Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

KERT – The ultimate collection is a collection of levels that aside from the majority of them being set in carrotus or using the schwarzengaurd boss have no real connection. The gameplay consists of little more than moving to the right constantly and shooting. When it does deviate, it feels like a subpar mario fangame. The eyecandy is extremely bland and quite repetive of the tiles it uses. The pack shows that the level author has a grasp on how to use the JCS but not a large enough grasp on level design or eyecandy. No download reccomendation, but @DT-boy: keep trying.

Area 51 reloaded is presumably a second edition of a level I have never played. This level feels less like a level and more like a tech demo of all the nifty stuff you can do with SCEs, MCEs, and the like. Pretty much, this is a bunch of example levels tied into one. There is no real goal to speak of, though the level occasionally hampers your progress. Why it insists on doing this is beyond me since this level is more about fiddling with destruct tiles and watching things such as a random seeker blowing up a crate. The lack of music also makes this level feel like a tech demo, though some ambient sci-fi esque tunes could have really helped set a tone.

There really isn’t much to review here as there isn’t much to play as a regular level this ultimately fails for being far too linear and dull despite the occasional obstacles. As a tech demo it slightly falters from having everything on display aready done years ago, though it may be interesting and awe-inspiring to new players. The eyecandy is standard Mez01 fare, but really from this type of level what more can you expect?

I’m giving this level a download recommendation but soley if you’re a new player who has no idea what SCEs or MCEs are and have not been to the J2O article section or JCSref. I can’t really rate the level but since its merely so-so at being both single player and a tech demo a 5 will suffice.

EDIT- There is a mistake in the following review noting the name Basler as “Ballsy”. This is due to my faulty memory, however the contents of the review currently will not be changed due to laziness. Just remember to disregard anything about “Ballsy”

With the oddly named title and poor screenshot I nearly brushed this level off. However the line “Please for rating” struck me as incredibly awesome and I decided to play the pack. Before we start I’d like to point out the current event taking place. There have been four single player levels uploaded recently which is the most entirely separate SP uploads uploaded so closely together in some time. Fun.

Whats also slightly fun is this level. The level can be split into two parts, one half that you’ll be spending most of your time in that is open-ended, and the other half is linear. The open-ended section started off feeling quite fun for me since it felt so wildly open. However that openness leads to the level’s major problem: The level design contains far too much empty space and too few distinct design choices to be able to link areas together. Also sucking the fun out of the design is that is no clear goal at all. I constantly found silver crates though I never knew what they activated, and I found the secret hideout you’re instructed to go to by aimless wandering more than anything else. The fact that I only had half the coinage needed to proceed past the hideout made my next session of aimless wandering in the level feel like a chore.

The enemy placement feels random, more along the lines of “There is grass here, so to will be an enemy” instead of “This is a strategic place for a turtle to be”. As usual the only enemies that posed a threat were the flying lizards and bees. At times I felt like enemies were placed without discretion as I paid the bonus booth 10 coins and warped directly onto a turtle.

That turtle signifies the start of what I call the second half. It’s not really a half since it takes much less time to complete, though its design philosophy greatly differs from that of the earlier portion. It is quite linear and feels like “Mah Furst JayJay Tooooo lvl!” in that its design could be placed into anyone’s first SP upload and feel right in. That being said, the design in this portion isn’t bad (in fact its a lot more competent then the open ended part) , it just feels uninspired and like I’ve traversed it countless times before. Upon completion you get to Eva thus giving the level’s name a bearing of sense and logic.

The eyecandy as usual is nothing bad, its just there. Not even trying to make a case for me to notice it be it by flaws or outstanding graphics-whoreship. This is quite simply, the most average eyecandy I have ever seen. There is nothing in the level that is wrong tile-wise, yet there isn’t anything thats not bland either.

The level also insults the player quite a bit and tends to be quite vulgar. The first time I noticed this I thought Ballsy was a misspelling of Bilsy, however as time went on I have come to the conclusion that this refers more to a sack carried by males. The second time I noticed this the level called me “gay” with little to no provocation. I presumed that this was a misspelling of “guy” as the text felt quite calm and this was presumably the level author’s first english level. Its like the XKCD comic where the author claims a hobby of his is to drastically change curse level mid-sentence. However the next textstring I found called me dickhead, and that was that. Why the level author did this is beyond me, since the insults are tacked on and aside from Basler’s sole text none of them really feel like they’re supposed to go with the text they’re with. Its like they were added last minute to make the pack feel “edgy”

All in all this pack is hampered by feeling uninspired throughout, and by being far too open for its on good without a clear set of goals. When the level finally decides to start forcing you down a path the level starts being fun again, but it never reaches the level it was when I first started realizing I had stepped into an entirely open world. If only that open world had more substance then what I had to traverse through.

