Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I’m finally getting around to reviewing this level, something I said I’d do quite some time ago. Now that I have played in the level more, I have no excuse to not review this.

This is an all around good level, suitable for duels or 2vs2 ctf games. It has a fairly original feel due to the usage of pinball events, and is well balanced due to it being symmetrical.

The level is a little too skewed towards the top. Almost all of the good stuff is located there, and the only real reason to go to the rather large bottom area of the level is to get the +1 carrot. Even then, there is a full NRG that spawns at the top. You can also find gun9 at the bottom which can be used to get the RF powerup, but you can also get it with bouncers. This makes the level suffer from a bit of a battle 1 complex, in that it has a large area that doesn’t serve enough of a purpose. Perhaps this could be changed if the two carrots were swapped, so the full nrg spawned at the bottom.

The design of the level makes the gameplay fairly straightforward and fast paced. There aren’t very many places to go, and it is very easy to corner your opponent. For duels, I would say that it is perhaps a bit too easy to get cornered, since this creates a potential for standoffs. This wasn’t a major problem when I dueled here though.

The level requires a fair amount of skill to be good at. The carrot at the bottom is a bit tricky to get, and there are a few areas where somewhat difficult jumps and RF jumping are helpful. This lends a bit of complexity to the level, which it otherwise lacks.

The RF powerup in this level needs to be shot to get it. As stated earlier, you can get it with either gun9 or gun2. Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be enough “loose” rf ammo around the level, which was particularly annoying when I shot the powerup and only got 3 ammo from it.

One aspect of the level I particularly liked was the floor under the full NRG: it was covered in pinball bumpers. If the full NRG gets shot down, the only way to get it is to stomp. This takes time, and causes it to be a bit of a deathtrap. Fairly entertaining.

This level is fairly solid and well polished, and because of that I give it an 8.

This is a small CTF level by Snooze with a fairly simple design that you can learn in mere minutes. It’s a fairly typical level in terms of quality: nothing special, but good enough to enjoy.

The first thing you might notice when playing this level is that the eyecandy is quite detailed, with no parallaxing background. In other words, the entire level, background and all, has a single scroll speed. Unfortunately, due to the tileset having a limited pallete of colours, this makes the level have a very “busy” look to it. This winds up adversely affecting gameplay; it becomes common for players to not see stray seeker missles and other hazards heading towards them before it is too late, unless they are really paying attention.

While this level is very small, I do not reccomend dueling in it. The level contains only a single full nrg carrot, and while that is not a bad thing, it makes the level much more suited to 2vs 2 gameplay. Anything larger though, and the level would be too crowded. The level thus has a very limited scope, unless you don’t mind dueling in levels with a single carrot.

One major problem I noticed in this level, which is present in almost all of Snooze’s levels, is the prominince of float up events. Using these sparingly is a good thing, but in the case of this level, the authour simply goes too far. These events are used in places where they are very easy to notice, and almost seem like a replacement for springs. There is a reason jj2 has a “jump” key. Throwing float up events all over the place is completely unnecessary.

Similar to the problem with float ups, I noticed that there are a few pits where if you run directly into them and fall, you will go through the side of the pit and hit a spring that takes you back to the top of the platform on the other side. If I run into a pit, I EXPECT to fall through it, not be magically transported to the other side. If I wanted to get to the other side I would JUMP. Several times while testing I ran into this problem, and while it is easy to get used to, it is annoying and pointless.

The level contains a single toaster powerup. Pepper spray and seekers are also prominent, both useful in this level. Finally there are a few electro blasters to get the toaster powerup, and rf missles. I found both of these weapons to be mostly useless. The electro blaster is only good for getting the powerup, and the rf missles are hard to use because the level is so enclosed, not to mention being inferior to pepper spray in terms of range and speed. For some reason I couldn’t find any bouncers, which would have been a great weapon in this level.

Speaking of weapons, I found the location of the electro blaster to be very spaz-biased. They are located in a pit, where spaz could jump down and double jump to get them, while jazz would have to fall all the way through. The lack of bouncers also makes this level even more spaz-biased.

Overall I rate this level a 7. I was considering giving this a 6, but the level was enjoyable enough to warrant a point higher than that.

Battle 4 is perhaps the worst battle level ever made, anyway.

There were very few gems because gems are stupid worthless items that do nothing important. I only used them in cases where they created an effect.

I don’t normally review, but I got a chance to play this so here it goes.

