Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

A rating of 8.3 looks promising, but after downloading the tileset myself I honestly don’t understand why this gets such high ratings. Sure, it’s huge, but sheer vastness isn’t enough for such a rating in my book.

And it’s a pity, but the tileset has little more to offer than sheer vastness. A lot of space is taken by animations of Black Ninja’s JJ2 character doing various things, and other JJ2 characters standing around doing nothing. Those animations are only really useful when making story-driven SP levels, and because the player names are part of the tiles a story-driven level using these animations is confined to using Black Ninja, Spotty, Violet, KJAZZ, Trafton or Hugela as characters. No offence to those mentioned, but I would rather have the possibility of making my own choice on who to include in my story.

The tileset of course does offer more than just these animations, such as platform tiles. Black Ninja’s Castle is drawn using semi-isometric perspective, which works well. However, and this is my main problem with this tileset, it just doesn’t look good. Colour reduction didn’t work that well and everything is dithered and looks grainy. The stone blocks are just grey tiles with a border, without any texture to speak of. The doors look like they had the wrong palette applied to them, the light beams look like a 10 second job with Paint’s spray paint tool.

There may have been some nice ideas and concepts behind this set, but it’s executed very poorly. The text suffers a lot from lack of anti-aliasing and horrible colour scheme, eyecandy tiles such as the “Ninja Cola” are grainy, destruct blocks and arrows are just normal block with ugly text on them, etcetera, etcetera.

All in all this is a very mediocre set that is not really worth downloading or using, except if for some reason you have a brilliant story for a level involving Black Ninja and Pals. 5.5 might be a little harsh, and 6.0 was my original rating, but to balance out the ridiculous ratings others have given it’s a 5.5 after all.

I find “If you find it too hard to beat or if you had to cheat a lot to get past all of the levels, don’t bother reviewing this pack.” a pretty stupid argument. Levels are supposed to be fun, and when they are not fun any more because they’re just too damn impossible to beat they’re bad, it’s as simple as that. Of course, when an inexperienced player doesn’t manage to solve a puzzle or beat a level it’s a different story, but I consider myself experienced enough to have the skills necessary to play through a fair single player level.

The levels in this demo, however good they may look, commit the 3 worst crimes a JJ2 single player level can commit:

1. They contain enemies that are impossible to avoid.
2. Expecting the player to do things they do not know they need to do.
3. Having a GIANT difference in difficulty between playing with Spaz and playing with Jazz.

For example, in the first level, I did not understand what the pits were about, so I jumped in them, expecting to land on another platform. Wrong! Instant death. Okay, lesson learned, on to the next part. At a certain point in the level one needs to jump from a treetop down to a small hole in the trunk near the bottom of the level. Problem is, there is no way the player can know he needs to jump into this hole until he has actually jumped, because the spot is invisible beforehand. And because it is invisible, I expected jumping down would make me land safely on a platform since there didn’t seem to be any other possibility.

The rest of the levels are full of problems like this. Very nice concepts such as the “time trial” thing involving a sugar rush, in the “Flames of Fury” level, are ruined because you can only find out what you are actually supposed to do by failing first. When I then found out that I needed to complete a certain part of the level within the 20 seconds a sugar rush lasts, I managed to get to the “normal” part of the level only to find edge after edge which you need to jump down from onto a out-of-sight platform full of enemies which you just can’t avoid because you haven’t seen them yet.

A lot of the levels have great parts in which you are required to jump from platform to platform, and missing a jump spells instant death. However, as Jazz’s helicopter ear ability gives you far more time to manoeuvre yourself to the right spot, playing the levels in this pack with Jazz is a zillion times easier than playing it with Spaz. At the same time some parts or jumps are just plain impossible without a doublejump. Another apparent oversight.

Anyway, I could go on for a while like this. It’s really too bad that the bad parts greatly overshadow the good parts. The levels do indeed look extremely good, and they do indeed contain innovative concepts and puzzles. Problem is, they’re just not fun too play. Between all fancy stuff you’ll just end up frustrated because you constantly get hurt or killed without being able to do anything about it. And that’s why these levels are, indeed, bad.

