Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I find this kind of… boring. Just a very average level. I’ve seen a lot better from you, Stefan.

What? I’m in credits :D Great job on this, though, blur.

Forest should work just fine aswell, for that matter – I find it quite unlikely that the few CRT funtions it uses should be a matter anyway.

Technodus Cargo Station
Looks, high detail
The level looks good enough to be nice on the eye when playing. I am too used to the level to be stunned by the eyecandy, since I’ve played this level frequently over the past year – loving it.

Looks, low detail
On low detail, the level looks, so-so. It doesn’t look really bad, but the fact that the suckertubes look horrible, makes the impression not as good here. On the other hand, you don’t play on low detail for the looks. Seeing the level in low detail really simpliefies learning aswell.

Base-areas
Red team
The red teams base is located at the top right corner of the level, being quite a good place for defence. However – staying there with flag is not that easy since it’s pretty much a dead end, if you disregard the suckertube that brings you all the way to the left side of the level if you fall into it… What I’m trying to say is, that the attackers are likely to force you to run away, and then you will have problems getting ready to score again, since the base is such an easy-to-defend spot.

Blue team
The blue base is, not very surprisingly considering the placement of the red base, situated at the bottom right corner of the level. Or well not really, more like a bit from the right of the middle of the bottom. In any case! It is not at all as easy to defend as the other base, but on the other hand, getting to it isn’t as hard, so you might be able to score without being RTS, also there’s more ammo around it, including a bouncer powerups, which’s room can be handy for variating your defence (or attacking fastly, but I’ll come back to routes later).

Carrot placement
There are two, well placed carrots in the level – one FullNRG, and one normal carrot. The normal one is placed at the exit of the aformentioned suckertube from the red base, and can be quite useful, especially for the red team’s flagcarrier. However, taking it isn’t entirely riskfree, as there is a turret facing it, from where you can quickly be killed.

The FullNRG is placed right between the two bases in a truly tactical area, with lots of “trix”. It can be shot down into the place beneath it – it can be shot down pretty much all the way to the blue base. It can be shot down to the ground and left there, while you camp safely underneath it with RFs (a truly annoying move). Also, there are several interesting routes around it, but more about that later.

Powerups and ammunition
The level has four powerups – seeker, bouncer, RF and electroblaster. All of them interestingly to moderately interestingly placed.

The seek powerup can be somewhat hard to find, but it’s in the bottom right corner, and is accessed only by electroblaster bullets. The placement is good, because that gives the players atleast one reason to ever go to that area of the level. (Overall all of the level is used a lot when playing – which of course is good level making).

The bouncer power up is placed right under the actual exit of that suckertube I’ve been going on about, and as I said before it’s placed in an interesting place. Because going to it is one of the fastest routes to the blue base – not to mention a cunning way of attack. Also, it’s the only powerup you are able to sidekick (unless the powerup is there, because then you stomp it automatically to obtain more shooters!). When in the small powerup room, having taken the powerup, you can quickly choose to go either down to the blue base, or go left and get shot up pretty much all the way to the one heart carrot. Also, the really cool people, like me can use ice, to shoot the spring that pushed you down and then quickly change to real fast missles and climb up again.

The RF-power up, you access through a warp in the top right corner (in the same place where that turret facing the 1h-carrot is). That warp, after having given you the power up, takes you to the area between blue base and carrot, and is therefore quite a fast way to quickly move around in the level, aside form providing you one of the mightiest weapons around. Especially nice is to immediatly bounce to the right and mutilate people standing at the base with your newly gained missiles^_^.

The electroblaster powerup, useless as it may appear at first sight, is placed in the sucker tube back to the red base from the 1h-carrot. Personally I don’t think it’s a very nice placement, because no one bothers taking it in game – on the other hand the usage is quite limited to getting other powerups, since the walls are mostly to thick for effective gun9-use, and otherwise the areas are too open to make other weapons than seekers, RFs, bouncers and possible pepper spray useful.

Other ammo: “there r many shooters i like that”. There is a suifficent amount of amunition pickups, simply.

Routes
Some people have said that this level is biased to the blue team, because moving to their base is so much quicker. However there are quick routes to the blue base, there is no such biasedness. Firstly, there are fast routes to the red base aswell, for example the sucker tubes – and secondly, teams have to move in both directions anyway. What is most awesome about the level is the speed, and the tricks. You can move very quickly in most areas, and once you’ve learned the level there are always so many options – most of them good in certain situations. For example there are no less than three routes away from the carrot, effectively taking you in any direction you want to go. One way not as easy to realize away from there is through the springs above you, using ice (you can see those on the picture above). I can’t be bothered to write more about those, just take a good five minutes and explore the level before playing a serious game, and you’ll do just fun – hopefully having atleast half as fun as I do when playing here.

