Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Brotherhood Of Death Level
Level rating: 7.9
Rating
7.5

Whew! I admit i’m quite surprised. “Brotherhood Of Death Level” sounded like another crappy newbie production put together in five minutes. But in contrast: this little battle level using the very underused “Psych” tileset is full of great looking new ideas.

The design is very “tight” and it has a very good event (the pinball paddles were used well here f.e.), weapon and goodie placement. Even better, the layer arrangements looks really really darn cool (Super Saiyan tried to hide a lot of things etc.). Very good eyecandy without any doubt, the author shows us impressively what is possible with “Psych”.
And, by the way, the included Bitmap map of the level is a nice idea, too.

As a conclusion to my review, i can only give out a STRAiGHT DOWNLOAD RECOMMENDATiON here. Really, you won’t regret it. You will finally play something original again and battle fun is garuenteed…good work, Super Saiyan!

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Chocolate Eggs
Level rating: 6.1
Rating
5

Hehe, not bad if you’re four years old i’d say :-P No, honestely, generally it’s always good to choose a custom tileset (as SPLASH already said), but when it comes to the legendary “J2LC_easter” i’m not that sure anymore…you have to admit: it looks very childish and a tad silly, too. Not my favourite style of course.
However, the actual level is pretty much okay. The authors tried to make it circular with many platforms and a sensible weapon placement. The layer work isn’t really worth mentioning because isn’t much of it at all (except the background clouds and some VERY FEW foreground objects).
About the background music: it’s “THE SUMMER HIT !!” by Calim (mention him in the readme next time) and most of us know it from stripe’s Happy CTF pack. So it doesn’t fit perfect here, intutievely (it’s still okay though).

All in all, “Chocolate Eggs” is what i would call an average level. Nice but not really beautiful. Playable but not addicting. If you like this J2LC tileset, or when its Eastern, or when your 4-year-old-sister wants to play at your PC, you may even want to download this (it’s a LOW 5 :-).[This review has been edited by Aiko]

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Diamond cave wars
Level rating: 4
Rating
4

Well, Skullhead SS (btw, allow me to add, that, from a german perspective and all other people who know about history, that’s not a very funny nickname), it was definitely a good idea to use this nice Jazz1 Diamondus tileset. Unfortunately the level itself doesn’t meet the high standard of the tileset: the layout is quite confusing (way too many warps in my opinion!) and there isn’t enough eyecandy to hide those (too many) empty spaces i discovered while testing the level. The music playing in the background (“emphysia”) is a nice little Startrekker module, very chippy and oldskoolish (i actually like it a lot!) but not really perfect for this kind of Jazz2 level.

Conclusion: sorry, “Diamond cave wars” doesn’t get a download recommendation from me. It’s below the average of nowadays level making and lacks of both originality and solidity. I’m sure the author can do better (and he will! :-). I also thought about giving a 4.5 because of the cool music but i decided against. Again, sorry.

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: The Re-constructor
Level rating: 8
Rating
8

Yes, these two levels remind us a lot of DethMan’s example levels for his AWESOME “7th Lava Fall” tileset. But Cell didn’t try to cheaply copy it in any way: he added original ideas, removed other stuff and, most important, shows us his very own style. I really really like this idea of how should i call it…adoption of DethMan’s tileset example and the creation of something new! Apart from that, it’s always good to choose quality CUSTOM tilesets, the J2 community still suffers from a lack of such.
As for the actual level, i could say a lot of nice things: the design is very very good, it creates a “tight” atmosphere, it is fluently playable because it’s circular and so on. Not to mention weapon and event (f.e. sucker tubes) placement.
The eyecandy is also nice…the layer work is definitely based on DethMan’s original levels and only slightly modified but thats nothing bad in this case. It just looks good and stuff like Cell’s try to hide the CTF bases always amuses me :-)
As ET probably wanted to say above, there is a small tile bug at position 23, 95 in the “CelLlevator” level. Doesn’t really affect on my rating though.
Oh and by the way, i’m not a CTF expert but i guess the bases are well placed (i didn’t test in a real CTF game as i have to admit…).
The music files by Leinad and Necros fit perfectly (DethMan used them for his own tileset, too :-).

Well, to sum it up in short: a MUST DOWNLOAD for all us custom tileset and level fans and, no less, for all you CTF fanatics. Congratulations Cell, good work! I was undecided between 7.5 and 8. Don’t ask me.

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Underground Lab
Level rating: 8
Rating
7

Let’s keep it short. “Underground Lab” is a very decent level using the Labrat tileset (and i really like that set), and indeed it may be a tad too large (about 175*60 tiles) in these times of small servers with only a handful of players (i wonder why the authors keep making this large levels).