Dashin’ through the snow in this level the first thing I noticed was the fairly plain eyecandy. It’s not that bad, and there aren’t a lot of tilebugs, but it doesn’t really stand out or anything either and could use a LOT of work. Try adding more decoration, the tileset could have been used a lot better: for example, I spotted only one (1) tree during my whole runthrough.

The level has to be hosted in Race mode, as there is no trigger mechanism to make it work in Treasure (which is what Race is usually hosted in these days). As you need an external launcher to host online in Race mode I’d recommend you to use the trigger system thing next time.

Now, for the racing itself, it’s quite straightforward and the laps are rather short. TNT and freezer are there, but no ammo apart from that. There are rougly three kinds of obstacles: randomly scattered blocks, blocks that appear and disappear following a certain pattern, and warps that take you back a bit. None of those are really hard to avoid or get through (I’d say they are a bit too easy even). The last warp obstacle for example is covered with blocks which actually make it a challenge to fall into the warps, while it should be a challenge not to fall in them.

All in all, this level lacks creativity in most aspects: it’s small, doesn’t have any interesting obstacles, it has rather bland eyecandy and lacks a fun factor. To the author’s I’d recommend trying to be a bit more original next time: try some eyecandy tricks, go nuts with the obstacles, whatever, anything to make it more interesting than this :)

Oh, this is nice. Gus properly “episodified” Tomb Rabbit and gave it an Episode File (so it shows up in the episode selection menu) and an opening cinematic. The episode file is quite nice, especially the logo, though I wonder why it’s placed in-between Jazz In Time and Flashback. Starting the episode starts the opening cinematic.

While it is essentially just a level, Gus took some measures to make sure it didn’t appear as such, and I must admit that it works really well. The palette of the tileset the level uses was altered in such a way that all HUD elements (such as the score indicator) are hidden, as well as the giant beam of light that usually follows Jazz while moving. This left me puzzled for a while and I only noticed it when the level ended and the reflection of the spinning diamonds was still there. Really clever.

The cinematic itself is, while short, quite nice. It’s not perfectly centered on the screen (which I suppose it was meant to be) but does look like a short movie clip rather than some clever parallax scrolling trickery and works well enough.

The upload also includes a patched version of the tileset used for the Tomb Rabbit credits, which also removes the score indicator and the rest of the HUD. As the author notes in the readme, it has some problems though (the tileset looks worse due to the limited amount of colors available and the enemies which were originally in it aren’t visible anymore). Still, I think it’s a nice addition, and it’s of course optional.

All in all, yet another refreshing and interesting upload from Gus, and certainly worth downloading alongside the original Tomb Rabbit. Keep up the good work!

A first remark: please do not put files in subfolders.

This tileset (which, as the title suggests, partly consists of tiles taken from Super Mario Bros.), is a classical “megatileset”, with several types of tiles which not necessarily fit with eachother. The tileset has some original, seemingly hand-drawn tiles, but also contains for example Jazz/Spaz/Lori animations, a textured background taken from Blade’s tilesets (which sadly does not work, even in 16-bit), and a lot of tiles ripped from the original tileset and other sources I cannot identify. And, of course, it contains tiles with all sorts of characters to make text signs with.

As can be expected the quality of those tiles varies, but is generally acceptable. Most Mario tiles are quite nice, I especially liked the question mark-block animation, though the combination of NES Mario and SNES Mario tiles doesn’t work too well due to the difference in palette and resolution.

A lot of tiles would be useful if only they were finished. For example, there’s a nice platform (taken from Mario) which is completely useless because there are no tiles for the bottom of the platform or to make corners. There are ripped tiles from the official tilesets, which suffer from the same problem. If you really have to rip tiles from other sets instead of drawing your own, do it in such a way that they do not limit your creativity by not allowing you to build platforms with more complex shapes than a rectangle.