Shockwave Sanctuary: 6
This level bothers me for a few reasons. The main one being the so called “new system to capture the flag”. That system not only makes the bases nearly impossible to defend, it is also tedious to go through and has a confusing coin system to top it all off. I feel this detracts from gameplay overall.

I think the design of this level is pretty average. It doesn’t really have anything unique about it (other than the weird system) and is alltogether unmemoriable.

Eyecandy is ok. I’ve seen better things done with this tileset, but there is only so much you can do with an official set that hasn’t been done before. Still, the level pretty much looks like countless other tubelectric levels.

I don’t like how this level flows. There are weird “turret” things near the base which shouldn’t be there for example.

Finally, one thing in particular seems to catch my intrest about this level. The tubes around the 1h carrot near the bottom are arranged into what seems to be a contorted swastika, with the carrot in the middle. What this means, I don’t know.

Cave Connection: 7
This level is a bit better than the other two. The overall layout is a bit more unique, with the level sectored off into 4 distinct areas. Two of the areas are out of the way from the main path from base to base, but those areas contain all the goodies. Carrots can only be obtained by going through tubes, and both tubes lead players to the same area.

This isn’t a bad idea, but the way it is presented is bad. First of all, each tube has a pair of 1h carrots. Since a player has to pass over both, this can lead to some weird situations of there only being one carrot sometimes. 4 carrots is also a lot, and can slow down gameplay. I personally don’t see the point of this, and think full nrg carrots would have been a better choice.

The bottom tube is also painfully hard to access, and is probably near impossible to get into with jazz. I don’t mind bias towards one character, but this is just bad. Aside from that one tube problem and a few oddly placed warps, the flow seems ok though.

This level has average eyecandy, like the other ones in this pack. There are a few tile bugs here and there, and a lot of places it could be better, but not bad overall.

God’s Garden: 6
One thing I really noticed about this level is that it is way too easy to get stuck. This level feels like it wasn’t tested.

One of the reasons it is so easy to get stuck is because it seems like most of the level is made up of one way events. This also has the effect of making the level a haven for seekers, which happen to be abundant. The weird thing is, the seeker powerup is placed in a wall, even though it is kind of pointless to do that for this level.

There are a number of tubes, but I found the exit points to be in weird places. I kept trying to enter tubes which just shot me back out. There are also tile bugs on those tube entrances/exits.

This level has a pretty bland look. Swamps is a pretty hard tileset to use if you want to make a good looking level. It requires extensive usage of layer 5, something there is not very much of in this level.

Overall: 6.33, rounded up to 6.5
This level pack is pretty mediocre. The people who made these levels seem to know what they are doing, and I bet they are capable of making good levels. In this case though, the levels seem pretty rushed and uninspired. My suggestion for the authours is to take a look at various popular levels, and see what makes them good.

There was a review here, but it was deleted since mike isn’t up to date with the current j2o policies, and did not merely edit it. He won’t do that again. Please do not sue. It was somewhere in the 8.2ish range, and said something like “nice tileset, I like it” or “his tileset is neat i like it” or “nice shoes” or somesuch. Anyway, if the original authour would like to repost it with more detail, please do so.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

I am posting this review out of disgust for the overratedness of this level pack.

All three of these levels are the same thing with the tileset switched. Essencially, this is just one level. I do not appreciate redundancy in level packs. Pick one tileset and stick with it. No one wants 3 of the same level.

These levels do not live up to their collective name. They may have eye-candy, but it is nothing remarkable. The eye candy is merely average, and in some places it is actually quite lacking and flawed. I found many tiling errors, and the background and foreground are virturally nonexistant. I have seen outstanding work done with this tileset in terms of visual appeal. This level does not use the capabilities of this tileset to full potential at all, nor does it look like the authour even tried that hard. There is no creative tile use at all, since the whole level has a generic look to it.

Despite the lack of the advertised eye-candy, things only get worse from there. The level is poorly designed, with a multitude of dead ends and an overall lack of strategic focus. The ammo placement is reasonably well done, but the selection of ammo is not. This level has ice and TNT, with no real use for them in the level. If there were a few springs to freeze or powerups to get through walls, I wouldn’t mind this. Unfortunately, there aren’t any powerups at all. I get the feeling that not much thought was put into the design of this level.

