Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

GooD Treasure Hunt,

Bud the music ,
thats not a good choice.

What can I say i like it.

//Shiverz\\

Jazz Jackrabbit 1 Forever

The first thing I noticed while downloading was that this file was embedded within the ZIP in /WINDOWS/DESKTOP. Please make it the root of the folder, since this caused it to unzip to C:\Games\Jazz2\Windows\Desktop, which is strange to say the least.

Now on to the level: Simply put, this is the best Treasure Hunt level to come around in a long, long time. Then again, that is saying very, very, very little since, after all, this is probably the only Treasure Hunt level that has came along in a long time. However, this is certainally a fantastic level. It reminds me greatly of “Sandstrand O’Hazes” in the eyecandy used. That is not a bad thing at all, but there are other similiarities. Dig:

- The passages are fairly narrow and cramped. This is not a terrible thing and probably is pretty good for a water level.

- A diverse selection of ammo is used.

- It is set underwater (well, of course!)

- The pretty bubbler event is used well in both levels, and quite a lot. There is no steam coming up from it, and it is only decoration, but it sure looks purdy.

- The eyecandy is somewhat close. You will know what I mean after playing both of these levels a few times.

It is nice to see people still making Treasure Hunt levels. I have not seen one in eons, especially not a creative and well-done one like this. A quick query to Telnet (telnet:jazz.logicware.com:10055) on the ever-useful port 10055 of the server lists reveals that only 24,903 of the 301,080 servers (as of last update, which was a while ago) were Treasure Hunt servers, or eight percent. Taking in account that many of these servers are probably Survivor or hotel levels, treasure hunt seems to be the least liked of all the gametypes. But this level is one reason to start liking treasure more.

PICKUPS AND STUFF
GEMS: Gem placement, probably the biggest indicator of quality of a level, was quite spifftacular. Gems were placed well, and while there were not too many, it was still not that hard to get to the maximum. The level recommends only 2-10 players (I think) which is a good estimation, though it may be a bit high. Once you get past seven or eight active players, a bit of a gem drain will occur. Nevertheless, the gem placement is good enough to facilitate enough players for the game to be fun. There is a eensy bit of crowding, but that should not be a big problem.

WEAPON: Weapon placement is not very important in treasure. The only thing I really looked for was to make sure that there were absolutely no ice events. Why? Because there were gem rings in this level. A little-known but highly dangerous bug occurs when ice meets gem rings. Since there is no frozen gem ring animation, Jazz will simply konk out and crash. Everyone in the server will also crash with an access violation. Fortunately, the author had the foresight not to place any ice in this level. Good job. You have saved some level hosters trouble.

FOOD: Food also is not important in a treasure level. In this case, it is simply used as decoration. Sugar rushes are more or less useless and near impossible to attain. Go for the gems instead.

LEVEL LOOKS
EYECANDY: This level contains plenty of eyecandy to keep even the most obsessive of observers happy. As with most levels using default tilesets, it does not go hyperoverboard with “gee-whiz” effects such as Elevator backgrounds or ultra-neat warp backgrounds. Still, for your basic beach level, this has good eyecandy and it definitely shows that plenty of effort was put into the creation and tweaking of this level.

TILE BUGS: Beach is not an easy tileset to master but Electric pretty much has the entire thing down. There are no tile errors that I could see, which is not surprising after seeing Sandstrand O’Hazes. This is the easiest sort of eyecandy to really mess up, but this looks great. Exceptional job.

LEVEL MECHANICS
LAYOUT: Since there are not a huge amount of Treasure Hunt levels out there, it is hard to compare the size of this level. It is more or less a medium size level tilting very slightly towards small. As with many other Beach levels that are underwater, the layout mostly consists of a lot of small passages with no center of the level to speak of. There are some areas that are more wide open to help the layout, but not much more than that. It is difficult to rate the layout of this kind of level, but by the standards of an underwater level, it is quite good.

FLOW: Flow is not as important in Treasure Hunt as it is in either Battle or Capture the Flag. Again, the underwater aspect of the level completely distorts how the level functions. There is no concrete way to measure flow quality in water levels since it is so different than flow quality of ground-based levels. While the passages in this level are small, that does not present a huge problem. After all, it is in the water. Since this is underwater and a Treasure Hunt level, this aspect means almost nothing.

MISC.
EXIT PLACEMENT: The exit is placed towards the right of the level, near the bottom. You will need to first stomp a crate to access it. This can be done any time during the game. Yay for trigger crates!

SECRETS: This level is literally packed with secrets, most of them containing gems but nothing ultra-huge. It comes with an image documenting where the hidden areas are, and I will not spoil them for you. I just hope you find them yourself instead of looking in the picture. If you don’t, may a giant sea monkey eat you. Or something.