Additionally the palette is quite bad, as the Textured Background does not work, and water looks horrid even in 16-bit. You might want to ask someone about this or read up at JCSref (http://www.jazz2online.com/jcsref/) or Disguise’s Tileset Resource (http://www.jazz2online.com/tilesets/) about this, Typhoon Bunny. The masking is severely flawed too: the ripped Carrotus vine, for example, seems auto-masked, so it doesn’t work as a vine. Vines should be masked with 1-pixel, 2-pixel max thick lines instead.

The author asks me to rate the example level too, but as this was uploaded as a tileset I’ll stick to rating the tileset only. The example level is quite nice, though, and even while it does have some flaws it shows some nice ideas and is a very good example of how to use the tileset. Even though the tileset is pretty bad I’d still recommend downloading this just to play the (single-player) level. I do not understand why there are 3 seperate music files in the zip file, though, as there is only one level. Jazz2Online is not a music repository, and you should only include music if it is not included with the original game and used by a level.

All in all this is a pretty bad tileset with a nice example level. So even though I’m giving this a 4.0, I still recommend downloading it just for the level.

Happy Birthday.

The remix starts with some non-distinct electrical noise which I can’t make much of. Then the beat slowly starts kicking in, but the electrical noise does not disappear, giving the whole a quite chaotic feeling, which I don’t really like. Having a bassline throughout the whole tune is not a bad thing usually, but when you try the same with whatever it is that is played throughout the whole song now the result is just… noisy.

Around 2:10 there’s a break where the noise fades away for the first time, which is nice, and the song turns into some breakbeatish rhythm with distorted voice samples mixed on top of it, and it becomes a lot more apparant that this is actually a remix of Tubelectric. This part was pretty cool, however again that atrocious noise can be heard in the background, which really turns me off.

The Tubelectric theme is repeated a few times, though remixed in such a way that it indeed sounds like how the author described it, distorded. It sounds slightly out of tune and a bit too distorded for me to like though. The high-pitched blips that copy the same pattern are a lot more appealing to me.

All in all this is a chaotic mishmash which fails to stay coherent or ear-pleasing, to me. There are some nice ideas in it, such as the vocal samples and the high-pitched blippy Tubelectric theme, but overall it has too many annoying parts for me to like this or consider playing it again.

When reading the title of this level I was afraid that it would be a clone of MULCH, but it’s a little larger than that. Only a little though; it’s still rather small level.

The level layout is rather interesting and while not entirely original, it is certainly a strong point of the level. Basically, the route from base to base is U-shaped, with parts of the level unlocking as you go. This is done via trigger zones, so it might be a little confusing playing in this as the level is different for everyone.

The level is divided in two halves; the top part contains the bases and carrots, the bottom part contains the powerups. Though both teams can eventually access all of the level, the blue team gets to access the bouncer powerup first, while the red team first encounters an Electro Blaster powerup, which is a little unbalanced. Consider putting in two powerups that weigh up to each other, such as a bouncer/RF combo, instead.

Additionally, the level contains two 1-heart carrots, which I think is a bit much for such a small level. One carrot is really the limit for levels like this. The amount of ammo placed in the level is okay, maybe a little too much, but nothing problematic.

Gameplay problems aside, there’s still the eyecandy. The level uses JJ1: Battleships and for some reason I always find levels using that look somewhat the same. “Small Symmetrical Space” is no exception from this rule and adds a few not-too-serious tile bugs, which are however amplified because there aren’t many tiles in this level to begin with :P

I can imagine having a few short rounds in this level for fun. Due to the small size it might be fun with a lot of people, though that’s more the result of it being small than of the level design itself. The level itself is nothing special, with mediocre gameplay and eyecandy, and I wouldn’t really recommend download it.

As this has no rating yes, I guess someone should review it. I don’t have time for anything substantial but here goes.

Omen Woods is based on Dean Dodrill’s example in the JCS help. It is however barely recognizable as such except for the platform tiles, but even those have been immensely improved. The tileset has a lot of atmosphere, with very good looking trees to put in the background layers, leaves for level 4 eyecandy, rain, lightning… virtually everything you need to create a dark, moody level.