Overall rating
This level is in essence awesome. I love it. It truly catches the true spirit of jazz2 – speed and a big gun. (The big gun being the plentitude of powerful weaponry). The only thing I can think of that would make it not be a 10, is that it doesn’t look so good on low detail. It might seem a bit unfair to an artist like Rag, but I am not always all too nice – so he only gets a 9.9 for this level. Oh, and the music suits the level too, but who cares?

Very Stupid Floating Castle
The second level of the pack, is one that I am not at all as familiar with. I did however play some really nice games here during the latest months, and found it to be nearly as awesome as TCS.

Looks, high detail
This level looks a bit better than TCS, in my opinion – but that’s probably just because I’m not as used to the level. In any case, it’s more than enough eye candy to satisfy my needs.

Looks, low detail
I am glad to say that the level looks just as awesome on low detail :D.

Base-areas
This level is symmetrical, which no doubt makes it balanced. Another out-of-game upside of that fact is that it saves me time when reviewing. The base areas are really nice, because they’re campable, but the camping can be countered. It appears to me that Saba put down some thought when designing them. The bases can be attacked from three directions – up, down and side. All of the ways are no doubt useful. Especially the lowest one, which is quite fast but with some luck allows you to snatch the seek power up on your way. When making the actual assault, however, I do prefer the side way – and just burst in with RFs and bouncers. Each base has close access to a good power up each (RF/bouncer), which of course comes in handy both when Aing and RTSing.

Carrot placement
There is only one carrot in the level – and that’s truly a good thing. Because in conjunction with the presence of all the three strongest powerups, this makes the level’s gamplay fast-paced and fun (same as I said before – speed and a big gun). The carrot is naturally placed int he excact middle between the two bases, and can be reached either from the sides or with RF-climbing (might be hard for jazz, but Spaz-bias makes levels more fun anyway:D).

Powerups and ammunition
As I mentioned the powerups are bouncer, seeker and RF, and I like this for reasons stated already. Well the seeker is at bottom middle (way down under the carrot) – but I’ve pretty accidentally much emptied this subject already in previous paragraphs, so I’ll just move on.

Routes
There are two main routes you can move between, as I see it. A top one, and a middle/bottom one. The bottom one is quite straightforward, but the top/bottom one is divided into three parts or something like that. I’ll just show you with a picture.

Overall rating
Overall, this is a solidly made level. Fun to play, well balanced and quite tactical – however, I don’t think I will keep liking it this much as long as I have with TCS, so it’s not worthy of more than a 9.

9+9.9=18.9
18.9/2= 9,45
~9,5

Of course with a downlioad recummandation

I couldn’t open it. Does it only work with service pack 2 or something?

AMbient lightning…horrible(cant see bullets) not a problem though since the only picks ups are ice, and fastfire, aside from a little pepperspray!
looks alirhgt, but the eye candy is boring… the only reason I dont am not too bothred by the looks is the beauitful colour of the background

the design is that of a single player level… you can pretty much only move in one direction… it took me years to find the base

there are crowded tunnels

the red base area is alright, aside from the fact that you can hardly jump out from it, and you definately cant with lori… meaning you need to take the warp, which of course makes it a lot harder to defemd the base, which is ONCE again “ingeniously” up balanced by the lack of ammo. the spaz biasness is constant thoughout the lvl.

The blue base area is a little better.. it can be accessed from two directrions, but its still quite impossible to leave in any other direction than the left one.. an interesting twist is how this warp leads to the same place as the warp from the other base, though

oh wait, I even found 3 bouncer pickups

no carrots, but thats ok sicne u dont have ammo!

to sum up!!
this is the messiest review ever, and I conclude this is worthy of a… 4

the minimized level change owns sooo much

the port change is ok

the last thing seems just weird and not very useful

You should really upload them separately… belgas or whatever lowers the rating 100 %

Maybe because it isn’t in this download? =O

He shouldnt:o DX should have hurried up releasing.

Eyecandy overall
Blablabla awesome/decent/good, or something.

