Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

It’s been nearly a year since FireSworD uploaded a new level to J2O – time sure flies fast huh? While last year we were graced with Enter the Chaos (quite a controversial level, but still an instant classic), today we turn 180 from mayhem and turmoil.

Golem Landscapes brings us to a highly abstract battlefield. As FS himself explained, this level takes action on a stone golem, which is a shockingly good idea, especially with the given tileset (a recolor of Carrotus). The theme is realised very well – taking the obvious aside, you can notice that all the walls (including the ones in the background) form a logical, solid mass of rock – like a giant monolith. It’s also a very stoic and tranquil landscape – dim lighting, leaves slowly falling to the ground, and the relaxing background track, with a beat that’s vaguely like a heartbeat – perhaps to imply that the golem is asleep?

The gameplay is far from tranquil, however, as this level sports four different kinds of powerups, lots of dodge space, fast movement, and shortcuts. This layout will remind you a lot of the classic OLC CTF levels – it’s highly interconnected and very spacious. With fast routes, two +1 carrots and one full, and no place to hide, this becomes an ideal level for 2on2 matches. You can get from base to base fairly easily with the aid of warps, but you’re not going to last like that too long, as most key items are out of the simplest route. There’s a ton of situational tactics (that I’ll leave you to discover and abuse…), so every game here ought to be interesting.

This is one of FS’ best releases up to date, so go download, play it a lot, and get inspired!

This level is an insult to other levelmakers

“And levelmaker is better, when he can make his level faster.”

That is the most retarded opinion about level design I’ve heard in ages

Don’t listen to the people, don’t make a TSF version.
Everyone else – want to use this tileset? Get over yourself and download TSF already.

What the hell, this is ingenious :D

Haha this thing is cool! I loaded a sp level and shot out all my blaster ammo (would be neat if you’d put a counter) to see if it would work. Then I had to get through a destructable wall and got screwed :—DDD

Giving this a 7 because it could have had more options (such as less health, or a tougher ammo limit). Other than that this is fun!

Now I can rest assured that my claim about Desolation being very flexible turned out to be true…

This level is plain insane. The idea of having gateways leading to different planets is very impressive, and manages to be pulled off fairly well in most instances—Starshine Valley being probably my favorite. The music choice is also contributing to the feel, using the same track as Unreal’s NyLeve Falls is a cheeky reference to how that level and this are very much about exploration.

However, there are some mistakes that break the immersion – the fact that players are apparently able to travel between one area and another without using the gateways, and that most “planets” feature the same white colored background, which which wrongly implies that all the places are located close to eachother rather than light years apart.

Some planets don’t look very appealing either – the Temple of the Ambient Moon, while a well done concept, it falls short in terms of eyecandy, by being rather bland and too open. The hyperstation core one, while it features extreme amounts of detail, overall it looks too cartoony with the red/blue/counter tiles used seemingly randomly.

Now onto the gameplay… I can’t say I’ll be sure to play this level in a game. Six control points is a /lot/, I honestly advise people to treat 3 points as a standard maximum. Anyway, I’m not going to get into all six into detail – what I noticed in general is that they appear in rather cramped spots (Gnome Hyperstation being a bad example), which will cause a bunch of “khaos” in-game.

Some design ideas were just not good: secret powerup stashes, scarce and randomly scattered ammo, ricochets (prone to cause fake health), the water shield (not the best idea in Domination), no carrots (?), a control point that’s randomly accessed (???). I can understand that the powerup stashes were there to put even more emphasis on exploration, but I advise you to fix everything else I listed ;)

Overall, this is a highly inventive level, which unfortunately went further with the idea than with the execution. My final advice is: don’t make more content than is needed, and focus on what you already have — in this case I’d have preferred less planets but connected in more intuitive ways. And don’t stop making crazily themed levels like this!

