Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I really enjoyed playing these levels. As for me it is one of the best non-scripted packs. I’ve played both early and fixed versions of it and now it’s time to write a review.

PROS
A lot of single player level creators try to make their levels as challenging as possible, which often turns level into a puzzle where you can’t even understand what are you supposed to do, and this ruins the gameplay.
Slaz managed to make a couple of well-balanced levels. In one hand, the levels are challenging enough, you have to find certain ammo/trigger crates/warp zones in order to proceed. However you won’t feel bored as it’s not just a tedious search for gazillions of hidden crates, but every time there’s a new gameplay element- like labyrinth, airboard, jumping crates, respawning TNTs, pinball bumps, strong winds or freezers. In the other hand, the pace of the game is still rather fast, so the gameplay is very similar to original JJ2 gameplay- run, jump and shoot. But here you have to use your brain a little more often.
I liked secret placement very much. The trigger crate in the end of the first level made me look up in JCS to find it. I found 49 of 50 coins in that level (even JCS couldn’t help me) but next time I managed to find all of them honestly. Extra lives were given out by shining through the walls, but I didn’t notice that at a first time due to the great amount of flicker light events around. I should add that enemies and baddies are placed strategically as well.
The Tuff boss added in the fixed version is situated in a very small room and is able to unpunishedly throw a flail at you one or two times before you jump into his room and burn him to death within few seconds.
What about an eyecandy, frankly speaking I don’t like Easter tileset much, but I highly appreciate succesfull modifications of original tilesets. This one is definetly succesful. Those cold colours combined with snow and lake covered with melting ice create the atmosphere of the late February- early March (in my homeland, nothern Russia, even late April often looks like that, lol). Probably that BG layer with the opposite bank of the river/lake should be recoloured as well.

CONS
There is a couple of small drawbacks, however. As I’ve already mentioned, the secret placement is nice, but the majority of pickups that are situated high above your head and probably are supposed to be captured in some ingenious way actually can be shot down by bouncers or especially PU-bouncers. Idk, whether it was intended by Slaz or not.
If it wasn’t for Primpty’s review I wouldn’t even pay attention to that, but… What made you change the music? As for me original tune sounds much better.
If I were you, I’d make the night version of the tileset for the second level. (And I’ve made a night recolour for my pleasure) It would bring a slight twist to your levelpack. But don’t mind, it’s just a nitpick of a moron who is obsessed with making recolours to everything he sees. The pack is awesome!

CONCLUSION
There are just two levels, but, as I’ve mentioned, it’s one of the best non-scripted SP packs out there. The author is obviously a great JCSer. I think that every fan of single player mode must download this small episode.

It’s an average-sized level which uses a slightly-modified original tileset, underwater part and has a boss (which is situated under the water). Let’s observe upsides and downsides of this level.

PROS
I’m always glad to see singleplayer levels that use skillfully-modified original tilesets. Good-looking recolours and eyecandy bring peculiar atmosphere to any level and that’s exactly what I liked most of all in this work. It’s rainy out there, not “rainy cats and dogs” but raindrops group in jets and it’s cool. The background uses slowly moving translucent picture of sky which is supposed to represent fog, as there are tiles behind it, but sometimes it looks like the cave has glazed windows.
Some enemies are placed into the walls, Tuf Turtle at 174*14 pretends to have a workout on a treadmill :) Some enemies hide behind the waterfalls, so it can be difficult to notice them sometimes. I aslo liked the secret placement and those hidden tunnels in the walls.

CONS
If eyecandy is what I liked most of all, gameplay was the most annoying thing.
I was irritated by the necessity to look for a warp to proceed further. Once I had to waste several minutes before I noticed two arrows pointing at a tile between them. There are dragonflies in the level, but bees could make the gameplay much more challenging, though I actually hate these nasty enemies that respawn from bee hive all the time. The blocks with exclamation points on them are used as trigger-blocks, this is widely used by lots of JCSers (and even JJ2 developers, remember Easter levels?) when they are too lazy to simply copypaste a block with a keyhole from one tileset to another. I won’t deprive points for that, as I have to rate the level, not tileset. Utherus can be found in its natural habitat- under water, which surely makes the boss fight harder but it could be a way more challenging if the arena wasn’t so big that you can escape from the boss to take a breath and collect some ammo. The boss tune is too calm and peaceful, so you can’t feel that it is the most important part of the level where you have to face the strongest enemy. More than that, the player has to backup original boss1.j2b file what is definitely not very convenient.