Sacrifice
Carrots
There are two one heart carrots, accessed by warps, in a little room. I think that it’s a good thing to have two carrots instead of one, since then chances aren’t so high that they will both stop respawning completely on a laggy server. You can counter camping inside the box by using gun9 from the outside, or camping where the warp out of the carrot box targets, therefore it isn’t easy to just take the carrot like that, which is good. Besides, if you try to get the carrot as flag carrier, chances are quite high that you get hit again when you try to get RTS, as there are often a lot of base/spawncampers at your base.

Power ups
The original part of this level is that you get seeker powerups each time you die or join the server. This adds a great tactical aspect to the level, as defending becomes very effective when you always respawn with seekers.
There are also pepper spray power ups, which can be quite useful… the placement of those are good, since you can get them on your way to base if you are taking the lower route.

Pickups
Ammo placement is good, along the routes so you don’t have to run away to look for ammo, which slows down the game and makes everything much more boring. A good thing is the piles of RFs that you can use for hunting complemented by the bouncers and powered up pepper there sre in the level. There are also quite a lot of toaster pickups, which can be useful for something I guess (this is not really my favourite weapon so I seldom use it, especially unpoweredup).

Bases
The base areas are great, easily defendable. There are three routes to them, I think. Camping the base can be countered quite easily with gun9, RFs and gun2. The fact that you can spawncamp the base area also adds an unusual aspect, since that’s not how jj2 normally works. Yeah, I like those bases.

Other tactical areas
There are a few tactical areas here. Mainly bases, carrotbox, above it… The bottom if the level tends to be come quite unused, unless the copters stop respawning.

Flow
It’s easy to navigate, the level is easy to learn, and everytihng is good. The only thing you can raise objections against is the use of copters, since those often stop respawning. The upper path is by far the fastest way to base, so if one team doesn’t have spawning copters, they have quite some disadvantage. There are a few places where you pretty much run into walls, which you must avoid to not get hunted down by RFs or gun8. I like those areas, as they are not really dead ends, but still dangerous. Same thing goes for the warps on top of the level targeting the carrotbox, where you can often get warpkilled, something I think is good as it adds another danger to the level. For example in really good games on bblair I never dare using warps, since I know someone will kill me as soon as I do.

Summed up
Nice level, I like it a lot. I am not sure what others think, but I give it a 9, the only thing stopping it from becoming a 10 is that copters can be a problem, it sucks for duels (no seekers for the one not dying) and that you can sometimes get stuck where you get seekPUs on spawn.

Introspection
Carrots
I think there is only one carrot here, so I assume it’s a fullNRG one. (No I refuse to use JCS to check, and I didn’t have anyone playing with me.) It is placed quite fairly. It is within sight from the blue base, but not from the red, on the other hand it’s a bit easier to reach it from the red base (from blue you need to do a quite tricky doublejump, if you are Spaz, to get there). In order to get to it you need to use a spring which is placed in an area where there should be a lot of people all the time, as it is quite close to both bases, meaning it has its risks to try to get there. The same spring is also really useful for attacking the red base with RFs. So nice carrot placement.

Power ups
There are two power ups, RF and toaster, which are placed in really dangerous areas to go to if you are hunted (since you have to either fall down to your enemy again after you took them, and the only other way to flee is by a copter, which you can never be sure of when or if it spawns). I like it. >) The fact that there aren’t any seekers makes the play around bases a lot more interesting, as they at first sight seems very easy to defend, but once you notice you don’t have seekers, you quickly become way more vulnerable to attacks from above.

Pick ups
It seems quite easy to find the ammo, and most of it is along the lower route between bases, which is good since that could possibly make that area of the level more used, as the higher road is way quiker. (same way as Sacrifice’s)
I would like gun9 to make the left base area a bit harder to defend.

Bases
Quite alright. As I said, they seem not to be too easy to defend… It’s also quite easy to fall off when you are RTS or R, which can add to both frustration and fun. The left base seems easier to defend than the right one.

Other tactical areas
I think the bases and the carrot are the only tactical areas here. Perhaps the power up-places too, but the power ups are really far away, and that could be bad for the gameplay, as it becomes way slower, which sucks. I don’t think I would bother with power ups most of the time, perhaps on my way back to get RTS or if I don’t have to R so fast.

Flow
It’s nice, apart from the power up areas where the helicopters are annoying obstacles, but I guess you can adapt to that, so nice job here too.