TEXT SIGNS: This is the sort of level that makes me write an infinite amount of “Misc.” values that have no point. This level contains some text signs which feature either copyrights or funny quotes like Moonblaze’s “You are a stupid person who is stupid.” There are not too many of them, but they are fun to read. The others are not exactly funny quotes, but are still humerous.

EFFORT: This level definitely had a good deal of effort put into it. If you believe the text sign, the level was apparently made from 2001 to 2003. I doubt that Electric slaved away on it during this entire time, but that still is a significant amount of effort put in. I like to see people put effort into their creations.

HOSTING: No maintence is really required. I hope that people will occasionally host this. Unfortunately, there still are a lot of people who absolutely can not stand playing Treasure Hunt. Some have never played a real Treasure Hunt game.

COMPATABILITY: No crashes or anything. The only thing I would like to see changed is that there is a lot of useless tiles horizontally. While the level is physically only about 100 tiles, there is about 126 tiles worth of solid wall and copyright sign. Even if the copyright sign was kept, removing the excess tiles would be nice, so that it would keep file size down (if by a very miniscule amount) for downloaders.

CONCLUSION
This is a very spiffy Treasure Hunt level. The gametype really does need more levels. Maybe if there were more works such as this, it would be hosted often. This is a quality level that shows effort and knowledge of JCS. There is not much more to say that I have not said above. It truly is a shame that Treasure Hunt is not hosted often. If there were idle dedicated Treasure Hunt servers, I am sure that this level would be hosted by all of them. This simply is the best Treasure Hunt level that I have seen in ages, if not ever. Worth a download for anyone, even if you dislike Treasure Hunt. Maybe this will change your mind. My score is 8.2 and a download recommendation. Very nice job, Electric. Truly a Treasure Hunt classic if there ever was one.

I played this level on your server today, and it looked and felt really good, except for one tiny problem. The problem is that when players get 100 gems, they will have to dash to it to find a lone player there ready to blast them to kingdom come. Anyways, good level, deserves a 9.7, and keep working on good levels! (I never make any good ones)

Intresting level. I played it earlier, perhaps the cool part about it is when you have 100 gems you smash a crate to open the exit. But it is positoned to the left of the exit, so you have to be careful noone else with 100+ gems camps there.

OMG LOL LOL

THAT IS HILARIOUS, YOU LOOK LIKE A A A…….Nazirabbit

Seriously, very very funny. worth a d/l reccomendation just to see how funny it is. Nice headband.Enjoyed That carrot?
Try this out folks, you probably wont regret it.

But it cant compete with tilesets though, because some tilesets plain rock.

(Marquee removal. -Trafton)[This review has been edited by Trafton AT]

Haha. It appears that Electric ate a heck of a lot of sugar (or carrots, or both) and decided to paint himself dark green, eat a carrot, and videotape it. The end result is this video featuring a pretty good Jazz Jackrabbit imitation. He looped over the introduction screen sounds and Jazz’s voice perfectly, with a great lipsyncing job. Very nice, Electric. The craziness alone deserves a download recommendation. :P

(Disclaimer: I won’t rate this because of the type of download it is, but I must say that I wish I could. Electric must have worked pretty hard on this. ;P)[This review has been edited by Trafton AT]

Hey, I didn’t know that you..
never mind.

Amusing video.:)
Still, I might make a better one someday. When I get a digital camera:-P

Lol, the idea is great, well done.
Absolutely wroth to see.[This review has been edited by Møøñßlãzé aka Zãr¢h]

Eh, so funnyyy. I big big big big bite of the carrot.

:P :P :P =) =) =) Hey! Hey come on… Heeheehehhee!

(Marquee removal. -Trafton)[This review has been edited by Trafton AT]

Hahahaha!!! What a doofus! Looks Xtremely Hilarious!!! What’s with the black face? Pycho?

(Content truncation. -Trafton)[This review has been edited by Trafton AT]

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA …. Inhales WHEEEEEEEZEEEEEEEEE….. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Odd…

uhhhhhh….. very strange, dont u get embaressed or anything?

Since Derby’s review is so darn long and detailed…there doesn’t seem to be anything left to say about Chemicals Laboratory. However, I don’t like this lvl so much that I’ll give this an 8. It does have some dead ends and hasn’t got much powerups either. I’ll give it an, in my opinion, fair 7.

Introduction to CHeMiCaLs LaBoRaToRYs:

CHeMiCaLs LaBoRaToRYs is a level that uses the laboratory tileset that boasts a new kind of flow.