CONCLUSION
I would like to give this level at least 8.0, as I adore this picturesque world of a cold underground lake, but due to described gameplay issues I’d give only 7.5. In other respects the level is nice, and I can recommed it to all the singleplayer fans out there.

Nice small level with a gameplay based on searching for trigger crates.

PROS
It’s castle, but it slightly differes from the original castle levels. Music is vigorous and buoyant, the eyecandy is modified a little- 5th layer uses vitrages and tons of chains.
Those floating hetmuts elegantly illustrate the possibilities of the Belt event. I also appreciate the idea of diverging corridors. Most of those corridors are descending, which makes bouncers pretty useful.

CONS
The level is obviously too small. The Boss… meh… Besides the fact that Tuf Boss isn’t a difficult enemy itself, the boss arena is just a smooth room without any additions that could make the fight challenging enough.

CONCLUSION
I think this level deserves to be downloaded, so I’ll give it 8.5 in order to raise an average rating to at least 8.0.

A nice map! Looks like a real landscape! The layout is so realistic- nearly no vertical or horisontal lines and right angles. (I don’t count those vertical columns, as they look like rock pillars) And the clouds don’t rush at a full speed like in some levels, they move just like they do in a real life.

Almost a year passed since I’ve written my last review. That’s not good.

Before I begin, I wonder what for do you set passwords to your levels? Almost everyone out there easily hacks all these passwords with “You shall pass” or other password-removal programms.

PROS
I liked the concept of hidden pickups that freeze you. Although at a first time I didn’t realise that it’s possible to unfreeze yourself by pressing fire (idk, wether players can freeze each other in a multiplayer since I’m kinda a sociophobic nerd who doesn’t play in co-op mode), so I was slightly confused till those respawning pickups keeped me motionless. Some walls freeze you, some don’t, some of freezing-walls are covered with ice blocks and some aren’t so you can’t predict whether the wall in front of you contains freezers. By the way this concept could be realised in a more elegant manner with Angel Script- just imagine walls, trees, or some enemies shooting freezers at you.
I appreciate the fact that the player has to collect some toaster ammo to remove frozen blocks in order to continue the level. But opposite to the enemies ammo isn’t respawning, so there is a chance to run out of toasters before you melt the blocks.
To reach some goodies you have to jump by stomping some flying enemy. That’s fine.

CONS
What Primpy says. There are more Cons than Pros. He’d listed some of the cons- narrow corridors, the lack of checkpoints, the level is too challenging and not relaxing at all. Looks like only Spaz can pass the level. Playing as Jazz I also couldn’t jump from a rope high enough to reach next platform. More than that, in the lower edge of the level there are pits you can’t get out of without typing “jjnowall”. And again, Angel Script can help you- it’s rather easy to write a code that kills the player when he falls below the certain horizontal line. But that’s not all downsides. An enemy just killed by you can respawn at your current position in a few seconds. There isn’t any obvious path in this level- several times I realized that I returned to the position I’ve started from. That’s why I don’t want to replay this level anymore (even with cheats)- it’s toooooo tiring to rush back and forth all the time. Fire hits you even if it is obviously situated at another layer, wich is pretty unrealistic. Bees in winter? Also unrealistic, but why not. I’m not quibbling, but as for me the level should have some kind of an atmosphere but this atmosphere can be easily ruined by the smallest things. It’s just my opinion, so I won’t deprive points for that. There are some mask issues, but they aren’t fatal. Wind makes the boss fight much harder, but it also presses you to the right wall and when Bolly adjusts his eyes to your current y-position you can easily shoot him within two or three times being stucked.

CONCLUSION
Seems like you’re trying to create levels offering a way more challenging gameplay than original levels do. You’ve though up some interesting features like those freezers, but the realisation isn’t so nice. Player should enjoy the gameplay, not suffer of it! Probably the features provided with JCS are insufficient to you. I strongly advice you to update your JCS.ini in order to expand your posibilities as a JCSer. You can also download some levels modified by Angel Script. You will realise that all your intentions to innovate the gameplay can be fully implemented with the help of scripted modifications.
Click the link below. There is a thread explainging how to modify JCS.ini and install JJ2+ (version of the game that supports Angel Script).
JJ2+

P.S.

