Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Here comes my first review for a long time.

{Eye Candy} [8.5]
This probably is the best part of the level. I like the mountains and especially the clouds. Sometimes I can’t really see the difference between Layer 5 roads and walkable roads, though. Don’t make this messy.

{GamePlay} [4.2]
So you can score in 10 seconds. Wow. The
level is a bit Blue biased, since it’s a lot easier to defend the blue base on the top-left, than the red base on the bottom-right. It’s fine for duels, but absolutely biased for #vs#‘s. And it’s easy to fall down just by accident. And those accidents happen a LOT. The bases are out in the open, leading in easy scores.

{Stuff Placement} [7.0]
No minus points for the seek powerup, since this is an open level that gives a chance for easy dodging. I’m more concerned about the CARROTS. The top-right carrot is so easy to camp. The bottom-left could be a Full Energy. Or to speak, there should be no two +1’s, have a full energy instead. Especially since this has this seek powerup. One seek hit gives two damage and you need to go first to bottom left, then to top right to full heal. By then, you would already have died. And the seek powerup is in an enclosed area, resulting in NO! That’s so easy to camp it’s painful.

{Originality} [6.5]
The enclosed area powerup placing is used so many times I can download something else and see it.

AVERAGE {TOTAL} [6.5]
This was a total letdown of XLM. I didn’t like this level. Considering this is a XLM level, I can’t believe they make levels this bad. 6.5! No Download Recommendation (unless you want to review it, of course)

EDITEDIT: No download recommendation? I swear i put N/A in it…

I will review this too. I don’t review every CTF level, but this is one of them.
Introduction to XLM Owned Town: the level name is surprising me. This level uses the Townsville II Night version, and I haven’t seen many levels with it. I made one with the Day version of this tileset. You misspelled ChippieBW’s name in the credits! It’s a small level made for XLM. Oh, I forgot to tell who made it. CrashMash made the level. =P

It’s easy to run around in this level. The flow is good, some float-ups help you getting around easily in the level. The level’s layout is fine, it’s nothing special. There is some good spring placement in some places. The level is a bit squared-off, and has some slope bugs.(I can’t run off the slopes without falling off them)The level is pretty open, you can be chased with RF’s, but there are some ways to each base. The base placement is pretty simple, but it works. The Blue Base is on the top-left of the level. The Red Base is on the bottom-right of the level. It’s good balanced in some places, there is no big advantage. The bases can be guarded, but it’s not like in Zaitox. That means it’s possible not to be killed if you ever play in it. CrashMash said that this is a 2v2/duel level, and I can understand it a bit because of the size. The level has some Spaz biasing, I noticed that when I played with Jazz in CM’s server.

The eye candy is above average. Every layer is used. Layer 1 and 2 provide rain, layer 3 has almost nothing. Layer 4 has some houses and trees. Layer 5 has the most stuff. It provides bricks, houses, other ways(this time not in layer 3) and also some trees. This is good enough for the tileset, as it doesn’t have very much eye candy. I don’t have many other comments about the eye candy, so I guess it’s just quite good. The background(s) of the level provide mountains and clouds. Layer 8 is just sky, but that’s pretty basic.

Some thing that isn’t very bad but needs some work, is the placement. The level has some boring shapes of ammo like the 2×2 +3 ammo. Some other shapes are some lines on the ground. This level has, instead of a Full Energy, 2 +1 carrots. Some of the last levels I’ve seen had also no Full Energy, but this is still decent. The +1 carrots are placed at 15,54 and 74,4. The Red team has to go down for the carrot at 15,54 and go right for the other one, and the Blue team has to go left for the one at 15,54 and up for the other one. This isn’t a bad idea, I can’t say I dislike something about it. There is one power-up in the level, the Seek PU. If you get in a tube(starting from 59,30), you will go to another place with a tube, and after that, you’re at the Seek PU and should go to the top-right of that area(but you could also camp) There is no Gun9 in the level, which prevents that players get the Seek PU without entering the warp. The choices of ammo are fine. The biggest flaw of the placement is probably that you can camp at the Seek PU and the boring shapes of ammo. There is enough ammo for everyone. Maybe some fast fires would be nice(like 2 or 3)

The level’s music fits the level, and I’ve never heard it before. There aren’t many levels with this tileset. The level has an interesting name, but I can’t say the level owns that much. It’s just an average level by a XLM member. So I can’t say the level is really original.

Ratings:
Gameplay: 6.7
Eye candy: 7.9
Placement: 7
Originality: 6.5
Overall: 6.7 + 7.9 + 7 + 6.5 : 4 = 7.025, which is rounded down to a 7.
Download this: Hmm, maybe. It’s better than alot of CTF levels.
Host: Maybe once.
I’ll give N/A for Download Recommendation.
-DarkSnc[si], co-leader of XLM.

This is my first ctf-level review except DS’s contest where I had been promised to work as a judge. Well, as my first ctf-review, I try to hurry with it a little as my time is running out.

