder for an instant if Mirrow was secretly Blackraptor’s evil doppleganger, but I doubt it. Still, this does add a certain varying to the level’s eyecandy. Regardless, there is not much to complain about or go on and on about regarding the creativity of the eyecandy. However, I will use this time to talk about the music (I don’t have a music section.) While I will not downgrade for this, the music had nothing to do with the level and seemed out of place and wrong. This doesn’t have anything to do with eyecandy at all, but I thought I would talk about it here anyway.

PLACEMENT OF STUFF
Carrots: Carrot placement really needs work. There are two carrots in the entire level, both of them full heals. They are placed in adjacent terraces that are only accessable via sucker tubes on the opposite ends of a large platform. They are way, way too close together and a player could easily grab both. There was little more than one carrot needed in this level since it does not go nuts with powerups. Or at least a little distance between the carrots would have been nice.
Powerups: The level, as far as I could tell, contains two powerups. The first of which is an RF in the coin warp and the other a bouncy powerup which happens to be fairly hard-to-get but not hard to find. Both of these are placed fairly well and I can not complain. It does take a while to find a powerup in intense large battles, making this level more suited for smaller, less roast-intensive battles, that will probably be 0wned by whoever happens to posess a powerup.
Basic Weapons: Basic weapons were very well placed and just the right amount was used. The overall amount of ammunition seemed a bit low, but this could be attributed to the abscence of easy-to-get powerups. The basic weapondry was well distributed accross the play area.

GAMEPLAY AND FLOW
Flow/Navigation: Flow was good, though not as good as the layout would make you expect. It was not that hard to get around the level, but it did certainally take some play to get used to. Flow was alright, though there was nothing extraspecial about it. The springs were well-placed but apparently Blackraptor tested in single player and did not take into account that the flow of which directions you are sent by spring changes from single player to multiplayer. This showed. It was obvious what Blackraptor was trying to do, but in some cases it did not work. Still, flow was pretty good overall.
Layout: Layout was outstanding. This was probably the area that the level excelled in most. On paper, you would expect that this would be a really, really good level. The bases were well-positioned. In fact, everything except the carrot were nearly perfect layout-wise. This is not common in levels these days, but it does show that a great deal of planning went into the layout of this level, and it definitely slows. Layout is probably the level’s strongest point. It takes some degree of getting used to, but once you do, you will love the layout of this level.

CTF SPECIFICS
Balance: This level is pretty much just a flip of itself. There is not much difference between one side and the other, though red was a tad closer to the coin warp. Overall, balance was good, but the two carrots just felt “wrong.”
Compatibility: I am worried about whether this level has flag bug or not. In my testing with FireSworD, I was unable to cause flag bug. Then again, I’m really, really, really, really, really, really bad at causing flag bug. I can not say whether or not this level is prone to it or not, but it sure looks like it is (half-masked one tile wide walls…eurgh.) Until I cause it, I can not knock the level for flag bug. Still, I would seriously recommend making the walls in the level much more thick, just in case. This level did not cause my Jazz 2 to crash, though I did get stuck several times. This getting stuck was, however, the fault of the tileset’s mask, not the levelmaker.

SUMMARY
Blackraptor is getting really good. For a level by a semi-new levelmaker, this is outstanding work. There are a few bugs that make this level annoying such as the repetitive and ill-fitted trance music and the carrots being so close together, but overall this is a very high-quality work. The best aspect of this level, layout, is even better than a lot of the layouts you see in levels today made by much more “famous” levelmakers. This is definitely a good level, though it does have some annoying bugs that may deter some.

+ PROS: Layout is great. This level is pretty good overall. Looks good and plays good, too.

- CONS: Annoying music. Possible flag bug. Carrots wayyyyyyyyy too close together.

VERDICT: I’m not a huge fan of flipped levels, but this one is quite good. The layout is the best part of this level by far, as I have stated many times before in this review. The level does take some getting used to however. You can’t just start playing and automatically grasp how to move around in the level. It takes practice. This is not necessarily a bad thing – luck is not what Capture the Flag is about. Still, the learning curve may be steep, but this level is quite good. There were a few bugs that really bugged me (no pun intended.) The music was out of place, the carrots were far too near to eachother, the springs were a bit glitchy, and there was possible flag bug. Still, these problems could be fairly easily fixed. This level is not anything mega-extrodinary, but it is a very good and solid Capture the Flag level, especially for someone who is relatively new to levelmaking. Overall, I give this level a seven point five and download recommendation. You may want to play some other music while playing this level, but it still is great fun. Great job, Blackraptor.