Summed up
For some reason this level seems not as good to me as Sacrifice, and it was also a bit harder to learn. A work well done, it gets an hmm… 7

Greed
I hate the coinsystem. It was probably a nice thought, but it just didn’t turn out to be fun. I won’t review this levels, I’ll just subtract some from the total score because of it.

Sadness
Carrots
There are 3 of them – one fullNRG carrot and two one heart carrots. The full NRG carrot requires that youhave a key to reach it, and if you take it you can be pretty sure that you will lose your health again afterwards, since there will always be campers at the target of the getting out of carrot area-warp. It’s not a good idea to stay at the one heart carrot of your team’s waiting for it to spawn again either, since the 1 heart carrots are sort of placed in dead ends. Also, the fullNRG carrot can easily be camped by simply shooting it down and standing at it shooting upwards. In other words, it’s risky to take carrots, which is good when your level only has one…

…Power up
The level has a toaster power up in the middle of the level, as I mentioned before only centimeters away from the warptarget out of carrot area. It seems to respawn quite quickly, and for using a one power-up system, I must say that toaster is a good choice, as it isn’t so easy to run out of.

Pick ups
The pick ups are obviously placed with thought in this level, and are mostly around the bases. The red team however has an advantage over the blue one, since there are toasters above their base instead of bouncers as there are by the blue base (bouncers being very effective for damaging the opposing team’s RTSer.

Bases
The base areas are great. They have only got one way to be reached from, but that doesn’t make it completely impossible for the attackers to get to the RTSer, since there is a turret where they can spam bullets from. As I mentioned before the ammo supplies are good around bases, which is a good thing in my opninion.

Other tactical areas
I can’t find any other tactical areas.

Flow
It’s quite easy to move around and the level is easy to learn (with the possible exception of the locked doors). In this level, as opposed to for example in Sacrifie, it’s fatal if the copters stop respawning, as there is no other way to reach base. This, of course, reduces some from the total rating.

Summed up
Good level. I give it an 8.

Sanctuary
I’ll, surprisingly enough, start off by commenting the eyecandy on this one. It’s much sexier than the others’ IMO, but maybe I just like the tileset because I am so m*ickng dark side.

Carrots
There are two fullNRG carrots in this level, placed right next to eachother with gun9 pickups near them, for extra camping/carrotkilling fun! I like it.

Power ups
I think there are two powerups in the level. Seeker and Toaster. They are placed nicely in the bottom corners, and they don’t really give any team any advantage over the other. Oh, wait there are pepperspray powerups too, at the carrot area… doesn’t matter, but I guess they could be useful for attacking the bases, which are in quite open areas. Also the carrots are placed in a way which could be ideal for attacking with pepperspray.

Pick ups
The ammo placement is very good. Most of the ammo, if not all, is played along the major routes between bases and carrots, which is good as anything that could possibly lessen the quickpacedness of a level is negative.

Bases
Great base areas. Open and accessible form three directions with springs for inspired bullet dodging. There are also quite a lot of pick ups around them, which is good as NA-fights suck.

Other tactical areas
Can’t really find any. It’s the normal: bases, carrots, powerups.

Flow
Very good! even if you don’t know the level you will easily reach the other base just by running where your nose points. You still need to do a few tricky jumps to find the fastest way to base, though – which is good since atleast I myself would like to have a little advantage over my opponent if I bother learning a level throughly.

Summed up
I like this a real lot, and I would like to give it a 8.5 for being almost as awesome as Sacrifice (which has more orignal, yet entertaining gameplay, giving it a higher score – Sanctuary is only entertaining, not really original).

Twilight
This has one of those sucky SILWI-like falling systems, which sucks, so I will just substract some from the total score of the pack, instead of making a proper review.

Total score
Sacrifice 9
Introspection 7
Sadness 8
Sanctuary 8.5
Average 8.125

Minus Twilight 8.0
Minus Greed 7.9
TOTAL: 7.9

In other words ~8 6Tees and a downlioad recummandation for CelL!

Yes, how to start? Hmm… Boring stuff first I guess. The level looks great, and it sure looks a bit better than version one. (thats all for eyecandy review)

Flow
It’s great. It’s easy to move around, but not too easy…

Learning time
You can learn this in no time. Mostly that’s because it is a quite small level. There is nothing I hate as much as big/too hard to learn levels.

Powerup placement
The powerups are practically placed, in places where it’s never safe to go. If you go to the ones in the left corner you risk getting cornered byt your persuaded and killed since its a bit dead endish (which is good :)). The seeker powerup is placed close to a major campspot, so it’s never safe to go to it.