EYECANDY
As I’m not usually so careful about the eyecandy and I like when there is some solid platforms at the background when the level is made of a tileset where it would look nice, I give the eyecandy 9. Well, the clouds are used correctly and I couldn’t have added at least much more than the hills and the rain because I would have used layer 5 for the eyecandy of the sprite-layer. It seems that the layer 1 or 2 isn’t used.
9/10

LEVEL STRUCTURE / BALANCE
The Blue team can reach red’s base a little faster than vice versa but not too effectively. Some of the platforms look a bit too simple and there is no place where you would have to jump, except a few ones maybe, so it might become boring to run through this level on and on. The level should be balanced in the other hand as there are 2 +1-carrots. Most of the float-ups are annoying. There used to be a bug that CrashMash hadn’t noticed before at the bottom-left, where was a tube what the player through-comes when he/she would have entered the tube leading to the Seeker-PU. The player was able to get rid of the tube…at least the easiest was with Jazz, so the player was able to camp and shoot to the incoming players. I didn’t get the meaning of that in the other hand even, but it doesn’t cost anything now as he fixed it anyways.
6/10

PLACEMENT
There is no exotic shapes of ammo…Only lines and squares. The placement neither seems to have any design and some of the ammo could have been spread more. The Seeker-PU which is the only PU, is placed at the top of the level into a closed area. That kind of a placement has been used a lot of times and I don’t like it so much, so it costs you a point. Also when there is a Seeker-PU…Yes not even Blaster-PU it isn’t very wise to place +1-carrots into the level. I will give the whole placement a 5.
5/10

OVERALL: ~6,7
LEVEL RANK: Average level.
DOWNLOAD RECOMMENDATION: Your choice.

ENDING COMMENTS: I heard this level was made in two days and I would call that kinda rushed level. Because of that the Author must have worked all the day but after all it doesn’t look so bad than it could look. Another average level which could be improved quite much. I neither don’t like the tileset so much although it looks nice when there is some solid tiles at layer 5 and 3 however.

-Superjazz

I reuploaded! A bug.

The Unnamed Level
Well, time for me to review this new battle level. I see it’s the second battle level made with the Diamondus Beta Night tileset (the first one was ChristMax by Olsen) and let’s see if this level is good enough. CrashMash forced me to write this review and he reviewed mine, so that would be a fair deal.
By the way, why no music? This will lower the gameplay rating by 0.5, you could have at least included a standard music file.

EYECANDY: 2.1 out of 2.5
Well well… let’s just check the looks of this level. I guess it’s a little bit obvious that I will draw parallels with Garden Brawl, since that level could be a standard for all Diamondus Beta levels that will be released in the near future. The eyecandy in this level is certainly not as good as in Garden Brawl, but it’s not bad either. In fact, I really like the eyecandy, since it’s quite clam and the relaxing. I guess the eyecandy level would be as high as in my Diamondus Beta Night level (Bay Of Diamonds) except this level has additional eyecandy in layers 1 and 2, which are looking good and not annoying. The layer 4 eyecandy is decent, although some platforms could be looking a bit better, and there are some minor tiling bugs (most of them in the walls). The backgrounds layers are almost the same as in Bay Of Diamonds, and I like them. Overall, the eyecandy is pretty good. I like it.

AMMO: 1.8 out of 2.5
I wonder if the placement of all the goodies is just as good. This is another level with a 3-PU system, although there aren’t any majors or minors – you could say the Seeker and RF are both major and the Bouncie is minor. You can reach the RF and seeker by one and the same warp, the first time you’ll get warped to the Seeker and the second time to the RF, which prevents camping a bit and it’s original, although I prefer to know where I’ll end up. The smaller amounts of ammo are not really originally placed (almost all of them are placed in squares or vertical lines) and some places are too empty, but since the respawn time is not too long (just 10 seconds) this won’t be a real problem in big events. There are three +1 carrots in this level (no Full NRG) which seems like a nice option to me. They could have been spread better over the level though, since they are all in the upper half.

STRUCTURE & GAMEPLAY: 3.8 out of 5.0
Structure and gameplay, finally. As I mentioned before, there is no music file in this level, which kills the gameplay experience a bit. I won’t district many points for this but it will cost you 0.3 points. The flow is good, in any case good enough for a battle level. Some of the springs could be placed a little better, but I didn’t experience many problems. A liked the large, open spaces which were all around, and they fit very nice to this battle level. The warp to the PU’s was an original solution, but I don’t really like it since I never will know where I end up. The level had some double pathways on some platforms in the foreground, but there are also a few objects placed in the background, which confused me a bit.

RATINGS:
CrashMash did a very decent job with the production of this battle level. The eyecandy is not as good as in “the other” level, Garden Brawl, but it surely is worth it. The ammo placement is generally good but there could be a little more of it in some places and more originality would be nice too. The flow is perhaps even better then Garden Brawl in some places. I think this level would do nice on a bash event, although too many Diamondus Beta levels would be a little boring. You’ve got yourself a 7.7, by the way.

Score: 2.1 + 1.8 + 3.8 = 7.7
Download: Yes.
Host: Yes, perhaps even on Bash.

Greetings,
~ ChippieBW

grytolle, you have almost exactly copied alexander’s review

Alex, i fixed that ANYONE can get Seeker, and ANYONE can get bounce, tested it by myself.

(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)

GAMEPLAY: 7.5
Too many springs. The other things are OK, except for some dead ends. You can get the bouncy PU with Jazz which is good.
EYECANDY: 9
Nice. All layers used. There are double paths. And waterfalls too. There is a foreground layer bug, but eyecandy is excellent.
EVENTS: 8
As I already told you, there is a bouncy and a seeker power-up. There’s a carrot behind the waterfall so look carefully to see it. There aren’t any fastfires and all ammo types except the useless (TNT and Freezer)
Final rating: 8.1
EDIT: Now Jazz can get these 2 power-ups! Rating raised with 0.1 :P