Though it has some transparency-related bugs, there is an exit-sign, which is something that is easily forgotten but yet almost essential for single player levels. There’s a small selection of blocks (with a nice vanishing animation) too, so combined with the hurt events this tileset has enough tiles for single player levels. It even has a support for a pole.

All in all, this is yet another excellent LMAT effort which has already led to the creation of some awesome levels with equally awesome eyecandy. Certainly a download recommendation, and on top of that I can also recommend you to actually /use/ this set ;)

It shows.

The level, using the Tube Electric tileset, is immediately recognizable as the first (published) work of a new level creator. Don’t worry Piraniazkalisza, most if not all of us started with releases like this, but this is a level that is not worth playing or remembering.

It contains little to no eyecandy, and is full of Destruct Blocks. Those are not a bad thing, but the way you overused them and placed them in about every passage, instead of using them to wall off secrets or shortcuts, makes navigating the level annoying and will quickly frustrate players enough for them to leave the server hosting this level. The platforms aren’t walled off like they should but are mostly slabs of “mid-platform” blocks. A key to making your level look pretty is properly finishing your platforms; take a look at other levels using this tileset (the ones coming with the game for example) to see how it should be done. It’s also a good idea to learn how to use layers (refer to jcs.Ref for example) so you can do the sucker tubes properly (by placing them in the foreground).

The ammo can only be gathered from ammo boxes, and only comes in two types. Though bouncers are a good choice as the level (with lots of destruct blocks you have to destroy while standing on them) has ample of uses for them, they only come in clusters of 5 boxes, making collecting ammo way too easy. Make it challenging for the player to gather enough ammo; this makes the game more fun to play. Same goes for powerups: they should be hard to get and placed far from each other, not in groups of 5 with several duplicates.

Lastly something about the layout itself. The level is some sort of giant maze, with the maze connecting some rooms with giant amounts of ammo inside. People do not like mazes or corridors of only 1 tile high. A level should consist of platforms connected to each other, not of one platform with some tunnels dug through it; again my advice is to look at some popular battle levels to check how to do it correctly.

I can not recommend people to download this. However, I do recommend Piraniazkalisza to keep on creating levels. Keep practising, and undoubtedly there will be something good in the end :)

“I did the layers besides 4 for him”

And then all reviews claim no layers except layer 4 were used :D

I played this in your server, I think.

The level, using Blade’s “Wasteland” set, looks rather boring. Most of the level uses only one variety of the platform tiles coming with the set which makes it look rather repetitive and emphasizes the blockyness of the layout. The layout of the symmetrical CTF level basically consists of two large rectangles, connected by a tunnel at the bottom of the level. On both sides some large platforms protrude from the wall at seemingly random places. The flow is acceptable, but this is only because the layout is rather simplistic and barely requires any navigation or strategic skills; the base-to-base route is U-shaped without any obstacles. Moving from platform to platform is mainly done via springs.

On the route itself no ammo, apart from an annoyingly-placed seeker powerup can be found. In fact the ammo distribution in this level is rather limited. Both sides contain exactly 14 ammo events and one powerup, which certainly is not enough. This certainly needs a lot of work.

Both sides have a warp that takes you to a platform above the other team’s base. However, the base is not accessible from here and the only thing you can do is take a warp to the bottom middle of the level, which I found kind of strange and useless.

To sum it up, the layout is kind of boring and too open, the ammo placement is horrible, especially for a multiplayer level, the eyecandy is seriously lacking and the gameplay kind of quirky. Not a download recommendation.

“Singing in the rain”, a classic song. The level clearly reflects the last part of the title, as it’s raining indeed. In combination with the “Night” version of BlurredD’s Psych edit, this makes the beginning of the level look kind of ominous with the lonely tree and the sign apparently signed by “Wabbit”.

So far so good. However, the level’s layout is not that interesting. It’s basically a giant “S”, with the start position at the bottom left and a Schwartzenguard at the top right. In between you’ll encounter some dragon flies, a few hatters, and surprisingly enough a pair of floating suckers. The hatters are walking around on the bottom part of the big S which is nothing more than a one tile high platform at the very bottom of the level. Flat platforms are pretty boring and I’d have liked to see some variety here. The least I’d expect are some slopes.

