Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Your name has been taken already again.

I don’t give jack shit if you don’t read this review, or if you disagree with my rating. I’m writing this out of the well deserved respect for blur and the work he has done. Thanks.

desolate (adj./verb)

1. barren or laid waste; devastated: a treeless, desolate landscape.
5. dreary; dismal; gloomy: desolate prospects.
8. to make disconsolate.
9. to forsake or abandon.

“desolate”, being a word of many meanings, fits perfectly to this eclectic tileset, which is chock full of many unique and creative ways to design an outstanding level with amazing eyecandy contraptions.

BlurredD’s Desolation depicts an once natural, now devastated landscape. That theme has been hinted by blur himself a long time ago, though in different context: “a happy grassy meadow in the middle of a city in ruins with molten lava beneath the surface.” ^[1].
A majority of the used graphics comes from long-since abandoned and forgotten (desolated) tilesets, and blur kindly listed all his resources.

Everything in this tileset looks completely over the top. It’s obvious that blur had to alter most of the tiles so that they could go together, which, from my point of view, is a TON of effort. BlurredD successfully (though I dunno if intentionally) managed to merge the two different styles of tilesets: cartoony and texturey. Usually they don’t quite match, but here they do and it looks really sweet.

I’ve been creating a level with this tileset for a little while now, and I have to admit that it’s more than a pleasure to work with. The way the tiles are ordered should be some kind of a standard, I haven’t seen tiles being so smoothly organised in eons. Everything has its logical place in this tileset, and there’s no case of “tile scattering”, present in many other tilesets (including the other BlurredD sets, like Odyssey).

Summary

• Stunning graphical quality
• Overwhelming variety of possible themes
• No problems with usability whatsoever

• N/A

Overall
One of the greatest tilesets I’ve ever seen released, up there with Egypt. This just screams “perfect” at the top of its lungs. Download this and use immediately… you won’t be desolated.

“Review successfully changed to Quick!”

I’ll start with the atmosphere.. firstly, this level, by using a highly one-themed tileset, suffers from having highly unoriginal eyecandy. Wherever you go, it’s got the “it’s been done before” look so often present in levels using Agama’s tilesets. And if that wasn’t enough, a (superior) swamps battle1 edit has been already done by Pyromanus, rendering this level as more or less pointless.

What bothers me is the three versions of the same level, only using a different tileset palette. What’s the point? It’s not like I don’t know what do the palettes look like. Besides, the three levels don’t even loop to themselves (as a matter of fact, they don’t loop to anything).

As for gameplay, this is probably one of the least conventional battle1 edits I’ve seen. There’s quite a few of complaints I’d like to address, and I’m definitely not going to explain all those in great depth…

Anyway, this level features coins and like three coinwarps, effectively turning a battle level into a gold rush of sorts. Then come the Frostbiter and TNT (??), the more or less questionable powerups and their questionable placement – especially the Bouncer, the destruct scenery was not the best idea (and one can get stuck in those easily), destruct scenery not removed, blahblah, generally a lot of things which make the gameplay slow(er) and annoying.

Summing up, this is pretty far from “the best remake of battle 1 there is”. This level doesn’t fix much and breaks quite a lot, and thus I’d think twice before hosting (downloading) it. Play this only if you want a battle1 hotel. And by the way, don’t bother making a “V3.0”.

Very useful program which works flawlessly.

He did not finish IC’s unfinished tilesets. The tilesets used by DarkSonic have been finished before they have been released.

(13-years-later edit: Sorry, but no, this pack aged really poorly, and the levels are extremely annoying)

A very good pack which definitely deserves my download recommendation.

Birdie enjoys experimenting with CTF layouts, and it shows. Most levels here feel different than your typical Capture The Flag fare. Not all of them do, though, such as Fluid Surface Oscillator and Temple of Hakkar, which have their own gimmicks but aren’t too memorable.

Speaking of gimmicks, this pack does a pretty good job on balancing between the gimmicks part and the standard gameplay part. The gimmicks vary in magnitude, but the levels don’t revolve around them entirely, which makes the gameplay smoother. Level 6 may be an exception from this, though, but even that level didn’t feel too awkward and it was enjoyable to spend time in.

