Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Well uh yeah. I find it extremely unfair that no one reviews uploads by DarkSonic, seeing as he’s one of the most active decent reviewers on J2O. Like n00b once said, “Dear J2O users, you’re all shallow.” Anywho, here goes my obligatory review :

Visual Appeal – 3 out of 5

And this is a problem of the pack. Not necessarily of both levels, as I actually enjoyed the eyecandy in Like an Oven, even if it was a little bit repetitive in some places such as 80,41. However, I certainly did not like the eyecandy in Planet Internet. I can see that the author tried, but unfortunately he kinda failed. Firstly, what’s with all the reverse “boxes” in the walls? I can live with the ones with black outlines, but those with green ones throw me off heavily.

If everything around the box has black outlines, why did you have to reverse it and make it have green outlines? It looks very out of place. Secondly, why are all the layer 4 backgrounds shaped like this:

It made Atom Heart 243.5 look fairly bad, so why did you have to use it the same way as SJ did? There are sloped layer 4 backgrounds, so use them instead of some crappy synthetic stairs thing.

Layer 6 in Planet Internet doesn’t even… tile.

As BlurredD himself says, most of the tiles have to be flipped to tile, and as you can see the background is the finest example of that. There are also more things of rather questionable visual quality (such as all the white/red things on layer4…), but I’ll cut it here. Planet Internet brings down the quality of the pack’s eyecandy a lot.

Playability – 4 out of 5

This was certainly better than the eyecandy. I still like Like an Oven‘s gameplay more than the other level’s. It flows well, and the layout is mainly open in most places, and that works. The balance might be a bit off with Bouncer vs Toaster, since Toaster won’t be as effective in this level. And, um, what’s with the triggers around the bottom +3 carrot? Doesn’t make much sense for me as you could just have removed the platform entirely if you don’t want people to step on it. Not much else can be said on Like an Oven, so let’s go ahead onto Planet Internet… ouch. First of all, why is this level so full of slopes? They don’t serve any particular purpose and just look out of place, honestly. The layout is also mostly generic, with boring platforms serving little purpose. The +1 carrots seem a bit too close to the bases for my tastes, which may just as well result in encouraging camping. Also, I’m not sure why is this level’s center powerup an RF one, since Bouncer and Toaster will be more useful here than RF, as this level is also quite enclosed. That’s all I have to say here, really.

• Like an Oven is a decent level.

• Planet Internet is ugh.

Overall
This was a mixed bag for me. I didn’t quite enjoy Planet Internet as you might have figured. I liked Like an Oven much more, although I still think you made better levels than that. 6.9 (would be 7.something but Planet Internet = ).

Odin and Dan posted quite decent reviews themselves, so I’ll just retort to say:

This is awesome.

This upload gets the honour of being the first one where I’ll be using my enhanced review system. It should provide longer reviews, yet save me a lot of work. A paradox, but it should work fairly well. Anyhow, here goes:

Visual Appeal – 2 out of 5

Uh well yeah. Take no offense on this, but I didn’t like the eyecandy at all. Firstly, it makes little to no sense that the background would be so terribly open while the level is supposed to be an underground depository? Also, a lot of the level was barren. Most of the walls seemed to be the same 2×2 block pasted over and over, which looked very dull and uninteresting. The layer 4 background weren’t all that good looking either, and most of the time the mournful background was gloriously exposed. Blargh. There was also some sparse layer 3 eyecandy, but most of the time it was either buggy: or it blocked 80% of my vision, causing me to bump into enemies. Overall, the level doesn’t have the scary atmosphere it was intended to have, and the lightning doesn’t help it, either.

Playability – 2 out of 5

This field was also below average. Most of the level involved searching for leaky radioactive barrels and blocking off access to them. Most of the barrels were placed on the main path of the level (why would a depository be so linear?), and thus it wasn’t as fun as it might have been. Also, the whole thing became boring after a while. Not sure why, but it might be a fault of the linearity. This level also was lacking in terms of hardness, it was mainly easy in most places. In some areas, however, there were vines placed just above the radioactive radius of the barrels, and I couldn’t avoid getting hurt there. There were some carrots on the way, so it wasn’t much of a problem in the long run, but still seemed unfair for me. And for a closing note, I wasn’t really happy with how there were little to no puzzles in the whole level.

• The general idea was decent.

• The execution was lacking, honestly.