- I really hate these creatures :)

I’ve already rated your previous works so this time I’ll rate just the labrat levels.

Gameplay.
This time you don’t have to waste too much time on finding your way out, so you can relax while playing labratory levels. Gameplay is various so you definetly won’t feel boring. For example playing as a bird which isn’t able to fire bullets makes you to avoid enemies and spiky balls wich is really challenging.

Secret placement.
The main challenge deals with reaching the secret places. However sometimes these places are empty, like an area near the exit from the 2nd level- there is nothing but a text on Hungarian, as I understood it explains that there aren’t any goodies. I also liked original desicions like a spring and a hole in the ceiling which isn’t situated directly above the spring so you have to make an effort to reach it. Many goodies situated high above your head can be reached by buttstomping the floating suckers or simply by shooting up with a modified bouncer.

Enemy placement.
I also liked the placement of bats (they are the same colour as the stone labratory is made of so it’s often difficult to notice them) However the boss is still pretty simple to defeat though the area is smaller and there are some spiky balls.

Eyecandy.
The levels are tidy, there aren’t much bad tiles. The design of the levels also has some original desicions like lamps placed into the giant bulbs.

Conclusion.
This levelpack surely worths downloading. All the singleplayer fans should like it!

Well, I don’t think this level is bad enough to rate it 3-3.5 Typical “first levels” are usually worse than this one.

PROS
There level looks nice, the eyecandy is OK. There are some secrets, hints and a boss (However I think you should make an arena for the boss fight). I liked the idea of jumping bomb-crates, but it makes no sence as the pit is small enough to allow you jump over the spikes. The same goes for the freezing sandglasses- it was quite unexpected and funny to freeze myself running at a full speed, but it doesn’t have any influence on the difficulty of the gameplay.

CONS
The usage of poles at the beginning of the level is annoying- you have to take an effort to get yourself out of them.
Just two types of enemies not counting Caterpillar…
And just two types of weapons.
Probably the level should be bigger. It’s 256*64 but it doesn’t seem to be big enough cause there is too much of emptiness especilly in the right side of the level. I mean level needs more paths, more platforms, more content…

In my opinion it’s a decent level for a beginner.

Well, looks like you aimed to make something similar to the original levels. However, your remake is very specifical. I’ll speak mainly about the third level as it is the most problematic in my opinion.

Firsly, the original levels always had an obvious path to follow while in your levels the search of the exit from closed areas takes 90% of the time, wich is really tiring and annoying. I even don’t want to mention that these exits’ placement is really unpredictable partially cause all the hints are in Hungarian…
Secondly, level design. It’s not bad, but still inferior to original… The platforms have ripped edges wich doesn’t look pleasant. As for the tilebugs. I was stuck into the wall when I jumped into a float-up area in 9*37 in the last level.
Thirdly, the music of the third level doesn’t sound good… It’s like playing tetris, not JJ2.

Now, to the upsides. The difficulty is OK. The placement of secrets is great! I failed to collect all the coins in each level, but mainly cause I was tired of this gameplay. I also liked how rabbit smashes the wall after he is affected by a spring.

To sum it up I’d say that the levelpack is challenging, but too tiring to get a download recommendation…

This chapter is much better than the previous one. I mean “Urdung Levels Castle Chapter”. You’ve became a more experienced levelmaker.
First two levels seemed to be pretty easy, just a little bit harder than original ones, however the third level was much harder, but I managed to complete the chapter whithout dying despite of being not a very good player :D
I liked some of your original decisions- gem stomp hidden under blocks , blocks that can be destroed only if you capture a copter and blocks you have to climb on to reach a higher place, pits that warp you to the certain place in front of them, needles you have to go through even when you encounter a boss. And there are many other things I wouldn’t bother to list. The secret placement is exellent. I still didn’t manage to gain all the coins.

There are also some drawbacks, of course. But they aren’t critical.

1) Language.
There are tons of hints but all of them are in Hungarian. If the information is useful, please, traslate them into English!
2) Recolors.
As far as I understood you used tilesets made by someone else. I like the variety of additional tiles but the recolor of the tileset used by third level isn’t succesful as for me… It’s almost the same as Carrotus Night but simply darker… Objects also change their colors. You can easily change the colors in Photoshop, but don’t touch first 96 of them- they are objects’ colors! Or it’s even easier to make recolors with Angel Script.

