Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

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 However, not only all of these have been discovered before, but a fair amount of them uses outdated methods of creating the tricks.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.

Have you actually put Carrotade in the same folder as JJ2?

Alright, I have had it damnit. This is overrated to the point where the author himself asked me to review this fairly. Which means, these ratings make my blood boil.

Visual Appeal – 3 out of 5

The main change here is the color, obviously. However, while I could live with the original Castle tilesets being based upon very few colors, I will not stand this conversion being just monochrome. Everything now has a cyan tint, which not only doesn’t go together with the castle tileset, but is very boring on the eyes. The background tiles now use a strong shade of blue, which does not fit to them, either, and makes the background look dull.

As for the additions, there’s the beach seaweed (which has ugly pixels around it and isn’t even fully ripped), the water block stolen from Persian Paradise, and a textured background. Unfortunately, the background doesn’t work well in 8bit mode, and thus neither does the JJ2 water.

Usability – 3 out of 5

The layout is the same as in the original Castle levels, which means that it’s rather unorganised, chaotic and hard to manage. Anyway, this doesn’t fix the bugs which the original Castle had, and doesn’t take advantage of the unusable tiles (the slide) to make them usable in one way or another. To put it shortly, this field hasn’t changed at all.

Summary

• The colors don’t look awkward at least :|
• The theme was a nice part

• Kind of miscolored
• Nothing really changed on the technical side
• The additions are average, and the seaweed is kind of ugly.

Overall
While you are improving, PJ7, this conversion is still not much above average. Try harder next time, and don’t rush things, and you’ll make great conversions.

Bah…

Visual Appeal – 3 out of 5

This tileset, being a Disguise one, certainly isn’t capable of having too great eyecandy, but this level doesn’t even look as if the author tried (sorry). The background looks bland and uninteresting (putting rain in the background in such a tileset is a… waste, for me), and layer 8 isn’t even textured. For one knows, why? I’m not sure if it could get anymore overused and boring with the background like that.

The other layers don’t help out the level either. Battlespaz uses the same one brick in terms of soil, and the same one wall tile in terms of a wall. Please. I don’t think I need to explain it’s a bad thing. There’s also very few eyecandy aside from the casual shields, torches and knights. How about some actual tile variety? I’d appreciate it, to be honest.

Playability – 3 out of 5

First off, the flow of the level could have been better. Specifically, I don’t like the bottom of the level (it gets frustrating with how the platforms above the pit are designed) and how the hook tiles used the Hook events. It’s certainly not the best thing to put in a multiplayer level, since hooks can seriously slow a player down. Use the Vine event next time, please.

Another bad thing I noticed, is that the ammo was so scarce it makes no sense collecting it. In fact, I’m 90% sure that there is more food in this level than ammo. What sense does it make? It’s like that in one of the coinwarps (three fastfires and like 10 candies?) which makes it heavily unrewarding and thus pointless. The other warp has a seeker powerup, and there’s a blaster powerup somewhere else in the level. Seeing as this is mostly enclosed, the Blaster and Seeker weapons will be the destructive here, which would just lead to total chaos, and chaos is not a good thing.

Summary

• Might be playable.

• Slow, generic, probably not worth the time.

Overall
Let Saphir’s really high rating not deceive you, as this is only a slightly above average level with several problems. Download? Nope.

Visual Appeal – 4 out of 5

Yay, I liked this one a lot ;D. This level certainly has a good amount of eyecandy. The plants, which are often neglected, are used widely here and give the level a nice feel. There are some original things made with the plants, such as the singular vines, which are also nice. The background is nice (albeit taken from the official JJ2 levels?) and there’s enough stuff to keep it alive in the foreground. There weren’t really any outstanding bugs in the tileset use, nor any bad eyecandy ideas.

My only gripe here is that more could be done with the background. You could have experimented with the textured background fades (which work only in 16-bit mode, by the way). You also could have put different tiles on the layers than just take them off the official levels. Anyway, that’s pretty much my only complaint, as this is very good use of the Carrotus tileset.