Overall
This level was pretty average. The story and the idea were good though, and they made me raise an eyebrow, as well as the overall rating. However, the level itself was quite a letdown… work on your levels a little more.

Eh? 1.23 does have usable trigger zones.

246=Trigger Zone |+|Trigger |Trigger|Zone|TriggerID:5|onoff:1|switch:1

Just add that into the JCS.ini in place of the default event 246 and it works fine..

Theming and Eyecandy – 2 out of 5

Well uh yeah. The eyecandy itself is a major drawback. The eyecandy is way below average. It doesn’t use the great potential which Castle2 gives. There are tilebugs in the walls, barely any details, and the background is extremely bland. No background layers used, no scrolling, textured background fading to 0. This level is kind of unpleasant eyecandy-wise…

Gameplay – N/A

..but the gameplay makes up for it. There can’t be much said on this field, since it’s just basically Jazz/Spaz/whoever automatically moving across the level. The way it’s done is brilliant and it’s extremely fun to watch (aside from some really boring elements… like the path full of poles at the end) fits more to the event placement description, so…

Eventing – 5 out of 5

Some of the eventing here was just brilliant. There were a lot of tricks (and I mean a LOT) which made the level tick. I was literally stunned when I saw some of the awesome effects. To name a few, there was a short path of ceiling springs bouncing me to the right by continually stomping the Pacman Ghosts which were on the way. There was a part exploting the Queen’s unique behavior, which I enjoyed a lot. There’s also an ingenious part featuring sugar rush and lots of float lizards, which bounce you up upon touch. The eventing is perfect.

• Awesome motion effects
• Awesome motion effects
• Awesome motion effects

• Bad eyecandy >:(

Overall
This, I think, was one of the most original levels I’ve ever seen. It’s like a large hotel rollercoaster, except it uses amazing effects which make the level really tick. This technically would get a 6.5-7.0’ish rating, but that would be some severe underrating since a ton of effort went into this level. 8.2 is my rating for this. You inspired me =D.

This should help you.

The tileset. Never rate the levels in a tileset upload (unless specified otherwise by the tileset author).

Theming and Eyecandy – 5 out of 5

There could be entire paragraphs written on just the eyecandy here, but I will keep it short. The eyecandy here is the best eyecandy ever made in a Damn level, period. The amount of detail is marvellous, I found myself walking around the level with my jaw literally dropping in awe. Blacky managed to give this tileset a far more evil feel than ever like he wanted, and I salute him for that. The background is brilliant, the large glowing purple pillar in the middle of the whole structure, vanishing skeletons, the perfectly designed lava pits (especially the ones at the rightest part of the level), and, of course, the very right part of the level. It was seemingly rushed by Blacky as it seems, since it doesn’t have the amount of eyecandy the rest of the level has. And guess what? That’s what makes it the most awesome part of the level. It gives the brilliantly exact feeling of a chasm, it perfectly contrasts with the rest of the level. I never thought I’d like use of Damn 1 more than its blue/yellow counterpart. Using the alternate palette version would ruin the feel (and masking!) here, so yay. Great job, Blax.

Gameplay – 4 out of 5

The gameplay is the finest battle gameplay I’ve seen since Villain Village The Corsair’s Coast (which, notably, was also Blacky’s). This level flows perfectly, the springs take you where you want them to take you, no dumb obstacles all over the place. This level features the (simplified for whatever reason) Last Rabbit Standing concept, which, as the name says, makes you lose a life when you die and you’re out of the arena when you run out of lives. One fine twist here was that the lava pits (which abound here) make you lose a life too, which adds an extra gameplay element and makes the level feel even more evil. Unexperienced players are prone to lose two lifes at once, when they fall with 1 heart and are killed when they respawn. The pits aren’t too exposed (maybe except in the lower left corner of the level) and are fairly easy to avoid, so if you fall in, it’s ultimately your fault. The only reason which keeps me from giving the gameplay a 5 is that the rightmost part of the level doesn’t add much to the gameplay value. Sure, it looks great, but doesn’t play as great.