Pick ups
I find myself not running out of ammo here, which rocks.

Carrot placement
Fair, and it can be camped, but there are many ways of coumtering the camping. And carrotcamping isn’t much of a problem in 2on2s, and duels are unimportant, so….

Bases
Nice basearea, open so you can be attacked, and have a hard time dodging, but still not so hard that you get killed immidiatly as soon as you are around base.
The way to run from base to base is good too, as there are 2 ways that are asbout as quick and a longer one… adds lots of tactics too it, as fast kills are really fun to do.

Tactical areas
There are no spaces in the level which you don’t have any use for. Good good good. I wonder if it’s just dumb luck, it a great sense of levelmaking.

Final score
I can’t find anything I’d like to change about the level, it’s awesome, and I played a lot of games in the last version of it, and so I will continue now. It is a action paced level with good ammo supplies and tactical areas – just the way I want it. Ideal for 2on2’s which is my favourite game mode.

A NINE AND DOWNLOAD RECUMMANDATION!!!!1

lol, awesome.

I had to replace something in my jj2 folder… Has there been another tileset made with this name?

It couldn’t patch my j2tsf.exe :((

I don’t feel I can make a good rating, so I wont try, but I feel like commenting a little on this.

Eyecandy
I dont really care, but atleast it isnt disturbingly ugly. Colors looks nice together, and all.

Gameplay, Pickups, Layout, and pretty much everything else
My first thought was “Oh, he made notsbv2 with another tileset”, since the areas around bases are made sort of the same way, which isnt a bad thing at all :) Coming to think of it… sort of reminds me of jungle’s edge too – with the placement of carrot and bases.
I like the way coins are used, its nice to have a golden coin, which draws lots of attention in a semi-dead end, (only 2 small ways out of there), however that place could be a way too easy stayalive-spot in a teamgame.
The RF-powerup’s placement is great. If you try to take it you will most likely get killed, but if you in some way manages to take it, you will have an easier time hunting your enemy.
Same thing with the areas under bases, very easy staying alive-spots…Could be good, could be bad ;p
Something that disturbs me is how the coins are placed so you have to jump to get them, and the fact that the text-string above the coinwarp is unreadable (due to the scoreing-count). Overall a nice level.

Anyways, 2v2 here, anyone?

Bleh, I said I would rate this, But I cant since I dont have inspiration to motivate my rating. I think the level is ok, though, not very funny to play IMO.
I think I liked that windevent most. It is useful like a turret but you can escape from it. I think that was the only area of the level I liked, meaybe with the exception of the bases, which are campable, but not to easy to camp at =P.

Overall I just think it is a bit unoriginal. Sorry WR.

But since I am a suck reviewer I recommend you to d and see for yourself ;)

EDIT:
Well, I changed my mind. I like the level, and whilst 2v2ing there I found there are a lot of tactical aspects I do like, not to mention the way WR doesn’t overdo eyecandy (which is overrated by so many).

The team that has their base to the left has an advantage in a 2v2, I noticed… When you don’t have flag as that team you can just get the RF PU all the time and do kamikaze killing at your opponent (for example FireSworD ;p) who is RTS at the right base :) I consider this as a possible unfairness, considering the other team can’t do the same with bouncers due to base being placed on top of the level.

I also like the way water allows you to camp the carrot with blaster only, or shoot the carrot down into the water for easy laming (however this didnt work in the 2on2 I played, due to carrot desynch :( )

I enjoy the basearea, since the ground is sort of… not entirely flat. this allows you to easily hide from RFs and other straightgoing weapons.

What could possibly be improved:
(+) Make it so the PUs are placed more equal… perhaps 2 PUs of each sort in the level? (much ammo is always good:))

(+) I noticed that in an intense game you don’t have time to fetch the gun4 PU during game, maybe it could be done easier or so? This isn’t necessary, however, since it adds sort of a tactical aspect… “Should I try to take the PU and risk getting late to scoreing /getting ready?”

Perhaps I was just too content with that one game (beating good players is sort of satisfying)… Ill still give it an 8.4… o, I can’t… It’s your lucky day WR, you got an 8.5 instead =)

(NUKE) There’s also RF PU which is very useful to go berserk w/ ;)
Final rating: 8

@Saphir: I know, CM forced me to review:P

(Nuked content, rating removal. Please refrain from just copying someone else’s review and changing the numbers a little. Write your own next time. ~Violet)

XP-support woulds be nice!!!!:@