I liked the way these levels looked and sounded like. Birdie managed to build a nice atmosphere in basically all of the levels here, I especially like the way SandBox feels like (aside from its glitched background layer scrolling..). All in all, very nice looking levels.

I give this an 8.4 and a pretty obvious download recommendation. Host this in your free time, I guess.

^{(Birdie included some old beta version of Omen Woods instead of the final one, causing the fourth level to break if one doesn’t have the right version. -0.1 points.)}

Maybe not the highest quality SP pack out there, but it was pretty fun anyway. The plot was hilarious :D/, fairly well executed through the whole pack. Most of the time I found the level design a bit frustrating, for most of the levels were pretty dark (especially the intro level), and overall it needed more ways of being hard than just placing a lot of enemies.

The levels looked pretty good, with some pretty nice tricks such as the waterfalls in the first level (you’ll get what I mean when you play). However, it would be better if you’d have used newer versions of some tilesets, for example NOKA’s Tubelectric SE, Violet CLM’s new Exoticus or Lark’s Bloxonius. Those are a lot better than the old sets you have used :p The music paired very well with the eyecandy, creating a nice atmosphere there and there (eg. Diamondus level)

Overall, the levels in the pack are around 7.5-ish quality, but the whole pack deserves a higher note for effort. Good job, I’m looking forward the other episode ;)

A really great tool for hosting and joining JJ2 servers.

This widely expands over XJJ2 or JazzTool (does anyone even use those anymore), and by being a “mere” mIRC addon it’s even more convienient. Hosting servers has never been so easy before (too bad I no longer can host), and joining via the addon’s GIP is fast and slick. The player profile is something I wanted to be implemented in JazzEd for a long while now (I admit I haven’t used the addon until now).

There’s basically no thing which can’t be configured with this utility. If there was an option to run Carrotade additionally with the server (without having to run it manually), it would be even better. Aside from that, the possibilites are endless, and this program so far has been flawless. All I really need now is an antivirus with a working ignore function :p.

EDIT: A link to the #jazzjackrabbit channel would have been a nice addition too. Same with #jdc perhaps.

Gry don’t eat me for being two weeks late with this.. please

Visual Appeal – 3 out of 5

Good enough for me. Nothing really got changed in the resize, and the original semi managed to look somewhat alright, too. The author even tried to shrink the machine in the lower right corner (which I presume to be the semi conductor?), which looks quite cute nice.

minisemi2, though, has got some additional eyecandy all over the level, such as layer 4 background bricks (which shouldn’t end with the shaded tiles when not connecting to a wall/ceiling), a better background (nothing too noticable though, except from layer 8 is now textured), and, well, foreground layers at the bottom. They feel a bit overdone and clutter the bottom area if anything. (I suppose Saphir made the eyecandy changes?) Though, next time you resize a level, do align layer 4’s size with the actual level size, because it looks tacky.

Overall, the eyecandy’s nothing too much of a deal here. After all, nobody will really play this for something else than competition, and you don’t really care about the looks in competitive play.. right?

Playability – 4 out of 5

What can I say? The level seems to still function pretty well, balance wise. By jumping out of the base areas (which is the shortest route from and to a base) you can get from base A to base B in about 3.5 seconds, and vice versa, which is kind of fair game for me.

As for other routes.. now you can double jump up to both bases, which kind of negates the other ways of accessing those. Getting down a base and running/jumping up the another does take more time, too, and if you mess up somewhere it may cost you a point.

Other than that, not much is to be discussed here, is it? I really don’t like reviewing level remakes and the changes :(

Summary

• Is not all that special, but doesn’t really break anything
• fastar.. gameplay

• Not too memorable
• Could be resized at least..
• Music choice.

Overall
I hate writing this section and I’m experiencing the writer’s block recently, so :) suffice to say this is a good resize. With horrid music.

EDIT: the sun is burning down los angeles

Myself I’d just recommend to rip the system from this pack. It uses the technique better than SPAZ18 described it, because this one makes the player lose a life, and SPAZ’s doesn’t.