Playability – 4 out of 5

I also like the way this level plays. This level’s definite plus is that the level’s main path forks into two, and the player is supposed to choose the way. Not really an original concept, but it’s always nice and the newer levelmakers tend to neglect that design feature. It’s easy to backtrack once a way ends and take up with the another one, which is also good. This level is also full of random pickups and secrets, which is an important thing in a SP level. I really like the biggest secret in the level, which is kind of tricky to access, but is certainly rewarding. (I’m not going to spoil it though, download the level and play it yourself).

However, this level also has a bit of problems. The main one is that it’s a bit easier to play this level with Spaz (the so-called Spaz bias). Like, there’s this place where the player needs to crash a crate to access coins by jumping from a platform. However, Spaz can get to the coins just by using his double jump. It’s also easier for Spaz to get back to the upper road if the player is coming back from the lower road.

Other than that, there are no real bugs which could destroy the gameplay (maybe except for the secret warp target with ID 143, the player gets stuck in the wall if he warps), and the gameplay itself is solid.

Summary

• Decent eyecandy
• A fine example of how a SP level should look

• Could use a little more original eyecandy
• As well as some polish to the gameplay

Overall
As you can see, I did enjoy this level because it’s how a real JJ2 SP level should look like, in my opinion at least. If I like it, why shouldn’t you?

Whoa, whoa, and once more whoa.

Visual Appeal – 4 out of 5

It will be hard for me to describe this without abusing the expression whoa, but I’ll have to give it a shot nonetheless. Anyway, I’ll have to say that I don’t really like the palette edits in the Labrat v2 (like I aptly call them) sets. I definitely don’t like the palette of the sixth tileset, which just hurts my eyes and shows that the soil texture doesn’t really tile with itself (like in Diamondus). I also don’t like the contrast between the metal plates and the soil in fourth tileset, and fifth’s general color scheme. Sorry :|

Enough complaints. I’m gonna be blunt and say that the Tubelectric and Letni tilesets are AWESOME, PWNAGE, L33TAGE AND ALL THE WAY BEYOND. I LOVE the concept behind the Tubelectric tileset here, I’m surprised no one has even attempted to bring JJ1’s Tubelectric style back onto its JJ2 cohort, which did lack a certain feel. Now, all the identity troubles are GONE!!! Who really cares if NOKA did use Agama’s tiles to back up the tileset, it looks great and Agama herself probably wouldn’t mind.

The additions to the Tubelectric are great, such as the spikes I’ve long awaited for, the belts using JJ1’s tiles which look great, the warps, the signs (stolen from Haze’s muckamok but no one should mind), the 5th palette which looks reminiscent to Industrius, it looks great and takes the old Tubelectric tileset to a whole new level. Great job here, and I mean great. The only thing I’m not too fond of is the 3rd Tubelectric set, which has, um, ugly bricks D: Everything else is sweet.

And now that I’m done praising the brilliant Tubelectric, I’m onto Letni now. And guess what? It’s as amazing as Tubelectric. In some places it was so amazing I couldn’t resist staring at it. Like taking Labrat’s monitors and giving them Letni’s red glow. It was so genious that my jaw has dropped. To sum it up shortly, it’s like Tubelectric, except just made to look like Letni. I’m going to cut it here, just download this and look over the set yourself already, the potential reader. No more spoilers for you D:<

Usability – 5 out of 5

I honestly have no gripes here. In most of the tilesets, the palette color events will work fine. The tilesets are extremely easy to use, for they are moderately blocky. The Labrat tileset is also made a lot easier, and has tiles which its precedssor greatly lacked, such as slopes. The mask is as smooth as it can get, there’s really not a little problem here; these tilesets are a JCS user’s dream.

Summary

• Great improvement over the original official tilesets.
• Generally great work, shows that a lot of thought went into the tilesets
• Tubelectric owns owns owns, need I say more?

• Some of the palette edits just won’t work well.
• Labrat could use some more stuff. Such as better background tiles? Who knows.

Overall
Definitely the successor tilesets for the official ones. They have what the officials had, what they lacked, and much more than that. If there’ll be someone who continues on using the default Labrat or Tubelectric tilesets, they’ll sure have to be insane. Even if one may not like the palette changes, there are still tilesets with the palettes remaining unchanged. So all in all, download this, use this, and review this. Saphir has underrated this heavily, 7.2 is definitely too low for this. If it wasn’t for the Labrat tileset a little lacking, I’d gladly give this a higher rating.