The level is alright, can’t really recommend it on any of its on merits due to far better levels sharing the front downloads page with it. The only problem with the recent SP surge is that level flaws really shine when theres a greener meadow ever so close by.

Holiday Hare 07 is Odin’s sophomore Holiday effort, and much like the official sophomore holiday pack this download is mostly made up of regurgitated material. The pack is split up into two parts, the main attraction “Jazz Jackrabbit’s Scientolomas Adventure” (Originally titled Jewmas adventure), and the much meatier Holiday Hare ’05 Remix. Both portions come up short in various areas, though the 05 remix is able to save itself a bit better since it is longer.

I shall start with the scientolomas adventure which is comprised of a meager two levels. The pack was originally centered around Jazz being a Jew, and a few of the pack’s jokes (intentional or not) fall a bit flat from the name change. The controversial line that sparked the name change is left entirely unchanged save for the replacement of “Jew” with “Scientologist”. How this is perfectly ok, or at the very least any better is beyond me. The first level in the pack is extremely dull gameplay wise, but makes up for it with its sharp sense of wit and humor. Jazz proclaims he is Corporate America as he steals coins (actually silver cookies, though the pack calls ‘em coins more often than not) from the citizens of Holiday Town (only open once a month in the year!) The level design however is extremely linear and the nearly nonexistant puzzles simple and trite. One puzzle (and perhaps the only puzzle) has a rather clever hint, however it serves no real purpose as the puzzle can be solved easily enough through guess and check. The dull level design is majorly hampered by two things: the rather slow pacing despite its amount of enemies, and that two recent coin collection levels that have been released eclipses what can be found here. It is still worth playing for it’s comedy however, though it will feel like a chore for the most part.

The second level is the better of the two by far, though it is short and rather shallow considering it has great potential for a larger product. The level is based around the concept of crate puzzles, where you must push a crate containing TNT to the silver crate to move on. It feels a little bit like Portal though without the humor. In fact, if Odin brought the humor over to this stage, then axed the first level so more time could be spent on this one, and then added as a bonus stage to the Holiday Hare ’05 remix it could have been much better. This stage also offers a very awesome, though simple, addition. It is called the failhole, so if the finicky JJ2 crates don’t work the way you needed them to you can retry without the loss of a life. The last crate puzzle is a bit anticlimactic and the Devan boss is rather dull leaving for an unfulfilling ending to an otherwise sublime level.

The eyecandy in the levels are rather basic, nothing that really pushes the tileset. However, this is the HH98 tileset, which is one of the hardest tilesets to use period. The levels in HH05 also contain basic eyecandy which is probably due to the Holidaius tilesets being limited in nature.

Speaking of HH05, the remix feels a bit spotty. Granted all Odin had to work with was my terrible review from two years ago (also granted this review isn’t much of an improvement, rarely going into detail), he did do a rather good job at trying to tweak it. The levels include more enemies, a complaint I had from the original pack. The problem with this is that some areas contain too many land enemies (a ton of air enemies, when done right, is always fun to deal with) and some enemies are placed in locations that make the level near impossible to traverse. The Bilsy boss fight feels worse with the added enemies, though if the aerial enemies in the arena were removed it could work out perfectly well. The level design, whether dilluted by the added enemies or not, is still as great as it was a few years ago and that alone should warrant this remix a playthrough.

All in all the pack has quite a few faults, though A) It is the only single player holiday pack this year (again) and B) the awesome parts are REALLY awesome. Download recommended.

The level design and eyecandy in this level is competent. Not exceptional, but competent nonetheless. However the level is unpassable in a few areas thus making it impossible to complete through conventional means, a sign that this level had not been properly tested prior to release. Its a shame, because the level is worth about a 7 otherwise.

Once again I am quite wary of not only this pack (which barely made a 2 and has zero satisfaction) but also its sole review which for whatever reason decided to comment more on the eyecandy than the gameplay. This speaks volumes in more ways than one, and perhaps one of the reasons I don’t trust JJ2 reviews anymore. I run from A to B and its boring? Really? Great, no really it is. No no don’t go on, I’d MUCH rather hear about the terrible eyecandy, since you know it’s not like I have to PLAY this pack or anything.

Which is actually quite true, there are long stretches throughout JJ2 The Movie where you are not doing anything at all.
In an attempt to make the pack feel more like an actual movie, level designer Krinya forgot the fun and the pack suffers because of it. For example, there is a level consisting of nothing but Jazz falling. This nearly sounds like a half hearted joke, so I will repeat that line again with more emphasis: One level in this pack consists nothing more than of Jazz falling for nearly 45 seconds in front of a bland background while you sit and watch. No measures where taken to make this concept fun or at the very least engaging. Some form of obstacles would have been nice. There are many more instances throught this pack that require minimal work on the players part such as the downhill-roof slide in the first “scene”.