Bugs are numerous in this level. The choice of tiles is poor in some areas due to them being ugly, but it is also poor becuase of the masking in them. It is extremely easy to get stuck in the walls. Also, the left edge of the level has been left uncovered by tiles, meaning that anyone can hide there and be immune to the effects of people shooting. There is an abundance of ricochet events, things which are known to cause 3+ heart kills due to their erratic behaviour and bad coding. The worst problem is the getting stuck, which I explained above. It is so bad that there is one area of the level where pretty much all of the walls like to eat players.

Overall I get the feeling that this level was rushed. Areas of the level seem incomplete. This level also has not been tested well enough, or perhaps it wasn’t tested at all. The layout is quite “mindless” meaning that there is really no apparent strategy here (nothing unique at least).

Please, test your levels with other people and get their opinions before you ask for ours on J2O. While they will offer good advice on how to improve your level, we will just give criticism, possibly negative. If you neglect the advice of testers or do not select ones which know what they are doing, you might get some jerk like me spoiling your nice 7 average by exposing the level as it really is.

Overall Rating: 3.7

Unimpressive.

Please note that this level is in no way connected to the OLC level pack which is currently in development. And also, please be thankful of that.

I hate to think what trafton is going to go through when I release my project…

I made OVC if anyone cares. Keep in mind that this pack has a modified version of the one used in JDC. The level is also on J2O, listed as “Team Battle.”

As for my review, I like the program, but it lacks some features which I think it should have. Take jazztool (another program that can be used to join servers, and my personal preference) for example. It has all the features of this program except for server hosting and IP adress display. It (usually) shows the ping of the server, and it also shows how long it has been up. Plus it will list the entire server list, TSF and 1.23 included, and joining either server requires a simple double click; no checkboxes or menus or anything.

I used this program a bit, and I didn’t seem to find any bugs, so that’s a good thing.

One complaint that I have is that the box which lists the servers is a little too small. A few columns are cut off, and they require you scroll to the right to view them. I suggest making the window wider.

Overall, this program is useful, but I just don’t think it beats the rest of the launchers we have out there. I’m giving it a 7.2. Good effort, but I think that a second, updated version should be made sometime in the future, obviously to add more features.[This review has been edited by Newspaz]

Please make sure your tilesets do not overwrite older ones. This can cause problems which I don’t think I need to explain.

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.

I’d like to point out that if you simply run off a platform without jumping, you will more likely than not land on a platform below you. Enough practice and you will only be falling if you are fighting (which is the intention).

Blode is evil. It was designed by a foo and it only appeals to foos (and the occasional FEIND).

This tileset, however, does look like it is in blode land. That would give it a somewhat high rating. Unfortunately, the mask is rather icky, lowering the rating by a substantial 2.5 points.

Bleached Diamondus is a quite small, intense CTF level suited for 4 players at the most. It has a creative, unique layout which is semi-symmetrical, and uses my “Dreary Diamondus” pallete edit.

When I played here, it was with about 6 people. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but the level was quite crowded with that amount, and not in a way I enjoy. Once the number lowered to about 4, things still felt a bit crowded, but in a good way. If you do not like intense gameplay, you will NOT like this level, but then, it’s a lot better than slow gameplay. FireSword did a good job with this level, and it is definately his best CTF level on j2o.

The best part about this level is the layout. While most good CTF levels use original layouts, this one is like no other at all. Each base is located in a pit which is walled by sucker tubes that carry you out to the top. If you are shot with a seeker, you will probably be thrown out of the base. The carrot is located in a warp, where you are supposed to fall into the carrot and immediately warp out again. There are a lot of tubes in this level, making ambush a very powerful tactic. This level is definately worth downloading just to look at the design.

The other high point of this level is the eyecandy. The level looks excellent, professional, but not too cluttered with eyecandy as to make it annoying for the player. It is only a basic diamondus-style eyecandy design: nothing totally unique but still impressive.

Looking into other aspects, we find what brings the score down. In terms of playability (moving around, gameflow, etc), this level scores only average. Many springs do not bring you high enough, and require a double jump to reach certain platforms. Many platforms feel like they are one tile too short, and they require awkward jumps in order to reach other ones. This is extremely evident with a certain sloped “tunnel” through a wall in the middle of the level, and a spring that feels like it should bring you up to the bouncer powerup. This doesn’t mean there aren’t good points of the playability, though. Liberal use of the one way event makes it much easier to move around, and it could safely be said that without those events, the level would be much, much worse.

Ammo in this level is easy to reach for the most part, and it is scattered around in patches that look good. None of that rectangular stuff that is in a lot of other levels. It is fairly easy to reach, but could be easier.

