RecommendedQuick Review by Parrot

Posted:
27 Jan 2009, 11:27 (edited 27 Jan 09, 12:20 by cooba)
For: Shocksheep
Level rating: 7.5
Rating
8

Good lvl: 8/10

[Review changed to quick review. – cooba]

RecommendedReview by CrimiClown

Posted:
25 Jan 2009, 12:00
For: Shocksheep
Level rating: 7.5
Rating
7.2

ShockSheep… I don’t have any witty comment to put here at the moment.

Gameplay: Original
The level has a platformed lay-out, which means the level consists of mostly platform that connect through the use of vines, springs and solid bridges. ShockSheep is an average sized level, with a lot of space being covered (though the down right corner is basicly just ‘earth filling’).

As it is a battle level, it is good that there is a lot of space to jump in. Few low ceilings and large walkways make the ideal settings for a battle level this size.

The level has some ‘gimmicky’ power-ups. With that, I mean that you’ll automaticly grab them via a spring on the ceiling, if you take the correct route and speed. The PU’s in question are the Toaster, Bouncer and RF Missiles. Furthermore, Seeker ammo can be found as well, but the Powerup is either well hidden or missing. That’s a good thing. The level also counts three +1 carrots (if I didn’t miss any), which is good in a level of this size.

ShockSheep also has a very fun gimmick, namely a working ‘turret’. When you enter the turret, you get instructions on how to operate it. Using Wind events, you’ll be able to run inside the turret and not move. In effect, everything you shoot will be thrown away for tiles than you can imagine. When inside, be sure to have the Toaster PU. Normally, the only thing that this weapon lacks is speed. Inside the turret, however, speed isn’t an option. The awesome spread of fire with the Toaster will cover a huge area, which is basicly inaccessible after you start shooting. Take that with the fact that the Toaster doesn’t run out of ammo fast, and you’ve got a killing machine. However, the skilled player will be able to ‘knock the turreteer out’ with one well-placed seeker.

Atmosphere: Crowded
The tileset used is one of NOKA’s remakes of the JJ1 set Letni. Out of the pallettes available, Arti (or Camou) went for a darker setting. NOKA – JJ1 Letni 4 is the purple version of the tileset, and most definitely the darkest one.

While this isn’t such a big deal for people who can adjust their monitor brightness, the overuse of eye-candy kind of kills it. Don’t get me wrong, though, the level looks really sweet, but it can be confusing in times. For instance, sometimes solid tiles are used as layer 3 and 5 eye-candy. Normally you’d stop at these tiles (or bump into them), but it took me a while to realise that in this level, you have to walk through those. Same goes with the background tiles (the nearly black plates) used in layer 3… Those have knocked me off quite a few times.

Sometimes, layer 3 also features the ‘tubelectric’ wood tiles, which looks surprisingly good. Then again, sometimes I find that more annoying than pretty, for example in the left-bottom corner spring.

Now of course this review isn’t going to end up with just negative aspects. The background looks peculiarly awesome. Looking in JCS, it’s really simple, but it looks pretty nice, also because of the addition of the black plating in layer 6.

The sprite layer eyecandy is something else as well. Nice platforms with good eyecandy in the walls and edges make for a winner. Too bad it is sometimes blocked with too much layer 3.

Overall: Not bad
If you get to learn this level, it isn’t half as bad as I make it sound here. Though the eyecandy can be confusing at first, look past that (or use Low Detail you pussies) and you’ll have quite an enjoyable level.

Download Recommendation: “On the edge” yes
The lay-out can be quite hard to learn at first… and not everyone feels like learning levels. I personally would like to recommend this, though, as it can be quite fun to play in once you know how the level works.

Score: 7.2
ShockSheep is an entertaining level with fun gimmicks and can be used for an unsettled score with an arch enemy. The level is also really fun for larger games, because of the turret. That could result in a ‘Tower of Power’ kind of gameplay.

Not recommendedReview by PurpleJazz

Posted:
11 Oct 2008, 09:54
For: Chilly Swamps
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
6

I’m reluctant to do this, but seeing how hideously overrated this level is, I felt like I had to do it. That’s the only reason why I’m reviewing this.

Chilly Swamps is a very small battle level created by now inactive Arti (aka Camou), using the (very overused and kinda boring) Swamps tileset by Agama. Due to the small size, this level feels too crowded with any more than 2 players, so in public servers this would be very annoying to play in. The layout has a “floors of height” design, meaning there are platforms in rows on different levels of the Y axis. This layout is not too interesting, however there are no serious gameplay problems here. It’d be better if the level was larger and had a more varied design. The flow was rather tilty; I had to constantly run and stop, turn around, run and stop, etc. In other words, the level does not flow smoothly like a good level like E.Prime. I also feel the water at the bottom was unnecessary.