The levels consisting of gameplay are no better being extremely linear and discouraging exploration (the hologram castle warped me to my death just because I felt like exploring a tower a suicidal person jumped off of). They offer little challenge, variety, and half the time I was merely going through the motions not even knowing if the path I took was actually going to lead to the exit. It also feels like the levels were designed with the intention of being a part of a mobile phone game for an extremely low-end phone as there tends to be no more than one enemy on-screen at most times. There are also a few instances where the faulty level design got me stuck without having any plan of getting me back out, a sign of a lack of beta-testing for sure. Theres a “maze” puzzle early on that seems to really nail down the feeling of pack, allow me to describe it to you in case you have yet to play the level. Jazz must retrieve a remote which is in a tiny dirt maze of sorts. The remote is safely tucked in the middle and is easily accessible. There is a burning oil barrel at the top of the maze which requires more effort to get to and does nothing but hurt the player. Forget telling Krinya to spend time on the eyecandy front, Sonicnathan, more time needs to be spent on making levels worth playing.

The dialog during the city levels in scene-1 try to humorously mask the laziness in playing the same dull level repeated multiple times but ultimately fails. Unlike in Haunted Castle Manor where humorously pointing out bees don’t belong in an old castle was fun because the bees added to the gameplay, the minor additions to the second and third repeats of scene 1 do not. Not only that but the plot is completely inane and doesn’t seem to follow any sense of logic at all. Jazz despite signing up for a movie doesn’t seem to know the script. The director seems more concerned with killing Jazz for whatever reason instead of making a competent film. When Spaz shows up you really get the feeling this is some elaborate snuff film. Not to mention that despite being called “Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Movie”, the movie’s plot doesn’t seem to follow anything from the actual game.

As if the poor level design (which breaks simple rules such as “You won’t have paths leading to bottomless pits at the level’s bottom”) and nonsensical story (the broken english wasn’t even that bad, the problems lie mainly with a broken plot) weren’t enough, the pack’s eyecandy is atrocious. Ahaha, did I say eyecandy? I meant Eyesore, shield your eyes kiddies Uncle n00b has just set his review phaser to “scathing”. Rocks float magically midair, poorly done backgrounds, tiles that don’t even finish connecting to anything, a mentality that only uses tiles to barricade you onto a single path, a hologram level that actually hurt my eyes while playing (no joke), and the god awful concept of an “invisible bridge”. You can probably make a bridge using Top Secret 3, its been a while, but I’m positive. If you can’t, just make a walkway. Invisible bridges are the level equivalent of closing your eyes falling back and expecting a complete stranger to catch you. I may be over reacting, but still, it bugs me.

All in all JJ2: The movie feels a lot like an old pack I made back in ’04 but never uploaded called “Operation P.I.G.” simply because the pack was meant for my entertainment, and my entertainment only. As I am prone to do, the pack was made completely terrible on purpose set to the story of a rather bad essay I read in class about an invention that makes pigs fly. The only difference between Operation P.I.G. and this pack however, is that JJ2: The movie isn’t an elaborate joke (at least not that I’m aware of) and doesn’t even include all the tilesets needed for the levels while nonsensically including tilesets prepackaged with JJ2 and TSF. No less than four times and perhaps a bit more while playing the pack I had to stop and hunt for the next tileset JJ2 said was missing like I was running errands for a pregnant women who got a new bizarre food craving every few minutes. I’m not sure if any of you have done that, but rest assured if the stories I have heard are true it is not fun. But I did unzip the tubelectric tilesets that came with the pack just in case my old ones deleted themselves (Read: Sarcasm)! More time needs to be spent on fleshing out the world in which the level is set both gameplay-wise (this comes first- remember that.) and eyecandy-wise, and the plot needs to at least have some kind of logic applied to it. I really never felt like I was actually acting in a movie outside of scene 1, it really felt more like Jazz wandering movie sets on his own accord while cracking one liners as the director followed him around with a cellphone camera.
Even without fancy mathematical algorithms, I can tell this pack is worth a 1.7 and nothing more and perhaps quite a bit less.

Note- I only played the single player variant of this level, if there are any changes in the multiplayer variant this review does not take note of them.

Windmill Country is a collect-a-thon level tasking the player with finding 100 coins much like the sublime Haunted Castle Manor. The storyline is about a lazy miller who asks you to find 100 euro (aka coinage) to pay off a villain who stole said Miller’s windmill. The process of getting said coins is quite dull and mundane. Unlike HCM which kept things tight and intertwined with twitchy action, Windmill country is far too open for its linear design and the action is dull at best. HCM relied on stock enemies for sure, but Windmill country has you fighting only Tuf turts and fat chicks. Not only is the action bland, but so is the manner in which you find coins. The majority of coins are laid out for you in bunches and rows, and very few require any puzzlework at all. The coins that do offer some interesting objectives but nothing that requires any braincells. Along with the long stretches of nothing interesting and all-too-few “puzzles”, Windmill Country has an extremely short length.