Food is clustered in large groups, which are impossible to miss and serve no other purpose than decorating, which doesn’t work too well because a big group of two food types is just not pretty. Apart from food the only pickup is a single green gem, which is kind of strange too. I liked the “Deactivated Bonus” though.

Another major problem is that part of the level lacks a bottom, allowing you to get stuck in the void at the bottom. This is a serious issue and in future levels I hope the author at least includes a proper bottom. Some more eyecandy would be nice too, because that’s seriously lacking here. No other layers except 4, 7 (the rain) and 8 (the textured background) were used and in combination with the one-tile platforms this makes the level very boring.

It’s also WAY to short. Basically it’s just a matter of jumping up twice with a short run in between and the epic fight with Schwartzenguard can begin. No obstacles at all, except for the tree and bonus warp which are exactly the things you do not expect to be obstacles. I expect a level to take several minutes at shortest, not several seconds.

Eigus, it would be a good idea to take a look at other popular single-player levels uploaded here. Draw some inspiration from it, add your personal twist and your levels will doubtlessly become good in the end. But this level is just lacking too many important characteristics of a good level for me to give a download recommendation.

hilarious lol

I wanted to review DarkSonic’s pack but since people hated my server (at least they didn’t want to join it) and I didn’t feel like waiting for enough people every level Cooba’s the one to get my annual review this time.

‘t is a nice level. I liked the flow and layout, which just worked and was fun to play in. The level has one full-energy carrot and two energy+1 carrots, which may be a tad too much (especially since the two +1 carrots are close together and near them is a warp to the full energy carrot) but since there are plenty of powerups too killing people shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The bases are fairly close to each other (travelling from base to base will take about 7 seconds) but this is not much of a problem. Partly because the level itself is fairly small anyway, partly because the more interested pickups, apart from the RF powerup, are placed near the top and bottom of the level.

The level is symmetrical and fairly small, with few complex structures and a general division in an open structure with some platforms at the top half of the level and a cave/tunnel system at the bottom. Both are easy to navigate and the springs are conveniently placed just a tile lower than the normal platforms. The eyecandy however is not too great. Everything looks a bit dull and uninspired and though there are some nice twists (such as the giant skull) the tileset has not really been used to its full potential, nor does it do anything (apart from perhaps the aforementioned skull) to make the level stand out from the rest. A little more creativity here wouldn’t have hurt.

To sum it up, |Toxin |||||||Twister is a nice and fun level, but fairly average too, with a nice layout and solid gameplay, but not too interesting eyecandy. Hosting this will guarantee one or two fun games though, with 2 or 4 players being the optimum.

Edit: formatting stuff

Batalla Castillo (which I find a way cooler name than “Castle Battle”, but perhaps that’s because I just like the Spanish language) is a battle level using the Castle 1 tileset which is, contrary to what the author claims, fairly small.

It is evident that Rodrigo does not have much experience in level creating. This is not bad – my first levels weren’t much better – but well, it shows. The level is cluttered with red springs in every direction, which makes navigating the level quite a challenge. There are a few other things that appear in virtually every novice level: the giant supply of powerups, grouped together in one place; the large cloud of fairly useless (freezer) ammo; an underwater area that goes nowhere; warps to other parts of the level; and obviously the airboard. All those are quite nice when used adequately, however when they are all in the same level it doesn’t really work.