As for bugs, there is only two are evident (at least that I could find). In the carrot warp, you can bounce off of the water instead of warping when you hit it (like you should). This means you can stay in the carrot room and wait for it to respawn. Also, the carrot can be shot down into some layer 3, making it totally invisible. Other than that, the level is bug-free and really feels like a lot of effort was put into testing it.

I give this level a 7.7 because it is a good, solid level that is well designed.

Pier 47 is a decent ctf level using the beach tileset. It’s a definate improvement over bulldog’s previously released level, but has some major problems which could have been easily avoided with some pre-release testing by various people.

Contrary to the previous reviewer’s opinions, I think this level looks pretty good. While the background is rather bland, the decorations on layers 5 through 2 are well-done. The level has it’s own look; you cannot easily confuse it with another CTF level using the beach tileset. The level looks distinct, and that is something creative eyecandy should be used for. This is certainly not an ugly level.

The layout of Pier 47 is good and unique. The “main” area of the level is a rather wide-open top area, which contains the bases: the red base in the top left and the blue base in the top right. Underneath that is a more enclosed section of the level, which contains all of the powerups and most of the ammo. There is one large dead end down there, containing a bouncer powerup. The dead end is not badly placed, and is not useless, but it is very big. This makes getting the bouncer powerup a bit too dangerous, considering that it’s not the most valuable weapon in the level. The rest of the layout is pretty good, and that one bad spot does not ruin it. There is a rather strange empty room in the bottom-left regeon of the level, but it is useful to hide in. It does not detract from the gameplay.

Other powerups are toasters, blaster, and RF. All of them are well-located. Floating ammo is sparse, but there are several barrels and crates scattered throughout the lower-interior. These provide a good supply of ammunition, although they may create framerate-lag after half an hour of playing or so. There is virturally no ammo in the upper area of the level, and there is none near the start positions. This is especially true for the area of the blue base, which is totally devoid of any pickup. Ammo placement in this level needs work, and would be the worst aspect of the level if not for one other thing…

There is no carrot in this level! That just doesn’t work for CTF. An injured player might as well just rejoin to gain health, as that is the only way to do it in this level, aside from death. Flag holders cannot hope to live long, and players can’t hope to get the flag without standing a very high chance of living more than 2 seconds. I am all for intense gameplay, but having four powerups in a level and not even a 1h carrot is just absurd. If this level could be redesigned with a carrot somewhere, the score of this review may improve by a whole point. This is a very significant problem, and when I found out that there was no carrot, I was quite startled.

There are also a few other flaws. There is one area near the bottom-left which is easy to get stuck in, and there is a single player level start near the red base. Single player starts are used by both teams, so sometimes I found myself (a member of the blue team), spawning right at the red base. That is a very unfair advantage. Another “bug” in the level is a semi-invisible platform which can only be accessed by jazz or a skilled spaz player with powered up RFs. This could possibly be an intended platform, but I do not like it.

Moving around in this level is faily easy, but there are a few difficult spots, such as near the red base. It is easy to unintentionally go into a certain tube near there, which is frustrating because it carries you a few seconds away from the red base. A few springs don’t carry you high enough, and it is a little difficult to reach the location of the blaster powerup. In terms of playability and flow, this level is average.

Overall, this is a level that could have been great, but failed to provide a few key things. It has a good layout, looks good, but the rest is just average — and it has no carrot. I’ll give this level a 7.0, which means I think that it is above-average, but not good enough to host in my server or use in JDC.

Keep making levels, because I can see a serious potential in you. Your levels continue to improve with each of your releases, and I look forward to seeing your next one.

Knightmare Castle is a highly enjoyable, simple CTF level. It is basically a large, symmetrical room with two warps, two tubes, a few powerups and a carrot. The bases are in each bottom corner, and are easy to find. Although this level is very basic in terms of design, it has a creative layout that allows for a lot of good strategies to be used.

The bouncer and RF powerups are located in an area which you can only access by sucker tube, unless you are skilled with RF-Jumping. They make for good areas to hide if you have the flag, since you can easily see people comming up and shoot them before they have a chance to hit you. The powerup areas are at least a second away from the bases, so they aren’t the best areas to hide at if you want to score a point quickly. There are also several other key points you can defend from, specifically underneath a certain platform near each base, and a ledge in front of each warp. This really makes the gameplay a lot more interesting, and can make the whole map hazardous for the player.