Visual Appeal – 4 out of 5

I like this one, actually. Medivo sure looks good in this color scheme. The walls are now in a delicate teal tint, which looks good enough for me. The background and the layers now use a bloody red color, which balances out the greenness of the layer 4 and looks fairly well. It reminds me a bit of Pyromanus’ Haunted House Hell conversion, which was also a great one. Anyway, there’s not much to complain about here, maybe except for the fact that you could have tried to make the layer 8 background tile (so that it would be useable as a textured one, since it uses the appropiate palette indices), maybe change the rain a bit, so that there would be one raindrop per tile instead of the way it is now, and maybe add a pure white tile to make flashes. Other than that, you did a good job here. The flags got a little distorted, but there’s no real loss.

Usability – 2 out of 5

Well uh yeah. With such a decent palette, I would have expected a better mask going with it. The original Medivo is renowned for having a terrible mask, which can render some of tiles hardly usable. Unfortunately, this tileset gladly ignores that and just uses the same ugly mask. One question, WHY?? This tileset would be so much better if it wasn’t for the annoying mask! A great way to improve over the original fell down the window! Ugh.

Summary

• The palette edit granted looks nice.

• More wasted opportunities for improvement, such as the horrible mask.

Overall
Fix the mask and I’ll gladly raise the rating. As for now, I wouldn’t reccomend using this tileset, however nice the palette is.

Uh, excuse me? If there would be an “Overrated Upload of the Week” this would be “deffinately” this. If you guys rate this a 9, would you rate BlurredD’s Diamond Dust conversion a 10? Sigh.

Visual Appeal – 2 out of 5

As the example level was loading, I honestly wasn’t expecting anything outstanding. And apparently, turns out I was right. What here is worth a 9, I thought? The palette change looks like it took less than an hour to make. Everything has turned green (not as bad as in Emeraldus though) the mushrooms and the Small Tree event got distorted, which is not quite how I would imagine a stormy Diamondus. As for the “additions”, they show no effort from the author’s part. These include a poorly drawn rain (always a bad idea to make one tile full of raindrops), a water tile (of similar quality) and a PJ7 “logo” which could have been fit into one tile instead of two. All in all, not the greatest quality here, and I would have liked if the cave spike tiles would have their backgrounds updated (they still use the ones from the old 1997 Diamondus).

Usability – 2 out of 5

No technical improvement over the original…. night version. That’s right, this is a conversion of the Diamondus 2 tileset, which has a few tiles placed differently (which messed up the Dopefish secret in the example level). The way tiles were placed in Diamondus 1 makes more sense (at least for me). Anyway, there are no added extras either (such as the ever-so-universal invisible masks), nor any improvements over the original’s mask, which wasn’t all that perfect anyways.

Summary

• Not as bad as the horrible Emeraldus tileset.
• The theme

• Badly drawn additional tiles
• Little bugs in the palette
• Wasted improvement opportunies

Overall
Certainly not the greatest Diamondus conversion in existance. Diamond Dust is much better than this, even though it lacks the storm elements (blur, if you’re reading this, consider making a dd03). Not really worth the download, imo. Try better next time, because you’ve got some potential.

Edit: And the different palettes added as I was writing my review (…) aren’t really better and don’t really do anything towards the tileset itself, sorry ;|

I think that coinciding genres aren’t as much of an issue as entirely ripping a level’s theme, n00b. Anyway, here goes my review:

Visual Appeal – 4 out of 5

Definitely a large plus at the eyecandy factor, the given levels do have a certain feel. First and foremost, I simply adore the Spacey Universe level with a weird name’s eyecandy. I don’t really care about the fact that blur came up with something similar in his Server Always Wins level, this one provides a good, silent atmosphere reminiscent of rather infamous Termite Haven. The lighting, while could get frustrating, supports the atmosphere. My only gripe is that layer 6 can get confusing since it uses the same tiles as layer 4 does, which at times can mislead the player. The remaining two levels also look fine, but Limenade is kind of generic, and Something Else‘s tileset (Sirius) doesn’t allow for a lot of varied eyecandy, as do Agama’s sets in particular. The music in the levels is very well chosen, and suits the given situations.