But layout and eyecandy are definitely above the average in this level: it has a very good and OPEN platform and weapon placement and therefore it is a great fun to play in it i think. The layer work is pretty good, too, using many elements of the tileset.
Apart from all that, there is music. And, of course, it’s always a nice try to win all my sympathy for a level by choosing a super elite tune like this one. It is the background music for Future Crew’s “Unreal” Megademo (of 1992, if i remember correctly), composed by finnish scene legend Purple Motion. Doesn’t fit perfectly to this little Jazz2 level, but still it’s cool.

To finally put it short: DOWNLOAD this level, it is WORTH it.

P.S.: A very annoying bug is the lack of a correct next level setting. I lowered the rating because of this (well actually i was undecided anyways). You should better correct this bug, MR MAGOO :-)

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Mountain Pass
Level rating: 6
Rating
5

Well, i don’t have much to say about “Mountain Pass”. It uses the well know (and totally overused) Diamondus tileset and is too large in my opinion (about 175*62 tiles). The design is okay, no more no less. Unfortunately there are a few annoying things like too many poles and a lack of openness (not really good for a battle). Regarding the eyecandy, i didn’t find much of it in “Mountain Pass”, sorry.
The background music is the original Diamondus tune from Jazz1 and fits okay.

What else to say? If you REALLY REALLY like large battle arenas AND the Diamondus set, you may want to save this level in your Jazz2 folder. If thats not the case: absolutely no need to check this one out.[This review has been edited by Aiko]

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Windy Windup
Level rating: 7.1
Rating
6

First of all, when i try to start “Windy Windup” in a CTF server, the program gives me an “No start positions found!” error. At least in TSF. And there are not even single player start positions (which would make testing MUCH easier and less time consuming). The level works in Battle mode, though. Anyhow: very annoying bug that should be corrected as soon as possible. However, i will still give a short review of this:
the layout is pretty open, as always in Disguises levels. Weapon and other event placement is above the average and the eyecandy is more than acceptable. About the base placement…no idea. Boring. In any case, i didn’t find a lot of original ideas or breathtaking aspects in it so it’s only six points this time (i could increase the rating, if you fix the bug mentioned above).
Download or not? Well, if you’re a hardcore CTF player or a Disguise fanatic (like me), you may like and even want to download this. Remember, it’s still above the average and it’s by Disguise :-P[This review has been edited by Aiko]

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Golden Oldie
Level rating: 8.2
Rating
8

Whew! Or to use the authors own vocabulary: “YAYAYA!!!!!”. Finally some quality.
“Golden Oldie’s Deluxe” is a nice little pack of five beautiful tilesets and five corresponding (example) levels.

“Rocky Greenland” (290 tiles) shows a rocky landscape with hills, clouds, bridges, flowers, stones, water, rain, signs and the like and it uses a kind of very impressing oil painting style (we’ve seen this before from the masterhimself and also from our finnish friend Blade).
“Prison Sewer” (190 tiles) shows the inside of a place, that noone really likes to visit for a longer time. Therefore, it mainly offers walls and stones. Not to forget the wall paintings (“I hate my lawyer”). It also reminds me of a…heh, no, i should better shaddap :-). LOL.
“Alien Homeland” (300 tiles) uses weird looking structures and crazy colours to create the atmosphere of an extraterrestrical place (namely Scotland, as far as i understand :-). Well, all i can say is that it’s fu**ing cool and every talented levelmaker will be able to do a lot with it.
As for “Modern City” (310 tiles), i can understand why Disguise hates cities. If they look like in this tileset, you simply don’t wanna live (or drive :-) there. Well, maybe thats some kind of subtle irony…). Nevertheless, the set includes some nice structures like streets, doors, windows, clouds, stones and steel. The overall look of this set is not too exciting, though.
Last but not least, “Green Matrix” (220 tiles), which shows a lot of green digits (C64 style) plus some other stuff thats hard to describe. It’s not my favourite tileset in this pack as well.
Besides, all tilesets are well-masked in my opinion (i didn’t look too close at it, though).
And indeed, all five sets look quite simple. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t effective (in a sense of good gameplay, having FUN). See? :-)
Apart from all that, the author included five (example) battle levels in his pack. And once again, Disguise sets and stabilizes the standards of modern level making (note: modern level making was always modern :-): the layout is open, the eyecandy is convenient and the weapon and warp placement also fits the needs. Personally, this is still my favourite type of level. I love to play them!
One thing i’m really really missing is the custom music (you know my theory: custom tilesets need custom music). Disguise, you’re one of the gurus when it comes to choosing good music for Jazz2 levels. Don’t bore us with default tunes!
Everything else is just great and it really proves the passion AND the soundness of Disguise’s creations. Besides, i wrote too much…so take my MUST DOWNLOAD RECOMMENDATiON and go playing Jazz!