Good job! I’m looking forward the new chapters!

I love single player levels! However, this pack is a bit… surprising. Levels use original tilesets but the way you used them and the gameplay itself are pretty original and sometimes confusing. Woven chains in the castle, enemies and pickups falling from the tubes in tubelectric, moving gargoyles in bonus-medivo, freezing pickups in hell, areas where you fall down and avoid baddies, tonns of explosives that blow up countless crates with goodies, great number of warps and frog/bird morphers… It’s difficult to describe everything! I’ll try to sum up pros and cons of this pack.

PROS

+ Original gameplay. All the situations I’ve described earlier.
+ Boss levels, bonus levels and music used in bonus levels remind of JJ1.
+ Some bonus levels are really cool!
+ All the bosses included, and it’s unpredictable wich boss you will face it each boss level.
+ Appropriate special effects like smoke above the fire at the bottom of hell, where you fight Utherus.

CONS

- The main problem deals with language and unrecognized symbols. All the hints are in Portuguese, I don’t think there are much people who know this language.The biggest irritation is the symbol “§” in the name of each level- my computer simply changes it to one symbol if it is in a name of a file, or to some another symbol if in the name of next level in JCS. Thus the game crushes every time I finish a level. There are many files to rename :(((
I’m sure I’m not the only who faced this problem.
-Levels aren’t very tidy, lots of bad tiles. Eyecandy suffers a lot.
-Some bonus levels are big and challenging, but some can be finished in a minute.
-Probably too much of useless goodies, I mainly mean gems and sometimes fastfeet. Bonus levels provide you with them, but they don’t give you anything except extra points.
-JCS flaws, for example “12§ Lost level” causes amnesia error, “12§ Devil Devan” doesn’t have any music.

CONCLUSION

The idea was amazing and original but realisation isn’t so good. However, the fact that you’ve made all these levels when you were a kid deserves respect.

First of all this level doesn’t use Angel Script but you indicated it as TSF+. It’s a bit confusing. Additionally the game crushes each time you finish the level, as you forgot to enter the name of a next level or ending.

Layout 2/10
The level is small and simple, not challenging at all… You could place some boss here at least! The level’s properties are 300*64 but only a small part of this area is used, the greater part of a level is a pit you can easily fall in. Ugly square pieces of wall are hanged in the air instead of platforms. The enemies have random positions, the bats levitate in the air… The hard difficulty adds some bats to the level, wich is pretty useless.

Eyecandy 2/10
Have you ever played jigsaw puzzles in your childhood? The tiles are some kind of that, you should put them in a certain order to make a good-looking picture. The absence of this order ruins this level’s eyecandy. Houses are deprived of their frontal walls and look like huge flat cardboards… There is something looking like a colomn at the 1st layer-although this tileset has a normal colomn, you had built it with some random tiles! No background at all… I understand that Haunted tileset doesn’t have any proper background except for the sky, but even the sky isn’t used in this level.

Music 1/10
You’ve uploaded an original music file, but the JCS uses some “Halloween.mp3” so the game can’t load the music to this level.

Total rating: (2+2+1)/3=1.7

I don’t think it’s a good idea to upload levels to the site before you learn how to make them.
Probably you should open some original levels with JCS and analyse their structure, layers, events, music, properties, ect…

The advantage of this conversion is that you’ve added some new tiles here : raindrops, waterfalls, lake and hills… With this tileset I’m not getting stuck into the spikes.That’s OK.
As for the palettes- now there are less colors. The grownd is just gray, without any colored spots. It’s a bit dull, this way you’ve reduced the diversity of the palette…

First of all why didn’t you change the names of the levels? It’s not very convinient to replace the original ones with these levels to play them.
The levels aren’t worth plaing at all- I can’t even see the certain path at the vasp majority of them. Some of them have problems with lighting.
There are also some survivals like Kill enemy or boss. First one has a terrible layout and respawns tons of enemies which is pretty pointless. The music isn’t associated with the tileset. The same goes for the boss fights where you have to face a group of bosses. It’s not challenging at all due to the fact that it’s enough to kill a single boss to exit the level.
The only thing I liked in this pack was the remake of an unfinished original Psych level known as “Far Out”. It can be easily recognized though you renamed it to “Funky Grooveathon” which is the name of the 2nd Psych level. You’ve extended it and placed the Bubba boss here. It could be a decent level if there weren’t places you can’t get through… I counted at least 3 of them. The drums (or whatever they are) in the narrow tunnels are an impassable barrier due to their awful mask.