Im quite impressed by this level. The tileset is…..different, but its been made to look quite good by Blackraptor. Its a difficult level to learn so you’ll have a definate advantage if you know where youre going. I liked the layout around the bases, thought that was quite unique. Things i didnt like were that sometimes you got taken for a ride by tubes jutting out from walls that you didnt intend on hitting (but i suppose you can avoid these better if you learn the level more throughly) and the trancy type music. Overall though its a very good effort, ratings will depend much on personal taste of the tileset. I liked it so it gets a d/l recommendation from me.

Some levels are realy good, other where a little smale, music great, an 8!!!P.s woud you please review my levels(Devans revenge episode 2,3 and 4???)

Wow, some really good lvls there, some where to small, but the music is good.

Wel done.

I hate to have to do this, but this is definately not a 9. Here’s what I think of this pack:

GAMEPLAY:

Almost every level in this pack has either average gameplay or possibly worse. They’re all kinda boring and not too original. The levels which use Disguise’s earlier tilesets I’m not too fond of. The only level I kinda like the gameplay in is Hazardous Space, except for the turret you placed at the red base; it gets annoying. Some of these levels could be more spacious in places. Others could use fewer platforms. And some levels are confusing, like IronCTF.

Some advice: Try using faster tubes; slow tubes take away from the gameplay. And you should try to make multiple routes to and from the bases. Also, I never really thought placing one base a lot higher than the other was a good idea (since it tends to complicate gameplay), but that’s just my opinion.

EYE CANDY:

It’s alright, but not great. Stay away from excessive foreground (like in SewageCTF). Maybe you should consider using textured backgrounds in your levels in the future because it makes some levels look rather dull.

CARROT AND AMMO PLACEMENT:

Some ammo in some places: not a good combination. And I’m not too crazy about +1 carrots, but you did include full energy carrots and they have generally good placement so that’s OK.

HOST THIS OFTEN?

Nah, needs work. But has potential. I’ll give this a 7 for the effort.[This review has been edited by BlurredD]

That’s the greatest over-rating I ever had seen. Please, make up your rating. ;-P

OMG 9.5 THANX THANX THANX

The reason i posted this review is because i forgot to mention something. Firesword deserves some credit for inspiration, because a while ago, after i made my battlepack, conversionbattlepack, so it was named, FS tried convincing me to make a CTF pack instead of a race pack. And so i did, so i guess this pack was partially made for FS, and partially for myself o’course. So whenever u see FS, bonk him on the head with a crowbar plz. Some more reviews plz, i feel very good today =)

Thanx blurredD, it needed that. Like i said, these are mini, if they werent mine, i personally would of rated them an 8. Ill keep working on bigger levels.[This review has been edited by Blackraptor]

wOOT! first review
Ahem neways review on you level pack:

Sewage CTF: Mmm Very good layout, nice choice of music, nice eye candy- lots of fore+background *nice

Planet Strawberry: Mmmmmmm yummy this tileset looked good enuff to eat! Ahem. Well, layout as usual, nice good eye candy- interesting- a fast speed pad- good efects.

Aquatic Antics: Eh? Something smells fishy here!
This is disguises fish tileset, interesting, funny level, good structure for CTF playing and good weapon selection.

Hazardous Space: Ohh, nice level, similar (in a way) to Zaitox Station nice layout, good weapons selection and good back+foreground effects.

Unreal CTF: This CTF is really unreal! Weird things blinking is- UNREAL! Interesting tileset, nice layout- lil hard to see where your going because of the some-what clear differences.

Flodded Rainforest: Nice- using nature tileset- good choice- nice weapons placement and good layout- mostly smooth for CTF playing (TIP!!!) so good job on did lvl.

Land Of Darkness: Discription siuits da tileset, very dark and efil. Good movement, weapon selection: good. Funne background ^_

Iron CTF: Lovely choice of music, nice tileset too! Great smooth lvl, float-ups for easy gameplay, and good lvl features. Personally this was my favourite.

All in all i give this great CTF Level pack at 9.5!

Download reccomended![This review has been edited by KILLERRABBIT]

I actually thought this was a battle level as well, if a slightly original one. I didn’t really understand the layout of the level, so I’ll do my bestest to review it.