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Battle Zone
Level rating: 3.6
Rating
3

Well, “Battle Zone” (boy…another DULL name!) isn’t my personal level of the week: it’s about 75*37 tiles small, uses good old MEZ01 (easy to use), it isn’t really circular and the whole design is just…boring, sorry. I have to admit that there are a few eyecandy attempts (sucker tubes, background structures), but like ShanD said, the event placement is horrible (way too much weapons, goodies and food). What else? Mhhh, the snow doesn’t really fit. The music choice (order.j2b) is okay, no idea :-)

The typical three-point-level i’d say (i didn’t find any major bugs at least). Download is not recommended. Oh and Ronyboy, don’t take it personally…if you’re new to level making give it some more tries, i’m sure you will get better in a short time![This review has been edited by Aiko]

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Fantasy wars 2001
Level rating: 2.8
Rating
N/A

All the reviews above are useless. Include the tileset in the ZiP archive, please. For that, use the re-upload function (see above). Thank you!

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: The boneyard
Level rating: 6.2
Rating
6.5

Okay, let’s keep it short: i really, really like the eyecandy and tile placement in “The boneyard”: it’s pretty original and Cell obviously spend some time on it!
As for the playability of the level, i have to (partly) agree with Flea: the poles can definitely get on your nerves! Everything else (weapon and event placement) is of good quality i think, apart from some stupid signs (“go to bed early, brush your teeth”) and one very questionable tile arrangement at the top.
Music is playing fine in the background, must be your fault, Fleaness :-P

Conclusion: if you like the D*a*m*n tileset and Cell’s fresh style of putting the tiles together, you will like this a lot (so go ahead and DOWNLOAD!).[This review has been edited by Aiko]

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Chocolate Lamp
Level rating: 8.5
Rating
7.5

Cool! “Chocolate Lamp” is a very decent battle level using fellow german tileset maker Skulg’s great “Lava Lamp” tileset. In the readme file, the author tells us that he used Commander Dats’ little level making tutorial as a reference…all i can say is: very smart idea! :-)
The level has some quite original ideas in it, for example a yellow/black/red cycling background layer, pinball events and hidden warps and sucker tubes. The whole layout is quite fluently playable which is the main requirement for every good battle map. Violet CLM also tried to put some eyecandy in it, the screen is dominated by those large red…errr…bubbles (at least six layers used, i think). Nevertheless, there are some aspects in “Chocolate Lamp” i don’t like that much. There is an obvious lack of weapons in my opinion and there are way too many shootable blocks, for example. Furthermore, DISTORT.MOD by basehead isn’t my favourite song for this level, sorry.

However, “Chocolate Lamp” is a very original and good looking level creation using a great custom tileset. Therefore, i can only STRONGLY RECOMMEND DOWNLOADiNG iT and hosting a battle server or two!!!

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Everlasting Allyship
Level rating: 7.9
Rating
8

(Aww! Why do these authors always forgot to set a single player start event?!)
Well, as for the actual review, Fl@sh made some good choices before he decided to start building the level: he uses Disguise’s COMPLETELY AWESOME “Spacey Universe” tileset and the fasttracked “Deadlock” tune by Elwood (so…as you can see, the music is not by “Somebody” but by Elwood, member of the super 133t finnish demo/tracking scene!).
The level itself looks very cool, Fl@sh used all kinds of different structures and objects from the set and placed them very wisely. The design makes it very fluently playable and a joyful experience to battle! About the layer work: what can i say, just beautiful…mainly because of the tileset but the level author did what he had to do. Very nice arrangements!
The music (see above) also fits perfectly.

I reward “Everlasting Allyship” with eight (8!!!) points because i’m sooo happy to finally some quality at J2O and some guys that still know how to choose a neat tileset and make a good level out of it. Great level making, Fl@shman![This review has been edited by Aiko]

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: WS Meza (Part 1)
Level rating: 5.8
Rating
5.5

First of all: good idea to use this great new tileset by Newspaz! Otherwise i think that “WS Meza (Part 1)” is not open enough. There are too many poles, vines and walls. I also found some minor tile placement bugs (despite the fact that Meza is horribly easy to use :-) and somehow, the water events are placed in a wrong manner (when i tested the water suddenly appeared at some point. The eyecandy is okay, but nothing spectacular if you have a closer look.
The music from Jazz1 (song14.s3m) fits okay, but i’d prefer hearing the original song Newspaz included in his tileset pack here.
Apart from all that, the next level setting is wrong.

Nevertheless, all fans of new tilesets and battle levels may like this new map. For everyone else, its not really a must-download. Slightly above the average, i think (and too many minor bugs).

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Battle in the City
Level rating: 7.5
Rating
7

Despite the fact, this level is from a german author, i’m quite suspicious here. Mainly because the “Town House” tileset is very hard to use and i never heard from Unhit as a level author before. Furthermore, we also had one or two levels with the same exact name…i hope the author didn’t copy or steal anything.