The level’s only saving grace is the quite awesome villain chase at the end of the level. While the concept is far better than the execution, it is still quite nifty utilizing the activate boss event to change the music for a cinematic touch and a payoff doused in absurdist humor. I would love to see Ischa (or heck, any other level maker) flesh this concept out in future packs.

The foreground and tileground eyecandy is quite empty and desolate, and really doesn’t offer much at all. The windmills in the background look fantastic though this more a testament to Gus’ tileset. Also, kudos to Ischa on the choice of music which if nothing else, really compliments Gus’ tileset style.

Windmill Country is hampered by the “Antz” effect of having a far superior product released shortly after it, without which some of the flaws may not have been as noticeable. Still from the few bits of brilliance here, and Chazz’s HCM it is clear that these collect-a-thon levels have some staying power and I’d love to see Ischa to take another crack at this subgenre again.

I was wary of this upload at first. Considering the quick review found that the level was worthy of an 8.2 for soley having “lots of stuff in it” and the second review for whatever reason placed eyecandy above gameplay, and then mentioned that invisible poles somehow looked good (what madness? they’re invisible!), to say the least I was highly skepitcal.

That being said, playing this level was quite fun. By making the majority of the coins gold (and thus meaning you really have to find a little over 50 coins instead of 100) and leaving about half in plain view and the other half requiring some brainwork mixed with enough action that the coin hunting doesn’t feel soulless, Chazz has found a winning design. That doesn’t even mention the at times humorous and thought provoking text strings (just how old are those vases?) which at times takes jabs at the level’s design choices. Also, about those invisible poles, while I would have liked a better explanation the concept does look quite cool when in motion. While there are a lot of enemies there are never so much in one particular area that it feels like a chore to take them out, although having to wipe them all out again on a second run-through to find missing coins is a bit annoying.

While the carrot-on-a-stick gameplay is addicting and the level design quite marvelous, the eyecandy of the level leaves a bit to be desired. While I didn’t notice it a first, it begin to dawn on me that the castle’s bricks were highly repetive and background was just not interesting (probably because it looks like its the same as what was used in the official levels). However there are little if any tilebugs, and the ones I noticed were just me being nit-picky.

All in all, this level, while short, is quite fun. I’d like to know how long Chazz took on this level since if he can crank out fun releases like this in a short amount of time it could just be the kick the dwindling Single Player scene needs.

What I said.

Seriously people, stop being sheep and leeching off my reviews.

Note to self- Include every regular JJ2 tileset in next upload, then hope sonicnathan finds no antidote.

Every so often, a level pack comes along that begs to be bashed and taken to the curb. This is not one of those packs, this pack is so short, so incredibly simple and so incessantly easy that it just has to be a joke. People trying to bash this pack for “humour” or whatnot are, in fact, the ones being duped. The pack, entitled with B-movie gusto as “Battle with Viruses!”, has very little storyline. Stuck in a B-movie esque computer, Jazz (or the rabbit of your choice) takes on Licensed Game esque objectives. Though there is a nifty bar effect at the top and bottom of the screen, the eyecandy leaves much to be desired. The eyecandy however is the last thing Krinya needs to focus on. The level design is horrendously ghastly and leaves behind such flaws as walkways into bottomless pits and obscuring part of the players view with the aforementioned eyecandy bars. Not to mention that two of the three levels consist of “hold direction button until you fall down and need to change direction, or hit end sign”. There is an included endboss which is a robot boss, and it suffers the same fault as every robot boss out there: the arena is nothing more than a flat stretch of land. Matters are made even worse with the unlimited supply of toaster ammo given. The first level is somewhat longer than the rest, but is still just as dull. Unlike Sonicnathan, I found no puzzle solving elements (perhaps his brain was melted after being poisoned by the tilesets?), however I did find a robot boss that did not activate as I stealthily slipped by to the exit. Now I may have just outlined many flaws in the pack, despite saying it shouldn’t be bashed. Hear me out, I am not bashing this pack. For starters, it’d be a waste of effort since the pack is, like, 10 seconds long, and because if I just said “Download this pack for this one really brilliant bit” no one would find this review helpful. Now as mentioned, there is this one really brilliant bit that redeems the whole pack, and since the pack takes 10 seconds or so to beat, you’ll agree with me this one bit was totally worth the effort. I’m not spoiling it, but when you defeat the endboss there is some very inspired writing that should make you chuckle at the very least (be sure to note that there is text at both the top and bottom of the screen). Also the credits have a neat equalizer animation.

Overall, the pack is broken on many faults but it’s short length and downright awesome writing make it worth a download.

