Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

The ending was a bit anticlimactic and there were a few dick moves placed here and there but it’s overall a good SP level :)

So I thought I’d return Slaz the favor and do a quick review of his level in return.

This level offers very enjoyable vanilla experience. It has a good pace and balanced gameplay with slight difficulty spike towards the end. I managed to get through on Normal with 1 life lost and no saving. Tileset was well used (especially for such a limited one) and overall it was pretty to look at. Additional falling lava tiles gave it the right eyecandy polish it needed. Also well placed and just right amount of goodies and enemies. There are no scripts obviously, but it still manages to do quite a few original things, like when you have to shoot the block by bouncer through tight crevice for metal crate on top of it to fall down and get destroyed by generating TNT event. Also plus points for humor.

Now to few things I didn’t like. One of them was a long lava section on the bottom right of the map, which was kinda hard. I got lucky and got a sugar rush right before it on my second life, but otherwise it could’ve been a bit annoying. I understand it’s important for pacing to mix easy and fast sections with difficult ones that require more careful approach, but I think at least one more carrot along the way (on normal) wouldn’t hurt.

Also the final “boss”. What was the point of that? I mean, even in vanilla, we have ways how to make him work in a way of chase challege, like EvilMike did. If you want to provide a classic boss room fight, wouldn’t it be better to pick one of the working bosses instead? I kinda imagined he was there for story reasons, like, to steal the ring again from you after you went through all that trouble to bring it back, but there wasn’t any text before, nor after, the fight to confirm this.

To conclude, as I didn’t really find anything wrong with it, I wouldn’t mind giving this a full rating, but I’ll substract a point for a boss, lack of originality and for maybe being a little too short. If you want to play something new and unique that would stand to today’s plussified standards, you should probably look somewhere else. But if you’re looking for a quick SP vanilla fix, this is just perfect.

This tileset is functionally sound but not really attractive. The 3 types of ground all look very similar, and everything has a somewhat generic, unrecognizable texture. One could say it’s possible to tell what things are meant to be thanks to their shape, but not what they’re made of. Other than that, it’s just not a very interesting set.

Blacky’s Single Player Catch Up Review #3:

I actually remember playing this before sometime, but neglected to leave a review so here I am experiencing it again! Whoo!

Having only played through The Secret Files campaign once, and a very long time ago, these feel like they should be the official Easter maps to me. They’re both great, my complaints are relatively minor so I’ll get them out of the way quick: There were times when jumping or tactical use of the Float Lizards enabled me to take shortcuts or reach stuff I wasn’t supposed to that way, like gold coins etc. There were a couple of tilebugs in the first level, a foreground bug with the frozen waterfall at 173,5 and a tilebug in the wall at 252, 3. I also got stuck on top of a trigger crate while riding the airboard in the second level and couldn’t get out without cheating.

Now, what I thought of these levels: They can be summarized by 3 S’s – solid, standard, and sexy ;). They’re pretty to look at, use standard jj2 obstacles and challenges without getting too experimental or using angelscript at all, and the layout design and gameplay is generally very polished. Any time something ‘new’ is introduced, you put a text string notifying the player of what is expected of them. I remember the first time I played this I got lost searching for trigger crates for several minutes, but this was my fault as I neglected to heed the sign stating that no Easter basket is empty. On my second playthrough, I paid attention and diligently searched every seemingly empty basket I came across – I was never disappointed. Likewise, signs are placed warning of the hazards of trekking over thin ice, and how to approach various puzzles and even the boss fight. The difficulty was fine, I think I played on Normal on my first experience so I replayed in Hard for this review. It was challenging enough to keep me engaged, but I felt you were awfully generous with the powerups and pickups so that by the end I was an unstoppable tank. I really liked that you gave me several options in how to deal with the boss, even if it was just typical old Schwarzy who cowered under the might of my powered up arsenal.

Some more variation (in enemies in particular) and innovation would have been welcome (and additional maps of course!) but it was a fun journey despite that. Now if you could make some Haunted House & Townhouse maps in this style, my memory of the TSF campaign will slowly be eroded and replaced with your levels :)

~Blacky

I really enjoyed playing these levels. As for me it is one of the best non-scripted packs. I’ve played both early and fixed versions of it and now it’s time to write a review.