The level has no “flow”, paths often end in destruct scenery or dead ends, so a battle game in this level won’t be much fun. Good battle levels allow you to keep moving continuously, without bumping into walls or obstacles every so often. The ammo should be placed sparingly, in groups of maybe 5 pickups. Power-ups have to be even harder to get, and certainly not all in the same place. Air boards shouldn’t be used when a level is as small as this one; you need large, open areas for them, without springs at the sides that bump you around. Trigger scenery in multiplayer does not really work well in this game mode, and is even annoying when you are virtually stuck somewhere as long as you haven’t broken the relevant trigger crate. Underwater areas slow you down considerably, and should be avoided unless well-designed – a simple square filled with freezer ammo does not invite the player to place himself in a vulnerable position by submerging himself. Especially not when there’s a chance he will miss the water level event and end up floating in the void at the bottom of the level ;)

The eyecandy isn’t outstanding, but does the job. There are no obvious tile bugs, but apart from that it’s pretty basic. You should try to make the level look interesting, by making platforms and ceilings less flat, by using the brown stones as background scenery, et cetera. Try to make it look alive, like a real castle. Or don’t make it look like a castla at all. Be original; original eyecandy is something that is usually greatly rewarded when done rightly.

All in all this is not very bad for a first level, but it is a first level, and suffers from many common novice mistakes. I can not recommend downloading or playing this level, but keep on trying, Rodrigo, and eventually you’ll get better :)

How about including a readme explaining the myriad of buttons with cryptic labels?

This thing is hideously overrated. The most important tiles, the ones which form the platforms you’ll probably walk on, look like some quick 10 second Paint job. They come in two flavours: tiles with an ugly funky multicoloured stone texture and tiles with some strange red and yellow texture. Both offer very little variationa and will look horrible when used to create big structures.

The eyecandy tiles generally look a little better. Some of them are even shaded (I like the Roman-style collumns), and offer sufficient possiblities to make your level look better. Too bad some of it has that same 10-second-point-job look as the platform tiles, because your level simply doesn’t look good when half of it has been made with shaded decent-looking tiles and the other half was made with tiles that look like they were copied from a first-generation set. When it looks good, it’s not always usable: too many of those funny balloons, for example, make your level look very repetitive.

On the contrary, the layer 6/7 eyecandy looks pretty good. There’s a mountain scene with tower castles showing behind it, and a simple 3D water scene, which does its job. You can easily make a level look like if it’s situated in a lake surrounded by castles and mountains, or something. There are some original fireworks animations to place above the castles, too.

Apart from the basic platform and eyecandy tiles, this tileset contains a lot of text. The quality of those tiles matches the eyecandy’s: it varies. Some text is shaded and looks good, some text looks like unedited cursive Arial, and like one third of it can only be used to say you’re a JSZ member or the tileset was created by a JSZ member or whatever.

I normally don’t care about the “event compatibility” other reviewers seem to value highly, but I think this tileset receives some extra attention for it ;). All palette-specific events seem to work, and there are even tiles to place those poles on. All destruct scenery is there too: even the ice blocks. The belts are animated and look pretty good, though they don’t really fit in with the platforms because those are 2D and the belts are semi-isometric-3D.

If I understood correctly, this set uses 920 tiles instead of 1020 because it would contain so much animations. And indeed it does. However, those have the same problem as almost all other types of tiles: some look bad, some look good. The spinning plates with the Jackabbrit family’s heads on it look quirky, but the fireworks look decent. Overall, it’s nothing special and some of the animations could well have been left out in favour of some more useful tiles.

So, this tileset is not as good as you may conclude out of Avarte’s review. It has a lot of tiles, sure, and some look pretty good, but there are too many badly-looking or not really useful tiles in the tileset and the platforms, as I said the most important part of your level, look horrible. However, where this set misses out on platform element completeness it compensates with its massive amount of event-specific tiles (tubes, blocks and the rest). I wouldn’t recommend downloading it, though: I don’t think anyone would use this for a level while there are so many betetr sets out there. If you really insist on giving your level a “casino”-look, use Chiyu’s set.

You stole levelnames from me! ;O

Small, comment-sized replies eh :P

Cataclysms asked me to review this, and who am I to refuse? This is my first review after a long break, so don’t expect super duper quality ;)

[I played this in the Medium difficulty level]
Frog Chase (which is a rather unoriginal level name) is a level in which the player plays as a frog and has to collect coins to reach the level exit. The coins are either hidden or guarded with enemies (or both), and it’s quite a challenge to finish the level without dying once (at least it was for me).
The level itself is linear and rather short, even when travelling through it in a slow pace (e.g. when you try to find secrets). When you walked through the whole level, you will encounter Bubba, who is accompanied by a Tuf Turtle and a Bat. He’s standing on a floor that collapses after half a minute or so, so you’ll have to withstand him (remember you can not destroy or harm enemies while you’re a frog) until the floor collapses and you will be warped back to the level’s start, where you can either collect coins you didn’t collect yet (there are 10 coins, and you need all of them to finish the level) or warp to the level exit.