Content:

The zip file contains one level file and one text file.

Unbiased Review:

This part of the review focuses on the level’s characteristics, which determine how it ultimately plays.

Design/Layout: 1.8/2.5

This level has a flow that is somewhat unique. While some routes are tube-based and others are manually traveled, there is clearly a choice between quick access of areas and reliable access of areas within the level. This level was made to flow, so steering yourself out of the way of obstacles is not as necessary as in some other levels. While the layout is decent, and the general flow is unique, the level’s flow is still a bit awkward at some points, as you either need to take yourself out of dead ends and change your mind on forks (tubes or manual travel). Controlling points also seems a bit strange when creating a strategy or traveling a route does not work too effectively at all. The gameplay also changes for the worse when more than two players are present. Controlling points almost seems out of question, as the routes are often ineffective and backtracking to the climbing portion of the level is necessary. This almost forces all the players to use one specific route, but this is easy to overcome. Overall gameplay should be nice.

Tile/Tile compatibility: 2.1/2.5

The tiles in this level are correctly combined to show fine eyecandy, so there are really no problems with that portion of the tile/tile compatibility. However, there are cases where jutting platforms and other protruding tiles do not look wrong, but simply odd and unfitting. These do not severely hinder gameplay, but they could possibly hurt the impression a player gets when playing or reviewing the level.

Tile/Event Compatibility: 1.6/2.0

The events are not a major flaw in this level. The level itself, however, is mutated so the events can work with the level and its flow. While there was nothing wrong with this, the awkwardness in the level was contributed directly from this problem. One example of such a problem is the lower right hand corner, where the springs are placed so the gameplay may go into a minor loop just above it. Still, this level has events and tiles carefully blended together so the flow remains smooth while the level still looks decent.

Event/event compatibility: 0.7/1.0

Overall, the weapon placement is rather pleasing, and strategies in the battle level could be easily planned out according to this. That is only one portion of the score, however. These strategies cannot be carried out as well as they are planned due to various problems with the placement of other events, such as springs, hooks, and vines. The springs in the lower-right hand corner are one example of a problematic event set, where one of the springs can get you cornered for attack, and there is really no reason to go there. The hooks are placed in such a way that you cannot escape or plan a strategy with fluid motion, and you might just end up falling off of them on purpose. The vines (wires) just seem odd the way they are placed; you may often find yourself falling onto them, thinking they are a part of the background.

Layer use: 1.8/2.0

The way Electric happened to use the laboratory tileset for this level was very complex. This even shows, as he creatively interlaced the word “Jazz” in the background, spelled in pipes. There is not much confusion at all, set aside the transparent pipes in the lower right hand corner (many specific flaws are found in the lower-right hand corner of the level), which are definitely confusing where they happen to be placed (the transparent pipes should be placed carefully). Other than that, this is possibly one of the strongest points of this level.

Game compatibility: -0.0/1.0

There is nothing wrong here, as usual. The only thing that could possibly be a nuisance about this level is its name. The first two and the second to last two sets of letters are capitalized, and every other letter is capitalized. This does not subtract from the overall rating, but make sure the level names are easier to spell.

Overall Unbiased Rating: 8.0/10.0

This level is considered to be “good” by current standards on the ten point rating system. A ten does not denote a perfect score by any means; it just means that the level has exceeded the standard. A score of eight is a good score, and it is only expected to be improved by one point to meet the high-end standard for levels.

Biased Review:

This review may or may not be lenient towards the download; it is based upon my tilt when playing it. In order to prevent discussing previous topics upon the quality of this download, aspects different from the unbiased portion of the review will be discussed. This portion of the review has no effect on the final rating of the download.

Replayability: 3.0/4.0

This level introduces a new kind of flow, but after a while, you get used to it. It will become like any other level, and it will wear out like any other level. There is, however, a sense of interactivity and making bigger decisions in the level with the tubes and normal routes. This almost seems to balance out, but in the end, the replayability is above average.

Maximum estimated sessions: 30 sessions.

My Opinion on This Level: 3.0/4.0

While this level is somewhat impressive with the overall gameplay and uniqueness, various other problems in the environment that were mentioned earlier may make this level hard or inconvenient to play. The laboratory tileset was used very well in this level, but the way it blended in with all of the events and the layout itself makes it look slightly mashed up after a good look. The way it plays after all of that, however, is excellent.

Professional Appearance: 1.5/2.0

Overall, the level has an excellent appearance. I am not sure how long it may have taken to create the level, but a decent amount of time of careful thinking and planning was probably put into this level. Altogether, the gameplay is fine, and the level looks nice.