I’m pretty damn sure the number one download rule is to only upload finished download content.
(It’s really the last rule, but it’s more designed to forbid demos and betas, neither of which this is. If a pack is not finished, and the author/s has/have no intention to ever finish it, then it seems only fair to let them put what IS finished onto J2O, so people can at least get a little enjoyment/functionality, if not the whole thing. I saw no complaints when Moonblaze uploaded the unfinished TDI2, for instance. I see no reason to not allow this to be uploaded, especially when it’s not even technically uploaded to J2O anyway. ~Violet)
At the time, the pack did not include the download links in the download info, that or I missed them-n00b

The second I read the description and thought “A minigame compliation, eh?” I knew there was only one controller fit to play them.

Wiimote in hand, I loaded up the level pack and was shocked to find myself dumped into a minigame without a lick of ingame storyline. Come on, this isn’t the ’80s. In this day and age minigame compliations have ingame cutscenes. WarioWare is at the forefront of this, with Rayman Raving Rabbids trailing not too far behind. Even Mario Party has an intro cutscene to explain why you’re running around boards.

The plot we are given also has one gaping flaw (well, two but we’ll get to the second one in a bit): If we’re supposed to stop Devan’s minigames, why are we playing them? Doesn’t that defeat our purpose?

The next flaw is that I don’t see why game companies feel they’re threatened. First off there’s only four games, and they’re all minigames. Even the most terrible minigame compilation on the market has way more minigames than that, and they’re much more interesting to boot.

The first minigame in the game is the “Break a barrel” which is an extremely dull concept to begin with. You’re in an area filled with crates, and only one of them contains an exit sign to proceed. The first level is dull enough with it’s small ammount of crates, but in each world the ammount of crates increases and as they increase, the fun decreases. There has to be a more inventive way to design this minigame past the “shoot! shoot again! look out for that enemy! shoot! shoot some more! shoot!” mentality shown here. The level design is at it’s worst on the Megairbase level where you get stuck in pits you can’t get out of.
Dear level designers: Stop making areas that force me to type “JJK”, it’s annoying and lazy design.
From, n00b.
There isn’t anything redeeming found in this minigame, however if it cut down the number of crates and made me have to solve a small puzzle to get to them or have a crate hold something that I need to access the end crate, this minigame idea could be pretty fun.

One vs. Millions should be renamed “One vs. two, maybe three”. Instead of facing off hordes of JJ2’s more relentless enemies (such as the demons, the monkeys, and the bees) you face off a lizard and a tuf turt, who will respawn after being quickly taken care of. Most, if not all, airborne enemies are in locations where if you don’t jump(which you don’t need to) they will ignore you.
Also, while the airborne enemies change with the scenery, the land team of Lizard and Tuf Turt never change, which added with the fact the air enemies mostly leave you alone, make this minigame another exercise in boredom.
It doesn’t help that DX pulled off this concept much better in his cancelled Jazz X pack, if you can get ahold of the betatest levels, try to study this stage.

Suck Through has the makings of a good minigame, but like the other minigame concepts in this pack the concept is wasted. Jazz is sent hurdling through a large water tube filled with fish and must survive to the end. The first of these shows promise, but it’s far too short with far too little obstacles to avoid. The second level attempts to rectify this by adding far too many fish that are near impossible to avoid, but it’s still the same length so even if you get hit a few times you’ll still be able to make it through the level. Unfortunately, the remaining two variations of this minigame follow the mindset put in place by the second, and still cease to change size. It doesn’t help that you can also shoot down the fish.
This minigame can be fun if the right balance is struck in the ammount of fish needed to dodge, or leaving it at the ammount in the first level mixed in with different kinds obstacles. Also it’s far too short and should be longer.

Out of all the minigames in the pack, Pinball is the absolute worst. All of the levels are essentially the same level where you must get to the top, with the exception of one pinball table in Nippus where you must find the hidden warp. There are no clues as to where this warp may be, and again the pinball table is essentially the same as all the others. This elusive goal is more frustrating than fun, and is worse than the abundant “get to the top!” style pinball levels. The get to the top levels all have the same strategy, and zip by too quickly. There is next to no challenge, and at first you may be confused as what to do since the instructions sign is placed not in the put where you start, but instead on the far left making you have to work a bit to get there. Out of all the minigames in the pack, the pinball ones are the worst since while dull like the rest, there is nothing that can really make the concepts shown in the pack any better. If you’re still interested in making a pinball minigame, I suggest axing the ideas here and reworking it from the ground up.