Playability – 4 out of 5

The main feature of these levels are, as the pack’s name and a ton of other things say, are the (to say the least) unusal layouts. Especially the Spacey Universe level’s layout is mind-boggling at the first sight. To be honest, I’m hesitating whether the balance would work, but I’ll lean towards %{color: #009600;}yes% in this case. Limenade is also, um, unusual for a CTF level (and probably not less confusing). This time it’s symmetric, although the symmetry works similar to Mike’s Glowing Poison in that one half is flipped. It works well, but it still can lead to some confusion. Something Else has definitely the least confusing, which is certainly a good thing. It allows for smooth, fast gameplay (which I wouldn’t expect from the other 2 levels – no offense), and it just feels, um, cool for the lack of a better word. All in all, um, well laid out.

Summary

• A nice experiment with the layouts
• Enjoyable atmosphere
• Should be well balanced

• Can get very confusing

Overall
Definitely an interesting pack. The levels will provide a bucket of fun once hosted, so download this and host already.

I wasn’t going to review this, but the reviews prior to mine have really disappointed me, rating-wise. Especially SJ who used to be one of the more harsh reviewers back in the older days. Perhaps times have changed again?

Visual Appeal – 3 out of 5

..the author tried. This level has little to no any outstanding eyecandy (which isn’t necessarily the tileset’s fault), or any good-looking eyecandy for that matter. There’s the (particularly ugly) animation of the palette tile used rather randomly.

Like in other levels by the author, “some parts look pretty empty while others look like they have random stuff tacked on, and the backround is pretty boring” as Blacky put it nicely. The background is nothing interesting, and the rather odd (pastel blue?) 16bit fade just adds to the empty, boring feel.

Also why does layer 7 move faster vertically than layer 6? It looks nonsensical, really. And on a closing note, the author should have at least taken time to disflip the tiles from the flipped half of the level.

Playability – 4 out of 5

First of all, I have to say that this level does have a very nice flow. I haven’t found myself annoyingly bumping into things, which is a vital thing in a CTF layout. On the other hand, the layout itself is a mixed bag. I do like its bottom part, even if it could use a little more paths, but the upper part just feels random and uninspired. There’s a big open area just next to each base, why not add a platform there?

The coins (needed to get to the player’s own base, which could be useful but not really original) are placed decently, if a little confusing. However, I couldn’t help it but get the feeling that there’s way too few loose ammo in the level. And if there actually was ammo, it would be in a boring square pattern.There could be more fastfires rather than just 3, since it would take a longer time to get a properly fast fire rate. The powerups are Bouncer, RF, and Seeker – no balance problem.

And last but not quite least, I really like the way Yasco places the +3 carrots, and this is no exception. The player requires to drop down a pit to get the +3 and bounce with a spring, which is kinda evil and might encourage camping, but I still like it, so there.

Summary

• Has several good concepts, like the +3 carrot placement
• Flows decent

• The eyecandy needs work, and quite a lot of it

Overall
This level was definitely overrated. Not by a lot, but certainly not worth an 8. It’s still a fairly decent level, but there are more worthwhile ones around. And just as well, the “BURN, BABY, BURN”, things are moderately disturbing at the least.

LF, there is a boss battle at the end of Part 2. It appears only on Hard mode (my wonderful suggestion ).

Visual Appeal – 3 out of 5

Well uh yeah. This level didn’t really have any eyecandy. 95% of the time the player sees the background, which is hindered by the fact that the background layers are visible only at the bottom of the level. Therefore, most of the level just turns out bland and uninteresting. There was layer 5 set to align with layer 4, but it was used really rarely and didn’t have any real effect.Also, the walkable soil tiles could use some work, because most of the time there’s one ground tile used which just added to the blandness of the level.

Also, what’s with all the “pillars” on layer 1? They don’t make much sense moving slower than the layers behind it, and they just get on nerves. And on a closing note, the lightning didn’t help this level too much.