Overall Biased Rating: 7.5/10.0

I found the level to be slightly “above average”. The actual score may vary .5 either way, and that depends on what the person’s opinion of the level was. This is likely to be the center rating for the level, even if it is not as fair as the main rating.

First Impressions: 7.0/10.0

What really made this score low at first was the awkward, but unique layout and flow. It is not often that you see tubes taking place in central gameplay, and where they really count. Also, as a Jazz user, the uphill movement in the right side of the level took longer to scale, but then came alternate routes, which was out of the first impression. After learning the layout, the level makes a lot more sense, and finally a strategy can be made.

Unbiased and Biased Review Score: 7.75/10.0

This is the average score between the Unbiased and biased reviews, which is an important count.

Full Score: 7.5/10.0

This score combines all three rated portions of the review. This is not very important at all, but it is nice for comparing statistics.

Fully Biased Score: 7.25/10.0

This score combines the biased and first impressions review. This is also not important, but it is also convenient for comparing statistics.

True Score: 8.0/10.0*

This is the most important portion of the review, mainly because it is the unbiased portion of the review, and that is what is best for the rating system.

Summary:

CHeMiCaLs LaBoRaToRYs is a pretty good level that takes time to get used to, and it is good for both having fun and competing, because it has a decent balance of gameplay and the need for skill. In short, it is a fun and compact level that anyone could play.

What Could be Improved Upon:

The lower-right hand corner contains most of the problems. The springs should be relocated so players can smoothly get out of the area and not get cornered for an attack, which could make them avoid that area altogether. The glass tubes that are not used for transport should be moved a little bit so players will not get confused when they are in that area. Also, the hooks need to be raised or added so they are actually useful wherever they are. Text strings are unnecessary in the level (although they do not contribute to degrading the level), as they simply get in the way, but leaving them in is also fine. This level simply needs to be a little looser in these areas so it could get a better score.

Interesting Fact:

If you did not read the entire review or simply did not know about this before, you would know that the word “Jazz” is written in the background in the form of pipes. Try and find where it is, if you have not noticed it before.

Note:

With each review, a new feature is added.

• Only the unbiased rating counts towards the site’s rating system.

~ Derby[This review has been edited by Derby]

“Chemicals Labroratorys” (i wonder if that’s grammatically correct…well, english sucks :-) is a nice little (standard size: 100*50 tiles) battle level using the good old Labrat tileset.

It has an acceptable layout that is obviously supposed to be round and easily playable (which it isn’t because of reasons i’ll mention later).
The weapon selection is very good. As for the event placement, i didn’t find it exceptionally good: the gems and food are pretty useless in a battle and the destruction events (which are quite annoying sometimes, esspecially regarding navigation) are just not my favourite idea in such a level (no real big problems, though).

Regarding the layer work, i have to mention this real nice(!) “JAZZ” arrangement in one of the background layers. Otherwise, nothing special about it.

Well, all in all, even if it may sound harsh, i don’t see this level too far away from the average. It is just missing something in my opinion. In addition to that, i find it horribly overrated here, which also influences my rating of “only” (high) 6.5 points. Still worth a download, if you like the tileset, the “Made in Holland” sign or if you just feel like.

I like this level because you can make good battles in it. The backgroud is nice. Cool level =)

I liked a lot o stuff in this level. Like the eye-candy, the layout, and the ammo placement, and the tileset that was used. What I didn’t like were those sucker tube things in layer 3 at the bottom-right of the level; they kinda seemed to have no point. Everything else was good. So just download this whenever you get the chance.

Yay you posted it, it’s a bieutiful wide open and good “platform” of a level . The tileset is underused which just makes it better! Good to see levels with lab rat once in a while. Good job and keep making good levels :).
P.S. How’d your lev already get more reviews then mine :P

Off we start again with my unusually large review:

Eyecandy: The eyecandy in this level was okay, but pretty basic. Nothing really caught my eye. It uses vines and sucker tubes and a good backround. The eyecandy is full and packed. A few minor mistakes here and there, but not much to worry about. Also, I noticed that those belts that move are floating without anything below them to make it look better. I find that to be weird looking.

Gameplay: The gameplay was pretty good, but for Jazz sometimes it’s a struggle. I suggest adding a few more springs in a few areas. I also noticed a few dead ends. Try to replace those with springs or tubes leading out.

Ammo: The amount of ammo was sparse in some places. A good amount of ammo in one spot, but barely any in another. Try adding different patterns of ammo to make it look more interesting. And what’s this? Gems in a battle level? It may look good, but gems in a battle is a nono. You also added food, which I don’t have a problem with.

Overall, Chemicals Labratorys is an average labrat level with good points and bad points. Download recommendation? Sure!