Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Clever and cute.

To be honest, I didn’t like either all that much since I think giving monsters more energy makes the game boring, and not harder. The palette manipulations (especially in River Secrets) are very pretty, though.

Finally a level in palette D!!!

Starlit may not be Starlit Summit, but it’s still a pretty decent CTF level with an oldschool feel – the music and tileset (good choices on both!) are right from the past decade, and the asymmetrical layout will remind you of 2002’s biggest hits as well.

Unfortunately, it has some flaws or otherwise weird things about it. First of all, I don’t get the point of the platforms in middle top – once you get on one, you can just sit there safely, since there’s no other way of getting to the top than the vines. Besides, it’s easy to access the full carrot from both places, so even if you managed to hit the camper, they could just run away and heal (with this look on their face). In a duel, where you have no teammates to take the hit for you, this would be a big problem. The bottom area is a nice place for the two +1 carrots and it has cool flow, but putting a gun9 powerup there is a bit of w wtf moment, since gun9 isn’t even all that useful here. And even if it were, there are still ammo pieces of gun9 flying around, so hogging the PU makes no sense. The tube at 42,57 is kind of useless, since it’s just as fast to reach the PU from the right by the springs and above. Also, no ammo at 48,53?

The full carrot really looks like it should be on the ledge at 54,33… but that’s picky.

Overall, it’s a nice level, but needs some fixes to be a proper good level. And as there was no beta testing, the rating will perhaps be edited at some point. :)

EDIT: That’s better.

EDIT2: Raised the rating since this is such a bunch of fun to play.

Totally pointless.

WTF is with the other .j2l file included?

What it says – a small Labrat romp. Decent overall.

Massive props for using this music!

Lithium: Fair enough, I didn’t notice that.

Quite decent.

Clever but lacking. With such a name and a custom tileset you could have done much more than a nondescript industrial level (even if the tileset looks decent).

Dude if you’re using a TSF only tileset in a couple levels then it would make some sense to mark the upload as TSF only, I think.

Missing tiles, miscolored tiles, no black tiles at all, pinball events broken, lazily converted animations, lots of filler, ugly textured background. This set didn’t age very well I’m afraid! :(

Crimi: It’s supposed to loop to the first level: http://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/3195/olc-battle-pack/

Some good eyecandy ideas all around (I dig the waterfalls), shame that the level looks rather amateurish as a whole (very repetitive tile work on the bottom and in the indoor backgrounds). Why put a black tile on layer 7 and then a textured background on 8? Beats me. The ambient lighting is a tad bit too dark. The music wasn’t too bad but the sample quality was grating (and also loud).

The layout doesn’t look like a lot of effort went into it. I can imagine dueling here would be boring. I was hoping the Devan shrine (which I mistook for a well) would have some use, even as just another way down. With no powerups, little ammo, and no room for using special moves effectively, it’s going to be a slow game. I recommend studying Moonlit Harbor and Triton Armory to see how to make a duel level. Can’t quite pinpoint a rating.

When playing this level, it’s important to take a look back at FawFul’s history as a JCSer. His J2O downloads page is like a cliched rags-to-riches story: starting with plain bad levels, slowly moving through the beginner phase, which then culminated in the largely hit-and-miss Planetary pack (my rating: 7.9); and finally moving onto his most recent work such as Wicked Wood, one of the most played levels on the jazzjackrabbit.net clan ladder, Faw’s evolution couldn’t be more obvious. And it doesn’t just end there, as Frontier Falls is at another tier of levels entirely.

While other level makers only theoretize about creating a perfect CTF level, Faw wastes no time and goes for it. CTF, being a gamemode treated more seriously than the others, has its own standards, and thus perfection, or being close to perfection, is very much possible. Is this level balanced? Yes, it’s nearly impeccably balanced. Does it flow well? No flow problems are to be found, everything falls in place. It’s neither too enclosed or too open, and neither too horizontal or vertical. Is it biased? All three characters have their own ways to shine here. Is it versatile? While intended for duels (the winner of the 2011 duel level contest), this holds very well in a 3on3 game, and will work in big games and also the bash.

Is it original? While it’s not anything groundbreaking on the first sight, there’s more to Frontier Falls than just the usual CTF level. The pit “concept” is as old as SILWI is, but seeing how Faw could have used a death pit instead (which would have killed this level), it’s quite refreshing. No Bouncer or Seeker powerups equals no silly spamming, and you’ll have to do your best with RFs and Toasters (which isn’t difficult, given the layout, but still some skill is required). There’s plenty of room for RF tricks, wall jumps, messing around with the carrots with TNT and Toaster, etc. You’d be hard pressed to find any sort of flaw here at all – this is as close to a perfect CTF level as possible.

Even if FawFul had to use an edit of an edit of the original Carrotus tileset, it’s still the very peak of its possibilites. Faw does the smart thing and instead of using every single tile he could, he sticks to the usual Carrotus eyecandy with some additions, such as the multi layered caves (the patches of black tiles giving more depth), the little holes in the ground with wood over them, etc. Instead of littering the level with carrots and pumpkins, Faw uses them sparingly to provide some small, reddish variation from the green and brown. The swirly, ropey pumpkin plants are replaced with the small grapevines lifted from Psych, to a great effect – this feels much more of a standalone world than another Carrotus level.