Playability – 3 out of 5

The gameplay itself also left room for improvement, and quite a lot of it. Firstly, I can’t say I enjoy the design of this level itself. The area with instakill lava and lots of seemingly random platforms was annoying, as they were too far apart of eachother most of the time, and the “pillars” on layer 1 just added to the frustration. Also, the spikes on the path leading to that area didn’t hurt me because you misplaced the Hurt events… The platform area apparently forks the level into two (or technically even three) paths, which is a nice thing and one of the few ones which are anyhow original.

The layout turns non-linear from that part, and the player has the ability to go for the nonobligatory areas and get stuff there. And here comes a complaint, why were all the pickups so sparse? I can understand that you wanted to limit on ammo, but the wide lack of food was just ridiculous. In the platform area, I had to destroy a wall of destruct blocks just to get two tacos?! Come ON. Also, the lower path becomes rather boring after a while, with all its random (and fairly ugly) bridges. Also, there are spikes in that path, and once again they didn’t hurt. Test your level before releasing next time.

Anyway, after one gets past the non linear part, there comes a challenge: the player has to RF climb up a tunnel. It’s been done before, and this time it’s not even moderately difficult. It becomes even easier after finding the RF pu in the non-linear area (what’s the point of putting such a powerup in the pack’s first level?) After that comes a rather generic area, with nothing outstanding (except for a big gem placed above a lava pool?) and with a few bugs (lizards don’t fall down when floor below them disappears).

Then comes another gimmick: Ride the rock. And once again it’s been done before (the unfinished TDI2 exploits the rock ride gimmick perfectly), except this time it’s not really as fun as it was in Moonblaze’s levels. After that comes some generic platform hopping, and the last challenge in the level: the player has to stompjump generating bats (which hang on platforms on layer 3… make the level less confusing next time). This is probably the most original part of the level, but still it failed to amaze me for two reasons, one being that I constantly do stompjumping in SP levels (and manage to run through some Invasion of Deserto/Rebirth of Evil levels in less than 5 minutes), and another reason being that in this level’s execution this was just frustrating. The bats end up being placed way too far off the goal, which made it difficult for Spaz (the author should’ve used a morph in the level), and they were also considerably too far of themselves in some places.

Anyway, after getting past that comes the end, and a fairly generic cutscene which explains the story which I’m not too fond of. And that’s the whole level really. Not too interesting is it?

Summary

• Could be much worse.

• Is fairly bad nonetheless.

Overall
This level is just average. Test your levels next time (make sure everything actually works in them, coughspikescough) and make them less frustrating. And I find this rather ironic, since I’ve seen you point out “this level was frustrating” in some reviews of yours even. Download reccomendation? I’m not sure. There are better SP levels to download out there, after all. Only download this if you’re extremely bored.

Without having anything else to say, let me just comment on the custom boss music.

It hurts ears.

Visual Appeal – 3 out of 5

First of all, I never liked this tileset too much. Mainly because it’s nearly the least flexible set in existance, since it’s so heavily based on style rather on functionality, which roughly translates to “every level using this tileset will look the same”. And this level is no exception to this non-written rule: it looks exactly the same as the whole buckets of Swamps levels. There’s nothing original about the eyecandy, and after having seen so many of visually the same Swamps levels, it just stopped being anyhow appealing to me. There are no annoying tile errors in this level at least. Overall, use a different tileset next time.

Playability – 4 out of 5

For starters, I’m not too fond of the layout. Some places were clearly inspired by other Swamps levels, and while it’s not a bad thing, it can get annoying sometimes. For example, the two tubes in the middle of the level placed JUST by the FastFires can get really annoying, and the Seeker powerup box just encourages camping, since it’s so close to the bases. There are also Bouncer and Toaster powerups, which make up a fairly good balance, seeing as this level is mostly enclosed. The Toaster powerup has to be accessed by passing through a hole in a tree, which makes it a dead end, unless one uses logic and shoots it with an Electroblaster, avoiding being trapped in the cramped room. It doesn’t seem to fair seeing as the Bouncer PU is just placed between two vines, which doesn’t create a situation seen in the Toaster PU.

Summary

• Well balanced
• Flows decent

• The overused and boring tileset
• Some of the layout is.. questionable

Overall
A decent level by Quickz. Doesn’t have anything original nor outstanding, but still should play well in an occasional 2on2. Definitely Qz’s best level, but also definitely not an 8.