Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

(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.

If I wanted to play a JJ1 level, I’d go play JJ1 instead of downloading a “Jackpack”, spending an hour trying to figure out what the hell is it and what am I supposed to do with it, only to find out I have to look for the tileset myself in order to play a carbon copy of a JJ1 level. Most of people here have played JJ1 at some point or another, they’ve seen how do the enemies look like, and they’ve heard the Fanolint theme themselves, so tell me: what is the point of this?

Those are THE laziest attempts at textured backgrounds I’ve ever witnessed. These, as noticeable on the first sight at the screenshots, are not much more than a hue change of the background texture used in most of JJ2 official tilesets. Lark is justified, though, because this thing is almost exactly 5 years old as I’m writing this. However, this getting a rating of 9 is something I wouldn’t make up on the most hardcore acid trip.

Good level? Definitely. 8.5? Not really.

“Those of you who think the music does not fit” are usually right and you should listen to people’s advice rather than point them the door out.

The pits ruin it. Download if you want a level to look at.

For your information: these bosses not exactly new as they’re just respectively old Devan, Bolly, and Uterus with misplaced (uncached) sprites. If you were to put a Devan in the first level, your “Hyper Jazz” would become a Devan. Etc.

This pack was predictable like no other. In half of the total 8 boss combats, Tuf Bosses are put out of player’s reach to back up the otherwise weak boss. That way of making a boss harder is older than I remember, probably dating back to Violet’s TTJJ2 pack (precisely, its final level). Old or not, it’s okay if done right, but six Tuf Bosses at once in the first level definitely isn’t right.

Tuf Bosses aside, these levels are filled with other hazards, mostly spikes and respawning enemies (more annoying cliches), spike balls and smoke rings to a lesser extent. None of those are affected by difficulty settings for some reason or another, which is unacceptable.

Some (unfortunately, not all) of the levels seem to have the general idea behind, which is hindered by the lacking execution. The penultimate level (which I like the most because it doesn’t have Tuf Bosses) becomes the easiest once you figure it out – which is a shame.

There’s not much else that can be said about this. I did not mention the visual aspects because this pack is apparently devoid of those. These levels are repetitive, frustrating, and don’t seem to have taken more than 5 minutes to make, each. If you say that 5 minutes is too less, then ask yourself if these levels were at all tested.

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).

• 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”.