It makes good use of Disguise’s Spacey Universe tileset, and I haven’t seen any glitches or bad corners. However, I didn’t see much attention to detail – there was just a few craters on the blue zone, and some overuse of the credits. Also, some of the tiles could have been used, but weren’t. Other than this, I found it a little boring – for example the Level 8 has no auto movement, and there’s no other background layers that I’ve found. I know there’s not many background tiles in the tileset, but if that happens take some tessalating ones and make them transparent. Also, in the ‘enclosed’ areas on futuristic levels, make the background semitransparent to make a part-see through wall so the parralaxing background shows through. Looks pretty :)

The idea was good and original, but also could’ve been better. I didn’t start off with a powerup very often either, and there wasn’t much ammo in the green room, so if you don’t like the Blaster you won’t do so well when you run out of ammo. I also found the room changint thing quite weird – you could find your way into all the rooms again apart from the rocky planet one. In the blue zone, there were a few springs that got in the way and a blaster powerup that I couldn’t work out how to reach because of an oddly-placed warp. Also, I’m not so keen on enclosed areas with lots of blocks in them, like the big green room in this level. It’s hard to attack someone, with all those blocks and stuff in the way. Finally, I couldn’t find any layer 3 usage or secrets to find. It got a bit boring, eventually.

This level has lots of potential. It was fun at first, but I eventually got bored of it and started writing this. You could’ve added some more stuff in it, like tubes or belts or secret areas, and spiffed up the other layers a bit. As it is now you’ll just wander around aimlessly looking for anyone to shoot at, in a big green room. It’s not the best, but if you spruce it up a bit you may have a good, fun level to play :)

This isn’t really a new gametype technically, but more of a twist on battle (don’t let the fact it’s listed as “assault” fool you – it isn’t assault.) “Trio Space War” is, in fact, a battle level. However, the game is played within three arenas. The red arena, which seems to be the barren landscape of an alien planet with it’s many hills and slopes. The blue arena features a blue-colored planet which resembles the moon. This area has mostly even ground but leads to a hill which eventually ends up at a gap that leads into a small passage below. All three of this lands are connected be a series of warps, reperesented by “bulls-eye” rings that are the color of whatever planet is lead to. This warps, while an interesting idea, are both a good and bad thing. During play, players frequently found themselves falling into warps they never wanted to enter in the first place. You then had to find an appropriate warp to get back to the correct planet. By the time I was able to do that, opponents will probably be long gone. However, this also added to the fun. Play was chaotic. While some people may not like that, it does add to the level’s fun factor. Some games (especially one-on-ones, which this level is good for) end up being some strange hide-and-seek/tag hybrid where players are running around trying to find eachother. I have some gripes with the level’s eyecandy. In some places, it just looks “off”, especially on some of the floors. However, the craters look spifftacular, and most of the questionable eyecandy problems (except for the blue planet’s half complete-looking ground) were related to the crater use in the blue planet. The green planet had the fewest eyecandy bugs. Some passages were way too small, and could quickly become annoying, especially when you are being chased or following many people at once. If two players are going through the opposite way, there will be problems. There are also a few dead ends. For a level with this hide-and-seek-like gameplay, I was disappointed with the weapon placement. There was few weapons, and they seemed to be placed so very few bottlenecks other than near powerups were made. This level is too Jazz-friendly. Make it more Spaz-friendly or Jazz will have too large of an advantage. Other than that, it’s a pretty good back, though not the greatest. It’s a case of a good idea with execution that could have been better. Still worth a download for battle fans, though.

Mmh.. I’m tired, leave me alone. TRIO SPACE WAR IS IT’S NAME, LET’S DO ANOTHER UNNESSESSARY LONG REVIEW, SHALL WE?

Eyecandy: Not too much to say here, slightly above average eyecandy I suppose. It was a bit plain, the tiles didn’t involve much more than a few crators and simple colours. Strangely enough only one planet had a backround other than the default one which was a mountain in the backround that didn’t move. To tell the truth, the eyecandy was a bit boring. Though this is true, I didn’t see any mistakes, either. Not bad, I’d say. Gameplay: Meh.. I didn’t like it that much. There are blue springs that get in the way of your narrow path in certain areas, and confusing warps. I have to say, the warping scheme was a bit odd. You didn’t always start off with a powerup, infact I rarely did. When you start off you get to pick between three planets to battle in. I don’t at all consider this survivor, other than “grouped battle.” Again, I have my good points to this level. It was very Jazz friendly, fairly easy to get around for most areas. By the way, you never made it so it’s impossible to get the powerups without having to warp, eg.(ice powerup) Other than that, not bad. Weapons/Placement: Again, I wasn’t too impressed with this aspect of the level. Yes, the weapons are sparse, and no, they don’t really have much of a variety to them. Rectangular shaped ammo is quite boring. Add more variety to it. As for placement, I didn’t have a problem with that. Good placement, there. My additional comments to the level are as follows. “Trio Space War” is more a battle level than it is an Assult/Survivor level. I found it a bit boring, not much layer three or sucker tubes or anything, mostly just running around in circles killing people. I didn’t think this level requires too much if any strategy at all. The idea of yours is okay, but it can use improving. As for the rating, overall you get a 6.5 Yes, it’s a little disappointing but you have potential. Keep working on it! Download Recommendation, maybe.. It depends all on what you like, really.