The bosses while all tile based, are pretty much a rehash of a minigame you already played. While each of Devan’s accomplices are named after a video game star, none of them bear any resemblance to their namesakes. Backman is essentially “Get to the top” only you now have to buttstomp each of his eyes to open up the exit, and the level’s height is drastically shortened. Super Rario is just no frills One Vs. Millions, and Devan just takes the dullness of Break the Barrel to a new low. Ponic is the only one of these boss encounters that show any real promise, and yet it would work much better if he was just a regular Suck Through minigame instead of a boss. You’re supposed to be chasing Ponic, but every time you stop to shoot through blocks (The level’s ‘twist’ over the regular minigame) not only does the high speed chase grind to a halt, but so does Ponic. If he’s just going to wait up then why am I even shooting these blocks down? The ending of this level is also nonsensical, as Ponic runs headfirst into spikes and then blames you for it. If the level worked like the regular suck through levels (I.E. no shooting through blocks, more stuff to avoid) and ended with a fight against a Ponic tileboss, this stage would have worked much better.

All in all, this pack is dull but if tweaked slightly could be entertaining. This could have easily been fixed beforehand if Ischa had someone else betatest the pack. However until a Jazz Planets 3 comes out that hopefully kicks it up a notch in the design and fun departments, I suggest not downloading this.

Review Nutshell!
Pros- Some promising concepts, nontraditional bosses
Cons- Nonsensical storyline, concepts fall flat in execution, bosses are just the same minigames ocassionally with small twists.

I get an error that I’m missing Phoenix1.j2t

This is genius work here.

I’m going to start off by saying the music for Chameleon world is among my least favorites on the Jazz Jackrabbit Advance soundtrack. This is however my favorite JJA remix, which isn’t that hard to be since only 3 exist (all done by 2xGJ no less).

Onto the review. Now I’m not some music analyzer like say Joseph Collins, I’m just a guy who knows when he digs the sounds he hears and when he doesn’t. And this guy dug this sound. Part of the enjoyment was that spark you get from hearing something different, which can help a bad song be tolerable, a good song sound amazing, or let Ron Jeremy rap his way to 26 weeks on the top 50 charts.

That’s not to say that if this song wasn’t a Jazz Jackrabbit Advance remix it’d get a lower score, far from it sirs (and womans). This remix is really good stuff, with the style progression feeling extremely natural and never jarring. The music’s inspiration comes through wonderfully and creates a remix that would work ingame a lot better than the original.

So, in closing, if you like JJA’s music, or if you like Splinter Cell’s music, or if you just like music in general, download this now and you won’t be disappointed.

This program was a breeze to install. Just unzipped it and clicked. Amazing. I usually have to read manuals for this kind of stuff but [insert program here] was so simple and user freindly I was impressed.
We live in an age where everyone uses computers and [insert program here] understands that. This program is just not for the smartiacs, and it’s simple interface displays this fact proudly. It’s so easy, even a baby could use [insert program here].
In this wave of the future, many programs are trying too hard to be overcomplicated jack-of-all-trades swiss army knives of the computer world. Not [insert program here]! It understands the “See a need, fill a need” approach of the 50s and is meant to do only one task that it excels at, instead of 50 functions of unknown quality hidden in a tome of a readme and a corperate interface. This task is [insert primary function here], and it’s done so perfectly that I am amazed at the perfection.
So download [insert program here] and have fun with [insert primary function here]. It’ll make you remember of a simpler time.

[Inappropiate rating (10) edit. Just… stop it. – FQuist]

NOTE- This is a re-review. This review takes the initial score and then re evaluates what is fixed. New points are then added based on how much improved from the previous version.

Theres a reason why the theme got a long rant in my review- It’s easy to write about themes or misinterpreting thereof.

There isn’t much to say about usability, especially when these things don’t phase me in the first place. What am I supposed to do “It’s been organized so I can find everything without taking a few seconds to look for it! Let me spend 3 paragraphs explaining all the changes in organization!” ?

In the end, while the rant on themes may be dominant, neither factor was dominant score-wise.

Now if you recall I had other complaints.

For example, the extra tiles are still lacking in creativity, the monochrome scheme is still useless and still feels tacked on, the water scheme still doesn’t make any sense or have anything special added to it aside from the color scheme that adds to it’s name of “water”. The Tex. BG still looks rather ugly in my humble opinion D:< (Can’t forget the “D:<”, that’s essential), the waterfalls still don’t make any sense in the Ice, Fire, and Dark versions (since Dark has now been overhauled to work as a darker version of Fire), hell, the water falls just feel cheap in general, and the tileset’s name still feels like an overstatement especially when you still didn’t add all of Disguise’s essential tiles.

Also, all you did that’s easily noticeable was change the dark pallet, fix Ice’s color mishap and tack on the old BG. Great, that didn’t actualy take any themes/feelings into account. If you did, you would have taken the time to actually flesh out the pallets like I suggested. Among my suggestions were (with words to them since unless theres alot of words, you won’t pay any attention apparently) “Make monochrome something appealing people would want to use, perhaps by making it look like a 1930s cartoon”, “The fire edition should have a lavafall, since water in hell doesn’t add up”, “The waterfall should be frozen in Ice. I mean, theres only two tiles that are ice in the whole set as it is, you might as well add something else to it’s namesake”. Finally, did you even bother to copy and paste in the other destruct blocks? Seriously, it’s not like you even have to put in any creative thinking to do that.