The level idea is quite original, I must admit – it’s all been done before, but together it’s a nice change from the usual run-through-the-level-and-kill-everything gameplay. However, the level suffers from several bugs. For example, you are chased by a floating lizard through the whole level, but you also encounter several exploding TNT bombs – a smart player will use it to destroy the lizard and make the level a lot easier. This might be an intended effect though, as the level is hard enough without the floating lizards – bats are a real pain in the (-) when you can’t destroy them. Another bug involves Bubba – as you know, he easily jumps through solid ceilings and that way he’ll probably disappear sooner or later while fighting him. The layer work could use some improvement too: you can see half-hidden events here and there, which looks strange. By the way, please always place one-way events on the large four-branch trees.

Apart from that, the level is pretty decent. Average eyecandy (nothing special, but it does the job – try to use tiles in ways they aren’t meant to be used next time, it usually turns out great), some bugs, a few easy puzzles, and a high score on the originality scale – a seven would fit. Download this if you like to play something different.

This review is just as rare as an upload by Blade ;)

Let me give you a first impression. “Islands in the sapphire sea”, which I will call “island” from now on, is a very detailed tileset with as main theme a carribean pirate island, it seems. The “feeling” of the tileset is exactly like it should be: Piratey! It has all that stuff you always used while playing pirate in your youth, plus more. Barrels full of fruits, rum (or some other liquid), and treasure, cannons, skulls, and SWORDS. Everything looks like it has some kind of cell shading, which gives a very “relaxed” feel to the tileset, especially in combination with the blue background.

As you can see in the beginning of the example level, it’s possible to create some “depth” in the level, as if it’s semi-3D. As Blade mentioned, you have to know the tricks of JCS to create those great effects in the example level, but it’s certainly possible.
Unlike in many other isometric tilesets, the objects in “Island” actually cast a shadow on the ground. This looks so leet that I hereby decalre this my new standard for 8+ ratings >8)
So the main feature of the tileset is the absoultely breathtaking 3D-like graphical quality. The drawings itself are nothing revolutionary, but combined with the perpsective Blade put into the tileset the tileset becomes a masterpiece.

So is it really worth a 10, you may ask? No, as you may know if you read my other reviews, I always keep my critics for the last part. While the tileset contains a great deal of objects like treasure or guns, the most important part of a genuine pirate island is missing: the pirates and the buildings they live in. If Blade combined the buildings of Oasis (redawn, ofcourse) and the amount of objects and detail in Island, this would certainly be worth a 10*. Another set of tiles that’s missing are the water tiles. Ofcourse, there are water tiles for the background and you can create small ponds. But there are no tiles to create the coast of an island, or tiles for underwater enviroments. Surely you can use the water level event to create underwater level parts, but it always looks sort of artificial if you use land tiles to create underwater stuff.
There’s no textured background either. The background provided in the set looks really nice, with clouds, a sun, a ship and island in the background, but some level creators will undoubtly want to use a textured background. Always try to please the masses if you want a good rating ;)

Alright, time for a verdict. I really like this set, but it misses some parts that would make the tileset so much better. The provided tiles offer a really really really one of the best-drawn JJ2 game enviroments ever (did I mention I like the anti-aliasing? Well, I do) and you can create a really versatile and detailed level with it, but this certainly needs a sequel. Grab it now!

^{(*) Yes, a 10. I never rate downloads or games like school work, where perfection exists. You’ll probably agree with me that creating the perfect tileset is impossible: yet there’s a “10” rating. When I consider a tileset really really great and one of the best tilesets ever, I won’t hesitate to give it a 10.}