Note: This review has been kept short because trafton already wrote a big one, and I think he was comprehensive enough (plus I agree with him).

Sweet Tooth
This is a rather circular designed level using the Candion tileset. It’s fairly average in most respects. The layout is average, the eyecandy is average, and the flow is average. I’m giving it a 6.7. A few gripes I have are that near the bottom of the level there are certain areas of masked stuff that should be one wayed, and that the far right “secret area” of the level is basially on gigantic dead end. This level is extremely spaz-biased too. Finally, this level overuses green blocks and they look ugly.

Dune Battle
I think this level is the worst in the pack. It’s confusing, doesn’t look great and has a below average layout. There also isn’t enough ammo, and there are a few bugs. The most noticable bug is that there are events placed on the far right edge of the level. Events there do not work. Also, the left edge of the level is unmasked which means players can go over there and make themselves almost invincible. Finally, this level uses hook events, which essencially just slow down the player. Vines always work better. This level gets a 6.2.

Frostbattle
Although this level has many, many tiling bugs and looks a little ugly, it’s otherwise not bad. There are dead ends and stuff, but arrows allow me to know where I am going so I do not run into many dead ends. The level flows averagely, and the ammo placement is good. The layout is the best and most original in the pack, which makes this level my favourite. 7.2.

Overall this pack gets a 6.7 from me. Not bad, but it needs more work.

Well, since I’ve played this pack several times, I feel that I am obligated to rate it. So, here I go.

The first level in this pack is one by the file name of candionbatl.j2l, entitled “Sweet Tooth.” The first thing I noticed with this level is that the flow of the level really needs work. While the layout (in JCS) is not bad at all, the author seemed to only use springs in areas where it was required. I tested it with Spaz, but I can’t imagine trying to play it with Jazz and having to uppercut whenever I wanted to get anywhere. The lack of springs damages an otherwise fairly good level. Weapon placement, contrary to navigation, is very good. There weren’t many gripes I could find. Powerups weren’t overused, but the bouncy powerup was in an area that was hard to get to with Spaz, and I could imagine almost impossible to enter with Jazz without taking up time that could be spent battling the opponent. The spoons in the level have one way applied to most of the spoon, but the part connected to the wall is as solid as a brick, which makes it hard to tell where you should jump and where you shouldn’t. This level features a lot of dead ends which subtract from the gameplay. Many corridors are small, making navigation often annoying. Eyecandy was good, but in some parts just looked off. The tileset served up O.K. but usually redundant eyecandy that could have been used better. The background looked like it would be better off in a low-quality Microsoft Powerpoint presentation than a level. It’s a level that suffers from small annoyances that build up, but still not a bad level.

The second level, desertobatl.j2l aka “Dune Battle” looked very good at first glance. The shimmering blue waterfalls were used well, and there were few tile errors in the dunes. Unlike in the previous level, it seems “Dune Battle” is often a little more friendly towards Jazz than it is towards Spaz. This is mainly because Spaz, when trying to get the seeker powerup, will often end up accidentally jumping through the bridge, or missing completely and falling down to an area where the player must go around the entire level in order to get another try. Jazz, on the other hand, can easily get it using helicopter ears. The tileset was used in an interesting way that I haven’t really seen before, but there are areas where this was annoying. The level was severely knocked by the bottom of it. Most of the level’s bottom is covered so you can not see it while you are down there. This tends to turn into a mad scuttle jumping trying to get out of this area. Also, there are a few platforms that are actually in the background that I often tried to jump onto. They look no different from all the other platforms, and this can be really confusing. Another eyecandy gripe would be the various spikes around the level. When I first saw them, I thought to myself “oh no. Please tell me he didn’t use the hurt event.” Fortunately, the author didn’t make the classic mistake of trying to use Hurt in a multiplayer level. However, menacing spikes that you can just walk through is a bit abnormal. It would be a good idea just to remove them entirely. Spring use was much better in this level, and there were fewer dead ends than the last one. However, weapon placement was not as good. The seeker powerup is a big advantage in this level. If you get it, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a nice amount of kills before someone can kill you. The rest of the level features some clumped together ammo, a lot of it pepper spray (which is rarely used since most people actually favor the blaster above the far-reaching but hard-to-see and often annoying to aim pepper spray.) Eyecandy was otherwise good (including the only above average background in this entire pack), and navigation was better than the other level (except for the layer-covered bottom). This is still probably my least favorite level in the pack, but not bad.