EDIT: In hindsight, I overrated this a slight bit. A 7 should be okay. Sorry ):

A lot of the tiles clash in style, with some parts looking amazing and some being very MSPainty. I understand the difficulty of getting palette events to work, but a background broken in 8bit is inacceptable. This set needs to break free from its influences, and get a consistent style. And the tech bg tiles are too light in contrast to the ground.

unsuccessful troll is unsuccessful

[23:25] <@BlurredD> Interesting fact: part of my fix for preventing the flag bug which caused “[player] captured the flag” spam messages apparently created a side effect where smoke rings can to wrap around a level and rise from the bottom. Oops.

(I ran this pack under TSF to overcome the animations error)

This is a pretty standard JJ2 romp, with several details making it stand out from the rest. The first level greets you with a variety of available paths which must be taken before advancing further. This, combined with the amount of goodies found everywhere, encourages exploration, which is an important aspect in most of these levels—the earlier ones at least.

The levels are also pretty standard on the visual side. There’s no overly revolutionary tile work, though using custom tileset edits made a few levels feel fresh (I liked the background in the first level a lot). The use of JJ3 music also helped, though some of the track choices were questionable (Basement Boss in a dimly lit swamp?).

One thing I noticed is that the overall level quality seemed to go down as I progressed through the pack. The first level felt cool and well polished, where as the final level was a big letdown. It uses a stock tileset, the music barely matches, is very linear, has a number of unfair challenges (namely the bird morph sequence), uses instakill without any forewarning, and has no endboss?? Combine this with several bugs in the previous levels, namely the Rocket Turtle who completely failed to work for me, and you have a buggy, unpolished SP pack.

Conclusions? An above average pack that starts out promising and goes steadily downhill, yet not to the rock bottom. Download if you’re bored, or if you want to look at the pretty first level =P

It’s still not entirely fixed because the leaders score two points with Capture Wait disabled, and one with enabled.

EDIT: I’ll bite you.

This episode is brilliant, definitely an example of thinking out of the box if compared to other levels from the same time. What’s kinda creepy is that these were made at the same time I’d made my very first levels. Cool huh? Download now.

And you included the TSF versions of the levels why..?

What Cell said.

This man thinks outside the box.

FawFul: There’s nothing absurd about Stijn’s review. He’s entitled to have an opinion about your work, and to defend it. Just as you are entitled to disagree with his rating and his arguments. However, you’re overreacting. I don’t see how did you infer hostility from Stijn’s review – your comments about personal attacks and distrust are out of place here.

Master Sven: Please don’t jump into the gray area of public debate.

Certain people: Please do remember that downrating a review just because you disagree with the rating is wrong. Like Stijn said, read the review first, and think about what you’re doing. Grytolle, who took time to read through Stijn’s review (even if he still downvoted), is a good example.

I want this mess to cease, starting now. I don’t want to see this kind of situation to happen again, so please let us cooperate.

9 is extreme overrating.

The eyecandy is a mess. This level attacks you with a multitude of colors basically everywhere, with the ambient lighting making it even more chaotic. The amount of decoration in every place feels almost forced to some point, there’s just too much at too many places. While this is apparently a palace, every piece of the layout is random and unordered as if it was a nature level all over.

Speaking of an unordered layout.. this level is almost like a battle level with bases. It would take a while to learn some basic routes and tactics here, let alone master them.. This level may be sure challenging, but it’s on the end of the spectrum where annoying levels go. I’m not sure if anyone would consider playing here.

Overall, a lot of effort went into this level, but in some places it went into details that shouldn’t have been there. Keep making levels, but make them less messy, please.

(PS. The text strings were very bothersome, by the way.)

EDIT: I didn’t mean to say this level is completely bad. It’s obvious that a lot of effort went into it, shows the months gone into JCS’ing. It’s just that the level is more to look at rather than play, which is not too good. Overall, I’m giving this a 7.1 not because it’s bad, but because it’s not very good yet.

This really isn’t what PT32 says, but it’s not exactly a very good pack either. The tileset is a start, and it’s good to see people make tilesets specifically for their packs. The design got repetitive after a while, though it did have its moments (I liked the spike boll maze). Overall, this pack is a good start, and I hope to see more.

An awesome lot of work there :D Thanks a lot DD.