Eventing – 4 out of 5

This part of the level isn’t as strong as the rest, but still fairly awesome. Anyway, the powerups were kinda lacking here. There’s the usual Bouncer/Toaster/RF mix here, although it didn’t stick in mind as much. RF does a very evil job here, since it can reach insane lengths in this level (as well as Pepper Spray) and tends to push people straight into lava. Bouncer, and its long range nature technically should work well here as well, and they’re arguably eviler here than RFs. But at what price? It took a while to find out where they are and how to get them (I should have figured it out straight out, stupid me…), and there seems to be few +3 Bouncer ammo in general. By the time one gets the PU and full ammo, other people will own with Toasters and RFs. There’s also an ambush/gambling element in this level, and it’s straight above the rightmost cavern. The tube requires Frostbiter (located at the very left) to get pass through, and even then one has no way of knowing whether they will be spit above the +1 carrot room
(which is THE perfect ambush spot) or if they will be passed down. I like the ambush part, but the randomness kinda ruins it. And as usual, there are food events there and there. They’re mostly grapes, though (note that this doesnt affect the rating!) I’d definitely prefer them to be apples, as a symbol of the primary temptation, the first incarnation of evil.

• The best eyecandy in Damn, EVER
• Awesome gameplay
• Perfect implementation of the LRS system

• The randomness ruins the ambush part
• Bouncer PU gets annoying
• The rightmost part of the level isn’t quite polished gameplay-wise?

Overall
Best level by Blacky since Charnel Keep. Download and admire immediately, or Cthulhu will eat you in your dream :(. This level will be perfect for BlurredD’s built-in Pitfall LRS, so yay.

• This level used to go through a lot of revisions, gameplay wise. Originally, it used to be Treasure, and then Blacky decided it to be SP and then CTF. It made it way onto the LRS path though, as you see.
• Blacky originally wanted death metal music to go into this level, but the musics which fit the level best (in his opinion at least) were mp3’s.
• Blacky missed the 6/6/06 when he uploaded the level. The funniest thing is, that user Sacrush (formerly Satan) uploaded a level on 6/6/06 by a fluke. _{That level is also a brilliant place to 2vs2, so download immediately.}

Saying that people suck because they have a different music taste than the author? What has the sociality degenerated into :(

“And you should replace the barrels with crates because they can cause lag.”

Just as well, *DO NOT DO THIS* because gun crates can crash a server and barrels quite can’t.

Before I review, I’d like to tell Dx that coin warps in tourney levels are one of the worst ideas to do. Thank you.

And now, the actual review:

Theming and Eyecandy – 4 out of 5

Very nice eyecandy here. I see that a lot of effort went into the eyecandy since it got (heavily) critiqued on the JCF. I like how it turned out, looks really good and relaxing. Forest isn’t really a flexible tileset to work with, kudos for you for trying to make it look good. The theme is my favorite part here, too, it gives me a feeling of suspense, like the part of a forest was some alien crash site, or something. Anyway, the eyecandy doesn’t have any obvious bugs, and I like the lush greenness of this level (P4ul would love it.)

Gameplay – 4 out of 5

Also a very nice gameplay here. The flow’s silky, no annoying obstacles sticking out of the ground. The springs take you where you want to go, and you don’t have to jump too much. The flow’s pretty much ideal. As for the layout, I like it MUCH more than DS’ other attempts, I see that you’ve really improved at layouts! This one’s simple and easy, suited for a wide scope of matches – I can imagine a duel played here, as well as a 3vs3. Good job here, really no major gripes here, I’m actually impressed by this, etcetc.

Eventing – 4 out of 5

Nothing too complain. One thing I really like here is the Full Energy carrot, once players get used to its placement it can be shot a long way down, evil fun. This level is symmetric, and thus is balanced. RF vs Seeker works better than RF vs Toaster, and this level doesn’t seem to “favor” either of those weapons, so the games will be a close game. There’s also a Bouncer PU, and several fastfires which make it a much more evil gun. It will be underappreciated during matches, and will play a major surprise element. Watch out, everyone.

• Very good eyecandy, nice theme
• Well done flow, a great layout
• Well balanced

• I’ll be picky and say that the caves could use a bit more detail. (take this with a grain of salt, because the eyecandy rocks)
• The powerups might be a bit campy, but that’s not a big problem. You may want to lower their respawn time, btw.

Overall
I’m really impressed. This is what I wanted you to do since Street Pass No. 1. This could be very well your best CTF level so far, keep it up and you’ll be as amazing and some others out there. This has a chance of winning the tourney contest (assuming I don’t make an entry myself), so yay. Download, host, review, etcetc.