However, the quality of the actual level is quite good: the layout is circular (one or two dead ends, though) and the event placement (ammo and goodies) makes sense (except that one full energy carrot!). Unfortunately the eyecandy isn’t too great (the background looks a bit messy and there isn’t a lot of layer work at all).

But all over all, i think this is definitely WORTH A DOWNLOAD. There aren’t too many “Town House” levels around.

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Memorial 2
Level rating: N/A
Rating
N/A

Okay, because this is a horribly cheap copy of URJazzCC’s level i will just copy my review from there:

“I really don’t know if a Jazz2 level using the Carrottus tileset is too appropiate in this case (terrorist attack, about 5000 people dead).
However, this is the place to review and rate levels: there is no design and no eyecandy, just some gems and text events showing the compassion of the author (of course, our “nice friend” JJTublear also talks about justice there…sigh). Well, at least i didn’t find any major bugs in the level. The music obviously fits, it’s an ImpulseTracker version of The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” and quite sad.
Personally, i think there was no need for this level and/or at least no need to upload it at Jazz 2 Online. Waste of bytes.”

I actually have a lot to say about this, but i should better shut up. Flame wars don’t help anyone (like J2 levels don’t help anyone…).

[Changed rating to N/A -Fquist][This review has been edited by Fquist]

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Memorial
Level rating: N/A
Rating
N/A

I usually NEVER post N/A posts, but i have to say something here:

We do care about what happened. At least a lot more than any American ever cared about any wars or terrorist attacks in Europe or the Middle East(!) in the last fifty years. Ever heard about ETA in Spain, iRA in Ireland, RAF in Germany (in the seventies)? Ever heard about serbian massacres in Srebrenica in 1995? Did you pray for the Iraquis who died in the US bombings the past years? Well, think about it.
I can only tell you that you have my compassion because of those horrible attacks on Tuesday. Apart from that, this level posted here is a bad level.

And JJ Tublear, i guess you’re about to be kicked from Jazz2Online forever. Sometime it’s just enough with all those personal attacks. And NinjaUR, i requested a serious warning for you. Watch your language.

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Meza
Level rating: 8.4
Rating
8

“Meza” is a pretty cool “3D” tileset that has about 950 tiles. It is obviously meant as a tribute to mezz’s work for the scene and you can really see that (not only from the name ;-). “Meza” has all kinds of cubes and square shapes, transparent, half-transparent and in lots of different colours. Dutch buddy Newspaz also included some very nice background structures which the talented level author could use for layers 5-8. Not to forget some useful tiles like vines and poles.

Esspecially for me (j/k ;-), Newspaz also included a nice little treasure hunt example level. The layout is circular, there are some gems laid out and the eyecandy also looks very good.
Not much too complain about, same with the music file (magic_t.j2b): it is quite nice (not super elite but still nice :-).

Well, to sum it up: apart from the fact that it’s a tad repetetive, “Meza” is a very, very decent, pretty original looking tileset and it gets a FAT DOWNLOAD RECOMMENDATiON from me. No doubt (i was very undecided between 7.5 and 8 here…maybe i’ll change it later!).[This review has been edited by Aiko]

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Memorial
Level rating: N/A
Rating
N/A

I really don’t know if a Jazz2 level using the Carrottus tileset is too appropiate in this case (terrorist attack, about 5000 people dead).
However, this is the place to review and rate levels: there is no design and no eyecandy, just some gems, carrots and text events showing the compassion of the author. Well, at least i didn’t find any major bugs in the level. The music obviously fits, it’s an ImpulseTracker version of The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” and quite sad.
Personally, i think there was no need for this level and/or at least no need to upload it at Jazz 2 Online. Waste of bytes.[This review has been edited by Aiko]

Violet CLM: As much as I agree with you, this probably shouldn’t be rated.[This review has been edited by Violet CLM]

Review by aiko

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Cracco Moon
Level rating: 4.8
Rating
4.5

Well, “Cracco Moon” seems to be some kind of experimental level: it uses a custom tileset called “CS” (80 tiles, quite original, by an unknown author, please give some info next time!) and it mainly consists of a hotel-like landscape, a boring labyrinth in the ground and the moon, where you don’t have a lot of annoying gravity :-)

The design is confusing enough (this is battle? I didn’t find any weapons!), and i don’t like the tile placement at all. Layer work is non-existant.

On the other hand, the moon idea is somehow original and the custom music by Alberto AS(!) is very cool.
As you may have noticed, my main problem with this is: where is the concept behind it? I didn’t exactly find it…

To sum it up: “Cracco Moon” has some nice and interesting ideas, but for some reason, they weren’t perfectly transformed into a level. Nevertheless, if you like experimental, “different” stuff you might want to download it (i wasn’t sure about my rating, it’s between 4 and 6 points i guess).

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