PROS
A lot of single player level creators try to make their levels as challenging as possible, which often turns level into a puzzle where you can’t even understand what are you supposed to do, and this ruins the gameplay.
Slaz managed to make a couple of well-balanced levels. In one hand, the levels are challenging enough, you have to find certain ammo/trigger crates/warp zones in order to proceed. However you won’t feel bored as it’s not just a tedious search for gazillions of hidden crates, but every time there’s a new gameplay element- like labyrinth, airboard, jumping crates, respawning TNTs, pinball bumps, strong winds or freezers. In the other hand, the pace of the game is still rather fast, so the gameplay is very similar to original JJ2 gameplay- run, jump and shoot. But here you have to use your brain a little more often.
I liked secret placement very much. The trigger crate in the end of the first level made me look up in JCS to find it. I found 49 of 50 coins in that level (even JCS couldn’t help me) but next time I managed to find all of them honestly. Extra lives were given out by shining through the walls, but I didn’t notice that at a first time due to the great amount of flicker light events around. I should add that enemies and baddies are placed strategically as well.
The Tuff boss added in the fixed version is situated in a very small room and is able to unpunishedly throw a flail at you one or two times before you jump into his room and burn him to death within few seconds.
What about an eyecandy, frankly speaking I don’t like Easter tileset much, but I highly appreciate succesfull modifications of original tilesets. This one is definetly succesful. Those cold colours combined with snow and lake covered with melting ice create the atmosphere of the late February- early March (in my homeland, nothern Russia, even late April often looks like that, lol). Probably that BG layer with the opposite bank of the river/lake should be recoloured as well.

CONS
There is a couple of small drawbacks, however. As I’ve already mentioned, the secret placement is nice, but the majority of pickups that are situated high above your head and probably are supposed to be captured in some ingenious way actually can be shot down by bouncers or especially PU-bouncers. Idk, whether it was intended by Slaz or not.
If it wasn’t for Primpty’s review I wouldn’t even pay attention to that, but… What made you change the music? As for me original tune sounds much better.
If I were you, I’d make the night version of the tileset for the second level. (And I’ve made a night recolour for my pleasure) It would bring a slight twist to your levelpack. But don’t mind, it’s just a nitpick of a moron who is obsessed with making recolours to everything he sees. The pack is awesome!

CONCLUSION
There are just two levels, but, as I’ve mentioned, it’s one of the best non-scripted SP packs out there. The author is obviously a great JCSer. I think that every fan of single player mode must download this small episode.

I’ve played it at bash18, and stallfests happened all the time (even with mouseaim and plenty of players), due to lack of ammo types. If you want to encourage people to use an underused weapon, make it strong and most importantly – fun. Also shooting with no ammo could’ve been scripted better, as the current way makes the game look bugged.

I’m too lazy to leave a full review, and other users don’t appreciate my reviews.
I’ll just say that I really enjoyed this level, and even though I favor the movement started by Sir Ementaler to create good levels without Plus or Angelscript, this level is an inspiration for all those who do use Angelscript.

Wow! This tileset is awesome, the art work I appreciate it very much!
The textured background is not there,There are blocks, hooks, vines and spikes,
also J2VF Logo!
The masks are fine, except vertical tree trunks (putting in layer 3 is fine).
Example level is battle, layout is better.
Overall ,I liked the pinball area ,the music you have chosen will fit into this theme. I dont rate the example level.
Good job!

This level is more of a race than it is of a treasure hunt, and not a fair race either, because you have to know precisely what to do. Breaking into the vault always determines the winner, and that happens within half a minute of a match. The reward is too disproportionately greater than anything else in the level.

The tileset has a space/night theme. All tiles match to the theme. Even with the limited amounts of tiles (150 tiles), you still managed to make an awesome tileset! Good job! :)

Overview

Vault of Ceramicus is a tall level that takes a while to traverse around upwards. It’s cramped in a few areas, with lots of tubes. There’s a coin warp reward near the top, and a room at the bottom with lots of gems, that you can reach with TNT and a flying carrot.

Pros

Props for thinking outside of the box. I think levelmakers should experiment with treasure more, as there’s so much hidden potential.

It looks alright, for the most part.

Cons

Slaz failed at making this level work for a smaller party, which was apparently his goal. I can confirm this by playtesting it a couple of times. I don’t think he realised it’s not about forcefully slowing players down, but mainly the size of the map. Even the recommended maxscore isn’t so great. At 5-6 players with 100 as the goal, whoever reaches the gem vault first will automatically win. Which brings me to this point;

Going for the gem vault is worth way more, than aiming for the coin warp. Not only does it take less time, but is a much larger reward. In other words, the rewards are completely imbalanced.

The gem vault isn’t that hard/risky to reach. It may take a few tries and require knowledge of the flying through tubes (press down through a tube while you’re using a flying carrot) and large TNT hitbox trick. But the reward is so high and most players aren’t going to stay at the bottom area, since there isn’t much reason to (small amount of gems and no useful ammo), further reducing the risk. Not to mention the reward is so high, that any gems you may lose from getting shot are miniscule in comparison.

To put it shortly, I think the vault reward is too high. Everytime I or someone else manages to reach to vault, the winner has pretty much been decided at that point. And at that point it becomes less treasure hunt, and more level and mechanic knowledge to win (also, whoever reaches that point first).

The coin warp becomes useless once all the gems are collected in the room. I think a respawning tube of gems would’ve been better, as they would always give the coins a purpose.

The nature of the layout (highly vertical and forcefully slowing players down) makes it difficult to catch up to others, or hit them. Useful ammo is a little lacking, too. As a result, the pace of the map slows down.