Theme – 4 out of 5

The theme of this particular tileset is apparently a dreamland. The way Birdie depicted the tileset is however much different than how Epic imagined it (as Jeh once said.) This tileset consists of sets of temples scattered over a cloudy landscape. While that may sound like something similar to Heaven, it’s the clouds which will take up the most part of the level (unlike Heaven’s clouds which are usable only as background layer eyecandy). Nothing much to complain in here.

Graphical Quality – 2 out of 5

This is where the tileset falls so prey that it burns. As it was said, the clouds will take up most of the level if one decides to use this. However, the clouds themselves have next to no additional eyecandy at all, and thus it will look very bland. The additional temple tiles possibly look a bit better and offer more variety than the clouds, but their background tiles still leave much space for improvement, in that they’re just a grid of two colored bricks. None of the additional content looks good enough (the JJ1-style Now Approaching screen, a badly dithered rainbow, and background clouds), so the tileset should’ve got 2 points on this part… if it wasn’t for the awful, awful palette. I have always been avidly opposed to randomly recoloring sprite palette indexes (and thus don’t like tilesets like Swamps too much), but this tileset is the peak of randomness. The red gradient has been turned into a yucky shade of green, which looks so ugly in combination with pink tiles, that words cannot describe that. The rest of the sprite indexes also gets affected (though not that much) and looks distracting. But, still, light pink and dark green. Blargh.

Edit: Now the tileset has been editd, the palette has been changed around and a waterfall has been added. However, call me a nitpicker, but the waterfall doesn’t work as it should (the last frame doesn’t match up to the first), and the palette change isn’t all that big. Why couldn’t you just give it the default palette? I’ll leave this as it is and give you the 6 anyway. This is because I’m nice.

Functionality – 4 out of 5

Dreamland’s functionality, on the contrary, is apparently well done. The mask is smooth, this is easy to use, and laid out fairly well. My only gripe is that sucker tubes could use a thin mask like Labrat’s tubes did, but that’s not too much of a problem anyway.

Event Compatibility – 3 out of 5

The poles all mostly work (aside from the Psych one). They all use similars shades of pink, which looks good in comparison to the rest of tileset, but if one had to use all of them in a level, it would appear monochrome (as if it doesn’t already…) and kind of amateurishly done. The textured background, while works well, clashes a bit with the rest of the tileset, in that it’s detailed as heck (while the rest of the set quite isn’t).

• Original theme
• Easy to use

• The quality itself appears slightly off.
• Somewhat monochrome?

Overall
This set isn’t all that bad. It’s only a bit too pink (not as bad as one of Disguise’s tilesets though), and could use more detail. That’s all I have to say.

They should be using 32 colors by default, not 256…

Dx’s Jazz X was started before you joined the community, actually.

I am technically more than a year late with this but whatever >O. Since the SP levels included with this aren’t really the forte of this pack and since they’re more of a bonus than anything, my rating for this pack will not include those levels’ quality in account. Anyway, here goes:

Theming and Eyecandy – 5 out of 5

The levels’ atmosphere is possibly what Blacky excels on, and it shows. Those levels are a real pleasure to look at, I have found myself stopping running to look at things; and given that I am really picky on eyecandy, that should mean something ;). There’s a lot of detail everywhere, many original and interesting effects… not much to say here. Best marks for the eyecandy.

Gameplay – 5 out of 5

The gameplay is for the most part as good as the eyecandy. As an experienced levelmaker, Blacky obviously knows how to lay out a level well; none of the levels will get too crowded nor too empty. The flow is also really close to perfection – it (as the author says) finds the balance between a sloppy flow and a fully automatic one. Also the levels are good enough in their size… not much to say here as well. This is just some very very good gameplay.

Eventing – 4 out of 5

Rating placement of events gets really annoying when you need to sum up 15 levels ;|. Anyway, nothing was too wrong with the eventing in the levels. No amateurish stuff like a 40 second shield put in all the open, or Jazz starts in a ctf level. However, there wasn’t anything overly original about the eventing either (aside from the SP levels, but they’re not mentioned like I said), so that’s why the eventing doesn’t get a 5/5. Sorry blax ;D

• Eyecandy pwns, gameplay pwns

• The eventing doesn’t pwn too much but too bad ;D

Overall
This is a pretty much pwnage pack which you all OUGHT to download and host. Blablabla my head hurts I’m done with the review now >O

>O Fearofdark officially gets the Overrater of the Month award.