The final level, nippiusbatl.j2l aka Frostbattle, which uses Violet CLM’s excellent Nippius conversion (Violet actually made all the conversions in this pack I believe), was probably my favorite level in the entire pack. Navigation was very, very good. I never had to backtrack, except to get into a hole with a powerup. There are fire, ice, and bouncy powerups in the level (one each.) Ice, while it certainally fits the tileset, is pretty much as useful in multiplayer as a stick is when you are about to be eaten by a pack of hungry leapords. Eyecandy was pretty much tedious and boring. The background, again, looks like a PowerPoint background (though it is the original background from the Jazz 1 level). A lot of the level features pretty much no eyecandy. Some parts may have some interesting items in it, but most of it consists of the ultra-boring ground tiles with little eyecandy to be seen. It may not be pretty, but this level certainally has great eyecandy, and is worth the download for that alone. My favorite level in this pack, I would say.

Rating the pack is hard. The pack suffers from many small annoyances, which brings it’s score down quite a bit. Still, this pack is definitely worth a download, especially if you are a battle fan or Jazz Jackrabbit 1 buff. It may have some bugs, but everyone can find at least one level they like in this pack, since the style they were made with differs in many ways. It’s a great pack if you are a battle fan, but otherwise you may not love this download. I’ll give it a download recommendation and a 7.1, rounded down to a pretty good score of 7. Not a bad effort at all. Keep up the good work. You have a lot of potential, Blackraptor.

-Trafton

Let’s see…I’ll start with candionbatle.j2l.

This level, named Sweet Tooth, is a decent level in the JJ1 christmas tileset. The eyecandy is fine for the tileset—you’ve got your gingerbread men, your lollipops, your chocolate, and your oreos—who could ask for more? There are two powerups and two carrots: a bouncy powerup, an RF powerup, a full energy carrot, and a +1 health carrot. I don’t see anything wrong with weapon placement.

The main flaw in this level is in the flow. The RF powerup is situated at the end of a hidden passage on the right side of the level. The room it is in has no exit other than the entrance, basically leaving the level as a circle with a line going off it at one point. I don’t know if there’s anything wrong with that inherently, but in this case it seems to make the level a bit restrictive, IMHO. The layout might also be more expansive, and easier to navigate. There are a few dead ends in other places, too, such as the bouncies at the left.

I’ll rate this level a 6.5-7.0. Before rating it I looked at some other levels with average ratings of 7.0; it seems battle levels have a lot to stack up to in terms of competition, so I would say a 7, or even a 6.5, isn’t a bad score at all.

Next level: Dune Battle, filename desertobatl.j2l. This is a fun level with some nice secrets. The bottom part of the level seems fairly jazz friendly; however, it is difficult for either character to easily navigate through the dunes at the very bottom where one’s view is blocked by a foreground layer. I found this an annoyance while playing this level. Enigma noted that some of the hooks can be replaced by vines; I echo this. There’s a passage in the upper middle that can be annoying to climb through because of the hooks.
Rating: 6.8

Last level: Frostbattle, filename nippiusbattle.j2l. Probably the best level of the pack. The flow is very nice; the level is quite easy to navigate. I see no spaz bias; if anything, the level slightly favors jazz (which isn’t bad). With just powerups (plus ice), the level’s three +1 carrots seem to be enough. Rating 7.2.

Oh, yes, I forgot: the music. All of it blends quite nicely with the levels. I haven’t played JJ1—is this the original JJ1 music? In any case, the 3sms are very nice additions.

Overall pack rating: 7.0. A nice battle pack; download recommended.

I admit, these lvls made it hard for me without JJ codes. i know, im kinda noobish so, :)