You don’t need to include all 3 tilesets, just use the necessary one

Please reupload with only one version of the level, and without any folders inside the .zip.

Hmm…

Visual Appeal – 3 out of 5

This level uses Tik’s conversion of the Marble Garden tileset from Sonic 3, and well, uh, it could make much better use of said tileset. The background looks decent, even if it could use layer 7 in a better way than scrolling clouds, but the sprite area does leave room for improvement.

The tileset doesn’t really allow for too much eyecandy variety, but myself I see a few creative options there and there. Anyway, aside from being a little bland, it manages to look so-so. There are no obvious tilebugs, at least.

Playability – 3 out of 5

First of all, this level is way too short. I think I was done finishing it in a bit more than 5 minutes. Some areas are a bit interesting (such as the one with float lizards and vines), and it would’ve been cool if they had been expanded.

Also, I played this level in Hard mode (as I always do), and unfortunately, it was a cakewalk. The only place where I lost a heart was the boss arena (which was done alright, but could use some more ideas). Work on the levels difficulty more next time.

Summary

• Looks decent.

• Too short
• Too easy

Overall
Well, this shows promise. Keep my advice in mind and practise making levels.

Well, it would be great if you’d at least give some basic info to how to use the program.

I’d reccomend taking the “(2)” away from the white set’s filename, to avoid in-game download troubles.

This level isn’t too much aside from a showcase of JCS tricks. However, not only all of these have been discovered before, but a fair amount of them uses outdated methods of creating the tricks. (I looked in JCS)

Besides the quirks, there’s hardly any gameplay than just getting to the exit. The eyecandy is moderately decent in some places, but overall it’s just bland and lacking, and the mez01 (ooold) tileset doesn’t help it, either.

For all those who don’t understand the way the keys are done in this level

“While the waterfalls look good in this set, they are becoming overused in tileset conversions, so they are becoming boring.”

The problem is, it’s you who made them overused and boring in your conversions, so downrating P4ul’s tileset for the mistakes you made is quite illogical :)

I would recommend giving different filenames to the tilesets. The @ and _ characters might give problems when downloading them via JJ2.

Visual Appeal – 5 out of 5

Long story short, this level makes the best use of the CyberSpaz2 tileset. I have never seen such eyecandy in a level using this set. Said set is basically a few random tech-themed tiles thrown together, but this level does a very good job at not looking awkward. Everything looks as it should, there are no tilebugs and there’s also some inventive tile use (the digits). I also like how this has an in-door feel, as opposed to most of the CyberSpaz2 levels.

The music is a very good piece, it sounds good and fits this level like nothing else would. Bonus points for not using Mechanism 8 in an Assault level, too. The background fade helps the fast-paced atmosphere, and the slowly moving background layers nicely contrast with the quick gameplay. Overall, I really like the eyecandy here.

Playability – 4 out of 5

I’ll start with the layout. It’s shaped like a rectangle, with horizontal paths cutting it through. Occasionally the paths fork and merge with other paths, so one can move around freely. The corridors are a little enclosed, but it helps out the gameplay because the pace would be slower if the level was more open.

This level also has carrots. I’m not really a fan of carrots in assault levels, but this one makes good use of them. They’re placed in pairs (fully heals the player in CTF) and in places where people are likely to get ambushed. At times I found this level a little lacking in ammo (the attackers don’t start with anything, and the defenders get a Bouncer PU), though it shouldn’t become too much of a problem.

The included map of the layout (PNG file) makes it easier to remember, which is a definite plus because this layout might be a little complicated. It’s easy enough to get the hang of it, though, in my opinion at least.

Summary

• Very good eyecandy
• Easy to play, fast paced
• Enjoyable. This is what counts.

• A bit too few ammo
• Layout might be confusing

Overall A very good assault level by Blacky which is on par with Assault3, in my opinion. Go to heck if you disagree. I liked playing here, and if I like something, then it means something. Go play this level now. BR put a lot of effort in it, so don’t neglect it.