Theming and Eyecandy – 2 out of 5

I’m not sure how to describe the eyecandy here. While the layer 4 looks oderately decent (if tad bit bland), the background is what threw me off while playing the level. Layer 8 is untextured (…), and layers 6 and 7 consist of lots of golden blocks slowly floating over the background! Just like in levels from 1999. Most of the level was also quite squared off and not really looking good. One thing the author did take care of is the lighting effects; they aren’t good enough to improve the eyecandy as a whole, though.

Gameplay – 1 out of 5

At the first sight, this level looked like it could have decent gameplay. However, the first sight popped like a bubble after I actually began walking around it. This level suffers from several crucial problems which no battle level should ever suffer from anymore. Like _*Hurt events*_. Hurt events are something you should NEVER put in a Battle level. The rest of the level is rather mediocre as well. The flow is rather quirky (“challenges”, as Fearofdark puts it, should never be used in a multiplayer level), the level is small, and also somewhat cramped in itself. Fun? Not really.

Eventing – 1 out of 5

The eventing was about as sloppy as the gameplay. There have been a few really bad things here, namely a 40 second Water Shield out in the open. I can only condone a shield if it’s put in an expensive coin warp or if it’s a 15 second shield only. Also, this level has TNT and Frostbiter ammo (always a bad idea to put those two in battle), horizontal springs and pinball objects (ruin the flow), and too many carrots/powerups for this size. Not a very interesting placement.

• The eyecandy isn’t what Zappo Egypt is…

• Basically the rest of the level.

Overall
This level is one of your first levels and it shows. Don’t be discouraged, though – a lot of people’s first levels were like this. Also, if some things in this review weren’t particularly clear, read this article. It should explain most of stuff you didn’t understand. That is all I have to say.

Theming and Eyecandy – 4 out of 5

This level uses the somewhat unpopular and overlooked Hocus Pocus EP1 tileset. Not many levels use this set, but for some reason all the levels using this set wind up looking good or at least moderately good. This level certainly falls under the first category – some of the eyecandy is pretty and creative, for example the translucent “signs” on brick background walls. However, that’s about the only one kind of decoration you may find on the layer 4 background – the rest of the brick walls are somewhat bland. So are bland the masked tiles on the layer 4 – there’s barely any different kinds of bricks used there rather than just the typically used 2×1 light brown brick from the ep1 forest levels. The background layers are a different story though, the color the background fades in looks natural and nice, and the background layers also look good enough. One thing bugging me is that layers 5 and 6 remain unused. So much could be done with those! Like changing the layer 7’s tile colors into something else with some translucency tricks. Too bad D=

Gameplay – 5 out of 5

The gameplay was done well. The flow was decent (aside from one place in the level where there was a lot of springs). The level was actually quite smallish, but it used its space well for the most part and wasn’t cramped. Actually, most of the level was rather open, and that allowed to easily dodge the available weapons. Also, both teams should be rather balanced overall in a match. Not much else to say here.

Eventing – 3 out of 5

This is where this level falls prey. First of all, why is it the defending team who has access to the control room? I’d say that’s what the host has to do, not some random players. Also, one thing I also didn’t quite like is carrots in the playable area. Carrots by themselves are okay, but this time they seemed to be just scattered. If you’re going to put in carrots, put them in a team’s spawning place. Speaking of the spawning places, the attacker’s spawn spot seemed unnatural. If the level is about breaking into a dungeon, why do they warp in the middle of the dungeon itself? There’s the roof of the castle where BN resides, that could have been a good spawning place for the attackers. Also the powerups seem to be also quite randomly scattered. You could have made it so that both teams spawn with a few PU’s on their own and don’t get anymore ammo from that point.

• Pleasant eyecandy
• Decent gameplay and flow
• A logical layout

• Somewhat illogical carrot placement
• Mildly scarce ammo

Overall
This is a pretty decent Assault. Aside from some placement problems, it’s a level worth an occasional hosting. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it used in a JDC event either… so go download.

I think it’s a good time as any to tell you right in your face that the whole idea of JazzBusters is useless.

THAT’S A FACT JACK

I don’t really think this needs to be TSF… care to send somebody the source files (tileset and mask) to someone to compile it in 1.23?

This is neat, btw.

WINAMP MAYBE