Getting from base to base is an easy task of simply running across a flat surface. However, this is a bit dangerous since there is a seeker powerup right in the middle of the path. Other ways to get to the enemy base are by using one of the warps, or taking an aerial apporach by using a spring or ledge. These methods are a little safer, unless your opponent knows you are going to use them. It is easy to be nailed down with RF missles and seekers, both abundant in the level.

There is one full nrg carrot in the top-middle region of the level, and can be reached by either jumping to it from the bouncer powerup or RF powerup, or by using a green spring to propell you up to it. It’s very easy to be killed while getting the carrot though, creating an intense experience for anyone at low health.

Speaking of springs, the placement of them is for the most part, excellent. They all send you just where you want to go, except for a patch of them near each base, which I found forced you to double jump in one area. It’s a small problem though, and the springs are still well-done nonetheless. Spaz has an easier time getting around in this level, due to a few high jumps, but the level isn’t totally geared in his favour. Because the level is extremely open (as in there is a lot of empty room), jazz can make ample use of coptering.

Ammo placement is fairly good, although there are 2 patches which seem rather useless. They are by the powerups in each top corner (they are the patches arragned in a vertical line). Those two groups of ammo are in places where people will not travel very often. The rest of it is very professionally done, but there doesn’t seem to be enough at times. The selection of weapons in the level is good, and they can all be used to their full potentials.

The eyecandy in this level is superb. It is not too excessive in that it gets annoying, but it looks great. This level has the perfect amount of eye-candy to use, and has its own distinct look. The background in one area looks a little bizarre, but it is a hard to notice “problem”, even if it can be called that.

I reccomend this level for 2 on 2 combat, but no more due to the small size. I played this level with more than six people, and it was a little to intense. When a few people left, the game was very fun, and that’s why I give this level an 8.2. I give any level that I would host online (not for the sake of reviewing, but simply for the sake of playing) a score of 8 or greater, and this level is certainly one I will play in again.

I would definately call this an improvement over your first level. This level is a quite small, simple level in the tubelectric tileset, which is basically of average quality. Electrical Battle Zone is excellent as a second level though, and it does show that thought work was put into it. It’s not one of those horrible, sloppy levels which suck to play in, like most first or second levels are, although this level has a couple of problems.

I would first of all, like to point out that the powerup and carrot placement is rather poor. Instead of scattering them about the level, there are 4 powerups (and one strangely placed fastfire) all next to each other in the same area. There is also a full NRG carrot in close proximity to them. The full health carrot isn’t a bad thing to have, but since it is near the powerups, that area of the level is overly important and will end up having masses of people “camp” there. This can be a good or a bad thing, but it’s generally not good because the rest of the level won’t be used at all. The layout is fine, although nothing outstanding, and it is fairly easy to get around the level. I like the ammo placement in this level, and although there is ice, an ultimately useless weapon, it’s professional-looking. You might not want to put food in your next level though, as a lot of players don’t like the sugar rush song. Many people play jazz2 with music turned off, so they can listen to their mp3 playlist while playing. Getting a sugar rush basically makes the songs sound horrible. I’m not taking points off for food though, because it’s a personal opinion and would be rather biased for me to deduct points.

I have not played in this level online, which I really should have done before I reviewed this. Luckily, it’s a simple level, so I can already see how the gameplay will work out. In a large game, like I already said, players will probably crowd in the top area which contains all of the powerups and a full health carrot. This level is not good for 1 on 1 combat though, because the full health carrot respawns too quickly. I reccomend this level for four players at the most. Any more and you will start to see “cluttering” in the top area.

This level looks a little bland, although it isn’t ugly. There isn’t much variation in the tiles for the most part. Eye candy is definately an area of level making you should work on, but it’s a good sign that you used this tileset properly. This level only has a 2-layer background, but it’s at least not ugly like some things this reviewer has seen. Some advice that I have is for you to use more tiles in the level, and to use animated tiles where possible. Look at the single player levels and ones other people have made, and look at how they arranged the tiles. That’s usually the best way to make a good looking level.

You definately have potential in you. I think you should make more levels, and keep taking suggestions from everyone you can. Most people are either bad level makers or good ones at heart, and the good ones usually take a couple of tries to make an outstanding level. Very few people make “average quality” levels (such as this one) more than a few times. They usually make them when they are half way to becomming a good level creator. Good luck with future attempts.

This level gets a 5 out of 10 because it’s a decent attempt with a couple of problems that can be avoided in the future.