Medivo looks ominous in these colors! The palette is really nice.

I see there are some problems with flags and blocks- like if you’ve pasted them from another file and they were spoilted as the picture exceeded the limit of 256 colors. This effect could be easily avoided if changing directly the table of colors.

There are some white pixels above the big white square in the left side of the set, they spoil the view of moving ledge constantly appearing each time it’s moving back.

As Cooba has already noticed the mask is original so there are tons of places to get stuck in the level. For example you can easily avoid Bolly’s rockets in the lower rigth part of the arena due to the clumsy mask.

There aren’t any new tiles as well…

I put 7 because I like this recolor and the Medivo tileset itself.

A marvellous mixture of Castle, Medivo, Haunted, Hell, Beach… Well, not sure if I didn’t forget anything!
The mask is fixed so spin roads work. Being inspired by this I used the similar concept in my single player pack.
The music is awesome!
Probably the 7th and 8th layers should be a little brighter.
This conversion is my favorite one, It is really worth to be downloaded!

You make me laugh. It’s a recolor of an original tileset, so there is no need in uploading any .j2l files- we can download your .j2t and apply them for existing original levels! But you’ve uploaded the level 3 times with different tilesets. I won’t deprive any points for that, but it’s funny :)
The main problem of these recolors is the change of the objects’ colors. Rabbit, enemies and pickups look awful! You could avoid it by not changing the first 96 colors (which are responsible for objects) of the palette. It’s very conveniently to edit the table of colors in Photoshop for example.
Another problem is the usage of the same colors in the single palette. The level looks monochromatic this way.
And finally, you used the original mask while you could fix it, for example, make the spin-roads (or wtf they are) work as they are intended to.

I also like making recolors and I can say for sure that Inferno is one of the most complicated tilesets for recoloring. It’s difficult to imagine it green or red… It would look weird and unrealistic.
This version of Inferno is far inferior to original ones- the ice world and the desert. It’s something average and it definetely doesn’t look good. Firstly, the sky, grownd, trees and the whole level are colored very similar and merge each other. Maybe you should make the sky red or orange. The black snow looks like falling ashes- it could be a good desition if somewhere here was a volcanic activity, but it doesn’t seem so :)
The original mask wasn’t fixed, so it’s a kinda of a wasted opportunity.

Wow! Seems like yellow is the best color for the castle. However it’s only a single recolor and I would like to see more of them…

Edit (Answer to Mystic Legends ):
I’m looking forward the complete version. This demo version is nice!
I got stuck above the tube, the coordinates of that tile are 28*16. It’s a small matter of course, but I’m sure this tileset would be used for some other levels, so it’s better to fix this small problem :)

Original review:
Well, most of the custom tilesets are really ugly and low-qualified but this one is well-drawn and original. Plaing this was like being jailed into the huge brain of some monster! Those gyrus, vessels, eyes, bloody waterfalls and puddles of blood look really brutal!

It’s a pity that you had a limit of 150 tiles, I’m sure you could make lots of useful tiles otherwise. However, seems like those 150 tiles are enough to make a fully functional level: there are tubes, vines and an awesome background modified with Angel Script.

The mask isn’t perfect, though. Sometimes player can get stuck into the wall.

WOW! This level is enormous! I don’t remember if I had ever seen such a huge level. It reminded me the Hermitage museum of St.Petersburg, where you’ll never explore the entire area whithin a single visit. This goes for this level as well. You have to play again and again to make sure there is no place you still hadn’t been to. There are splitting paths, so you have to choose where to go, there are plenty of secrets! Someone may say that such a gameplay is too boring and repetitive, but as for me that’s a good idea. I also liked the way you used the 5th layer, the use of Tuf Turtles, different starting positions for Jazz and Spaz and cunningly-hidden warps .

However, while proceeding this level, I had chosen to change the music to the original tune of Diamondus and I also changed the tileset to “Diamondus Storm” by Cansin13. This way it looks newer and matches to the falling leaves, to the stormy weather.

Seems, like you’re really advanced level-maker! I really appreciate levels like this one.