This is a sentence on how easy it is to find a tile in the set. No really, it is really simple. Most of the ground pieces are placed right next to each other! And all of the trees have been grouped together! So have the 4 destruct blocks! All of the skeletal parts are right there! No time spent looking! Wow, I really can’t say enough about this!
It’s amazing, you seriously won’t beleive how you used it beforehand! I’ll even be cocky and say never use the old one again! Just so you REALLY get the picture on how easy this is to use, here’s the same paragraph again! This time as a runon sentence: This is a sentence on how easy it is to find a tile in the set, no really, it is really simple. most of the ground pieces are placed right next to each other, and all of the trees have been grouped together, so have the 4 destruct blocks, all of the skeletal parts are right there, no time spent looking!

Pros-
-Better Organization
-You can now use every tile from the old set (Like the old BG for instance)
-Dark now has a purpose aside from “Random color scheme!”
-Ice has been fixed

Cons-
-Water and Monochrome still feel to random and neither have anything that really warrants their use except “Hey want to use some random colors?” I don’t care if it’s weird, what I want is for you to take that weirdness and actually DO SOMETHING with it. Anyone can make a color scheme. It’s not that hard to make color schemes, hell Purple Jazz’s entire tileset career is based on making color schemes. I’d like to see something actually done with the scheme.
-Still hasn’t added all of Disguise’s essential tiles, not even the easy ones like destruct blocks.
-Despite saying that the feel of the set was taken into account, all that was done to the set tile-wise was the addition of the old background
-Waterfalls still feel tacked on and unimaginative
Cons that don’t affect the score- – Old BG was removed because converter felt it was too ugly (I’m inferring). This did not take potential users of the tileset into account, and was a very bad move. It has since been fixed of course, but this is something that should have never needed to be fixed in the first place.

So you fixed some colors and added in the old background (Which ironically is miscolored in the ice version, I’ll let it slide since the pallet wasn’t meant to include it), I hope you weren’t expecting me to add 5 points to your score just for that.

DR- Sure, the original sets are now easier to use and is all there so you can’t exactly lose there. Otherwise, the improvement isn’t exactly all that major, and what has been done with the set imho still isn’t worthy of the title “2.0”

[HTML fix ~Cooba]

I like the changes made here, but calling it “2.0” is a bit much, more like a 1.5 if you ask me.

I’d REALLY want to see a tex bg that says I’m in hell. Thats what The Dam Nation tileset is, Hell.

Not some Samurai War (Which is what the tex bg conjures up for me), Hell.

Hell is down in the Earth, why is there SKY in hell? Before you pull the “Hell on Earth” card, I’m going to toss this: If it was Hell On Earth, why didn’t you do something more with that idea?

I did not enjoy this pack whatsoever. No wait scratch that, I enjoyed it, but disliked parts of it which were major enough for me to not enjoy it in the aftermath.
Unlike Ischa, who’s name is now pratically a synonym with “Bad Packs” to me, I always enter Gus’s packs hoping for the best.
Which is why I feel so terrible I left with the worst. I’ll start with something positive, but it probably won’t be too long until I start delving into everything negative (not that it matters, Gus doesn’t listen to the parlent users, I take it)
Interesting Buttstomp technique used at the end. Too bad it’s A) Poorly done and B) The name “Homing Attack” sounds retarded.
It’s a stomp you do with your butt, ergo “Buttstomp”. How the hell does “Homing Attack” relate to that in any way shape or form? It doesn’t even sound all that cool of a name anyways. You ask “Who cares about Buttstomp?”, I ask “Who the hell are you to say the attack needed a namechange in the first place?”
Thats like me all of a sudden going “Who cares about ‘walking’, from now on I’m gonna call ‘Super Hydrosonic Gremwarp’” and expect everyone to follow. Next, The general idea of the plot is very imaginitive and unique, but the problem with it is that it’s not well thought out.
“Team Jazz” are all written like they’re bored to even be there (what a coincidence, so was I). Devan is also poorly written, and it’s hard for me to suspend my belief into thinking that Devan knew his plan would fail. Why would he leave signs saying “I’ve had enough of you meddling! NOW TO SEE THE REAL POWER OF THE PHANTOM!!!”
Looks like even Devan is falling into a routine, which is what’s making SP packs so boring lately.
It’s just not enough to play Situation Madlibs, you have to make the characters
act like they want to be there as well.