And of course, there are the titular frontier falls. While this idea has been done before many times (how often do you play JJ2 online PT32?), it has never been used with such effect before. It’s the key part of the visuals, yet it’s not overbearing or annoying (if you like, though, you can disable it with a JJ2+ trigger command). The waterfall theme makes sense with so much vertical gameplay and falling going on. Because of JJ2’s limitations, Faw had to settle for a less complicated backdrop for the top parts of the level. Some may dislike its simplicity but I love it, it feels very natural. Together with the excellently chosen music track, the eyecandy creates a compelling ambience that I immerse myself in every time I play. I’ve said this several times before and I’ll repeat it again: this is the ultimate Carrotus level. There will never be a Carrotus level looking as good as Frontier Falls again.

This is FawFul’s best level yet, this is XLM’s best release yet, this is the best CTF level of the year and one of the best period. It was worth enduring Faw’s comparatively sucky levels just to see him make this one. Congratulations and don’t stop JCSing!

Decent on first look, problems on the second. It’s very campy. Dead ends with carrots and PUs are annoying. The full c can be camped too. Pits unnecessary, IMO. Standard Castle eyecandy, could have used more variation (or just another set). Wouldn’t duel here or host this often. Glad to see you had fun making it tho! DJazz > LMAL

Considering how both of those are listed at the top of this page I question the usefulness of this upload…

Violet: How about we talk about demand when there are 1000 downloads and not 9.

I had some trouble with reviewing this one. Though it’s two years old at this point, I’ve never really played any serious games in it (and I certainly don’t remember testing it, unlike the credits field says?), and every time it appeared in a JDC event, I never lasted more than a couple minutes because an RF would usually explode in my face. But seeing how this does get played every now and then (and nobody complains about it ever!), there’s no reason to assume it’s broken, so I decided to just give this a run in LAN mode and say what I like about this and what I don’t.

While obviously SJ put effort into the visuals, as the tileset’s creator I’m biased here. The eyecandy is largely a mix of organized and unorganized, some places have so much detail that they look busy (especially when exposed to the intricate background) while some have big swathes of gradients or black backgrounds. Some things feel repetitive, and some look rather tacky, like the animated lights, or the dust(?) at the sides.

Also, while WTF is pretty much a “do whatever you want” type of tileset, some things bother me because they were never meant to go together: the green [X] tiles don’t look good when combined with the brown stone tiles! It feels like SJ used the tileset as if was a nature set, which gives a rather strange result. The only thing I can compare this to is Atom Heart 243.5, which is another SJ level which I didn’t find too good looking. Maybe SJ should just keep using nature sets? I definitely prefer SJ’s nature levels to SJ’s tech levels.

Xyzzy has a rather impressive size of 200×70, though it uses it space differently than other large levels – the layout is a standard three floor fare, and the corridors are spacious and open. Still, it’s not suited for a 3vs3 or anything of that size (a quick check reveals that this level was played in a whopping zero 3vs3 games in the past three JDC seasons). RFs and Seekers will largely dominate this level, and we all know how that ends :P. And while it’s not as enclosed as Sanguinary Sanctuary, the route from base to base takes longer in this level somehow. The bottom path helps a bit (it puzzles me why wasn’t it there from the beginning) but I’m not sure if the wind events were all that necessary.

To sum it up, this is a good level objectively speaking, but I can’t really enjoy it for a bunch of reasons? To quote the legendary Trafton’s reviews on Atom Heart:

a fundamentally good level tinkered with until it just doesn’t quite “work.” That isn’t to say that it is a bad level.

My rating may seem low, but that’s simply because there’s no way to give a 7.99 rating. Please make more levels like Conflux and Mt. Helens SJ! ;)

Funnily enough, until writing this review I haven’t realised that this is SuperJazz’s first Battle upload since a year and a half – apparently I wasn’t the only JCSer to take a small break in 2010. :P While 4th Reich was a good level (even if the name raises an eyebrow or two) I wasn’t really the biggest fan of it, even if it did use my tileset rather well.

Conflux, however, is an improvement from 4th Reich in pretty much every aspect. The theme, which is that of a “freak magical accident” is strong through and through, with multiple “elements” mixing smoothly but never really clashing with eachother. I think SJ could have done some more mixing, though, because as it is, the level is pretty much split into a Castle section, a Diamondus section, a Hocus section, etc. The spectacular background offers a glimpse of what could have been if SJ gave himself more freedom ;) The music fits the level (or should I say, the level fits the music?), but after it loops once or twice, even the biggest HoMM 3 fan will be a little sick of it.

This is a big level. The size is 140×80, but it’s more open and straightforward than E. Prime, which is 140×90 but doesn’t feel as big as Conflux does. For the most part, the gameplay is exactly what you’d expect from a well designed battle level – it flows well, it’s fast, plenty of carrots and powerups, etc. There’s a number of twists on the formula though, and one of them is the Bouncer powerup – you need a Sugar Rush to get it (inspired by Rainforest Revelry perhaps?). With the Bouncer PU, you can now shoot the previously buttstomp-only Fire Shield. It’s a cool sidequest, even if not very practical in the long run: the freely available RF powerup will be a better weapon than Bouncers, and the shield isn’t a very big deal, considering the bottom 25% of the level is underwater. Two of the five carrots are located there, by the way, and I don’t like the bottom left carrot – it’s hidden, it’s easily campable, and the area it’s placed in is boring.

Other than that, everything else in the level really clicks together, and the other small gimmicks (there’s a hidden warp, the Toaster PU which is a bit tricky to sidekick, the hard-to-reach carrot) are amusing and you can tell that this level was polished a lot. My favorite part is how the Castle part closely follows the mannerisms of other battle levels using Castle (namely battle1), but doesn’t rip them straight. I had fun playing this in this year’s bash and in various JDC 20 events. This is SJ’s best battle effort yet and it shows!

I agree with Derby but I like this level enough to think it’s underrated!