A lot of areas look the same, especially the middle area. Part of the reason is the vast amount of tubes sticking out there. When you’re falling down, it’s not easy to see which tube direction goes to where. I think it may have been more intuitive to have the tubes sticking out from where you can enter from, which is far easier/quicker than trying to read small arrows.

Conclusion

Overall, I think this level is okay, but with notable flaws when you play it for a while. It may work better with a larg(er) amount of players.

I played this online today. It’s a nice level, but it’s so big! You’d need a lot of players to make this play well, as we were with about 6 people and I often went for minutes at a time without really interacting with other players.

The level looks really nice, though it’s a bit “bumpy” in its design – you don’t necessarily get stuck, but you’ll be jumping rather than running most of the time. This is of course in part due to the level’s vertical layout. On the one hand the many obstacles and the vertical gameplay make it hard to get away from others, on the other hand they also make it hard to actually shoot someone. The inclusion of TNT is a nice touch that has the opportunity to mitigate this.

As for the gems, I think the amount is just about right for the gem limit of 150 or more we played with. Things tended to get a bit eventless in the later stages of the game as most gems were gone from the level and people were hard to find due to the level’s size, but that might be different with larger numbers of players.

All in all a good level, but it’s kind of stuck in the “big JDC event levels” niche. Taking on a level of this size is commendable, but for casual treasure servers a smaller level would probably work better.

There isn’t much to say about it. It’s simply nice, but the music sounds like satan remixed the original theme. The map is a little bit confusing, too many annoying lizards… There are no other enemies than the reptilian foes, which is sad. The tileset looks nice. Something scares me when I play the level, I don’t know why. Playing it with Lori is almost impossible. Anyway, I think 9.2/10 is a fair review.

This level is awesome!

One of the few rare times – or even my first – time that a treasure hunt level absolutely amazed me. We have much fewer uploads recently to J2O, but those that are uploaded have a tendency to be good!

EDIT: You can get stuck at 48,66 under the platform near the sucker tube!

This level made me pretty happy

@Cooba: Haha, J2VF was a level group me and NOKA started late in 2003, but it didn’t last very long. You and DS used to be in as well, so I hope remembering it doesn’t hurt too much. :P

I silently revived it last year since I began some new attempts at JCS, as I thought it’d be fun to release my levels under that old tag. For now it’s just a one-man group though. xD

@ThunderWalker: Thanks again for reporting that bug. That and other masking errors should be fixed now.

@Treya: Wow, that’s lots of cons VS pros.. Anyway, the vault reward was designed with ‘mechanic knowledge’ in mind, and I’m fully aware that it was a risky choice to surround the entire level around it. For weapons, well, in my playtests (with 4 to 6 players) the bouncers and hidden seekers did the job quite well, while ice was pretty much ignored. However, I fully agree that the final level size far exceeds the intended ‘duel-style treasure level’ I was going for. At least some people liked playing it, and in the future it could be a great addition to event playlists instead. Thanks for the 7 though, it’s a fair and good score (compared to the overrating-nature that haunts J2O lately)!

Now that’s not a tag I expected to see ever again.

I finished playing this level, and I have to be honest, I really enjoyed it a lot.

The main Jazz Jackrabbit 2 game isn’t challenging at all. In fact the main levels are very easy. That’s not the case with this level. It’s actually very challenging. It took me a long time to know what I was supposed to do, and find the right crates etc. They weren’t hard to find, but it still required some thinking.

I also love the placement of the items in this level. I get to use variety of weapons. A lot of places requires the flamethrower, which is why I’m glad I knew where to find flamethrowers.

As for the scenery, I love how the level looked. It looks absolutely fantastic.

As for the coins, I can’t say what I think of the areas that require a coin. Because finding each coin is hard, some of them are hidden that’s not a bad thing.

Overall, this was a challenging and a very fun level. Well done. I’m rating it 9.7. Yeah, it is very high, but I believe this level deserves it.

Well, as I see Hungary wasn’t the only place with a cold Easter. This way the level was quite fitting here as well. Luckily we’ve got normal weather now. But enough of that, let’s see the level. I noticed at once before downloading it, that the level itself is well constructed so I was really hoping to like it a lot. I actually downloaded it the day it was uploaded, but only had time to play it today. Thankfully 2 reviewers already motivated me to play it as they liked the levels. I must say I won’t be the one who will say that they overrated it. As you mentioned in the description, you didn’t want it to be original but enjoyable. Well these levels are a perfect example how it looks when it works well. I like looking for crates anyway if they aren’t hidden in impossible places. Actually they reminded me of the original levels (the way the levels looked). If you like finding secrets this pack won’t disappoint. They aren’t that hard to find. The difficulty on hard is quite ok for me. I didn’t die but had some hard times as well. Items aren’t overused but you’ll find quite a few of them, as well as several weapon types. I think the only complaint I can have is the music. It’s ok and all, but after 10 minutes it becomes boring (my opinion only, depends on how much you like the Easter level music).

I recommend this to everyone who want’s to have a little fun in levels. It won’t be very easy or very hard, just fine.

My rating is 8.5