Level design isn’t too terrible, but it’s not amazing either. The only real mediocre level in the pack is the last one, where Gus shows he doesn’t know the difference between “Difficult” and “Frustrating”. Listen, just because you toss in a bunch of bees doesn’t mean the level is automatically difficult, it means most players are going to hate your level and will not even attempt to finish it without cheating.
Another frustrating aspect is one puzzle that forces you to type in JJK to redo it.
I’m sick of these. Next time you level makers out there make a puzzle ask yourself “Is there a way I can make this work without making them press JJK?” If not, don’t put that puzzle in. It’s overkill to expect the player to get rid of a whole life just because they couldn’t solve a puzzle. At least use the CTF Base thing, that doesn’t remove a life at all.
There were also a few instances where I asked “Did Gus even test this blasted thing to see if all the rabbits could get through it?” Like in the first level, theres a cliff only Spaz can jump up to. Too bad for Jazz and Lori that the cliff is the only way to continue the level. Maybe Gus should start calling the group “Team Spaz” isntead.

Oh, and I had no clue what was going on at the boss fight with the phantom. Can you people please start giving some instructions on how to fight these “Dodge respawning enemies and do something” bosses? I have no clue what the hell I’m supposed to do, and they’re ussually just JJNEXT fodder.

All in all, the level design is decently average but theres plenty of things I didn’t like about it. These things knocked the score from a 6 to a 4.8.

Personally, I would reccomend downloading it because maybe you happen to like some of the things I dislike (and apparently there are people that do), and generally, the level design isn’t all that bad (but not all that good either). For me however, the cons outweigh the pros, and this is just another forgettable pack I’ll probably never touch again.

Of course, this review is more for everyone else than it is for Gus. No matter what I write here, Gus will find it “offensive” if I don’t give him anything above a 7, and probably wouldn’t take any advice on what he did wrong or knowledge of what he did right I’d put in here.

Devan does it again! Boy oh boy he does!
I decided to stop my Ischa Boycott to see if Ischa’s level-making skills had improved. Honestly, here’s the blunt, cold, hard, truthy answer: They’re still terrible. Here’s the sugar coated answer: Keep trying! You can do it! B Moe Positive!

Whats so hard about the concept of getting people in the community to betatest your levels? You don’t have a deadline, and you’re apparently not making purposely bad levels, so why not? I know you read these, as you’ve gone to such lengths as to prove a simple line in my review false, so why not actually take the advice? Sign up at the JCF and make a topic that says “Hey, I have a level, does anyone want to betatest who isn’t going to forget 6 days later?”

Onto the actual level. I’ll let stealing a concept slide. I’ll even let underutilizing the FLoating Rock slide.
What I won’t let slide is the level’s poor design choices.
Why in god’s name would you have the player start by WALKING IN THIN AIR, if later on, every pit kills off the player? That is a terrible thing to do. You toy with the player by adding a secret slightly left to the starting position out of sight, after he’s/she’s used to not having anything there. You don’t toy with them by laying down a ground rule (example “You can walk on thin air”) and then a little later break said rule.

Next, whats up with the Stone Lady? She constantly never makes sense. First she addresses you as “Jazz”. The next time you see her she says “If you’re Spaz or Lori”. Later on she just starts spurting out gibberish but makes it sound important by saying “according to me”

The level itself, is a terrible disjointed mess that’s linear the whole way through. Really Linear. Aside from when you need to get up to the next straight path, the whole level is just a straight path. Theres even a section where you push a crate for 20-25 tiles NOT DOING ANYTHING. It’s a waste of time. Dont get me started about the lame tacked on “jump over fire with 1 tile wide safe zones randomly scattered” area. Finally, there’s the boss fight with Devan. Can we seriously just stop using the same arena for this guy? I’m sure Devan-Stories would be more appreciated if the Devan bossfight wasn’t on a straight line of an arena. Seriously, can we also give Devan a little more motivation than “I’M EVIL! I ‘M OFF TO GO DO EVIL THINGS NOW! HAHAHAHA” or any other villain for that matter. Just because Super Duper Badguy Lemon is the villain of a level, doesn’t mean he’s automatically better than Devan. Especially if he has no motivation to actually do the evil deed aside from “I’m Evil!” (That was aimed at everyone else, not Ischa).
In JJ1, Devan’s motivation was that he hated rabbits and wanted them wiped out. In JJ2, his motivation was to wipe out Jazz’s parents so he can wipe out the rabbits without the Green hare meddling in affairs. In JJA, Dark Shell wanted revenge on Jazz for defeating him 2 years prior.
Those are all short and simple motivations that make the villains much more interesting than “I’m EVIL”.

Finally, the Moon is a jerk. Well, the oversized Boomerang that calls itself “Moon”. he could have flown away anytime he wanted too, but didn’t because he wanted to see Jazz beat up Devan. What a jerkface. If our moon was really like that, I would go to space and slap it on where I assume it’s cheek to be.

It should be clear to anyone who has read this- No Download reccomendation.