Placement is not great. The ammo is not evenly spread; some areas of the level have a lot of ammo while others have barely any. The top left in particular has about twice as much ammo as the rest of the level put together. It’s mainly placed in lines of around 5 or so. Although I prefer large groups, seeing how small the level is this doesn’t really raise much of an issue. There are 3 powers up, the common Bouncer/Seeker/RF mix. Due to the level design, Bouncer will probably favour over the other two. There are two carrots, which are placed ok.

Nothing really much to say in the looks department, for it looks exactly like the usual bunch of swamps. The author did not try to attempt anything creative with the set aside from the weird floating branch platforms, but yet they look ugly and out of place. The only saving grace was the music choice, giving this level a peaceful and enjoyable atomsphere.

In general, I wouldn’t reccomend this level, as it has nothing here that makes it worth playing over other levels already existing.

RecommendedReview by PT32

Posted:
3 Oct 2008, 21:51
For: Chilly Swamps
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
9.6

Well, Arti, this is a great level! Set in the Agama Swamps night tileset, Chilly Swamps is a battle with great eyecandy, a fitting song, a cute little water segment at the bottom, and more. Not really anything outstanding when it comes to size, but there is minimal to no buggage. The neat little level was done quite well, and I think it’s definitely worth downloading.

Review by PurpleJazz

Posted:
14 Oct 2006, 05:41 (edited 14 Oct 06, 18:32 by Purplejazz7)
For: JazzDJ 2
Level rating: 6
Rating
N/A

This file doesn’t work, whenver I do it I just get access violations.

RecommendedReview by BattleSpaz

Posted:
12 Oct 2006, 14:19
For: JazzDJ 2
Level rating: 6
Rating
6

This program does cool things to musics. It kinda… Well it DOES corrupt the musics sound like heavily remixed ones. I liked the second remix best, but the other two was just plain weird… (Hint: Menu music sounds REALLY cool when you put remix 2 on ;) )

This porgrams main problem is the unusablity: It makes cool sounds, but what is the point if you can’t save them? You should make this to emulate and/or save files from JJ2 supported music files so it would be good to use.

This is not bad at all, and it does get Download Recommendation because its fun to use and test, but unusability puts the score down to 6.

Review by jam

Posted:
9 Oct 2006, 16:06 (edited 9 Oct 06, 16:35 by Cooba)
For: JazzDJ 2
Level rating: 6
Rating
N/A

Cool program.

If you delete this review you are officially a (PA)

[Wide personal attack and unacceptable rating (10) clearance. You know the review rules yet chose not to abide by them. ~Cooba]

Review by Saphir

Posted:
16 Aug 2006, 16:22
For: Hellsinki
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
N/A

Pointless post: Helsinki is the capital of FINLAND, not Iceland. And it wouldn’t be that snow-covered anyway :)

Review by Aegis

Posted:
11 Aug 2006, 19:58
For: JazzDJ
Level rating: 8.6
Rating
N/A

Uhh, there’s a simpler way to do that. Put the music volume to zero, open your favorite music player and put some music playin’. But I guess this is for changing the original music. Which makes it pretty cool. I’d give this a Download recommendation but there’s no review so I won’t.

RecommendedReview by Red Ninja

Posted:
7 Aug 2006, 21:46
For: JazzDJ
Level rating: 8.6
Rating
8.5

Awesome!!

The discovery of this is amazing, and has many useful functions if we can find more things like this.
Discovery: 5.0 – Definately

Simple and User-Friendly interface, checkbox to enable/disable.
UserInterface: 3.5

Takes up virtually no memory and even jazz-illiterate people could use it.

What this program does is disable certain sounds in the JJ2 music, making for a familiar tune that has been mixed. It’s like an instant remix of the JJ2 level’s music that you are on.

I love this.
Overall: 8.5
Download Recommendation: YES

-Red

Review by HorvatM

Posted:
4 Aug 2006, 16:03
For: JazzDJ
Level rating: 8.6
Rating
N/A

That’s a cool application. But I don’t like it some way. It ‘turns off’ all instruments except drums.
Medivo music sounds creepy.
Beach music sounds like the normal one.
The… umm.. (beep) music sounds weird.
Credits song (or Pull Back The Bass) sounds like normal.

Anyway, good job. :D
RJ

Review by MSB3000

Posted:
3 Aug 2006, 22:27
For: JazzDJ
Level rating: 8.6
Rating
N/A

Awesome.

RecommendedReview by jam

Posted:
3 Aug 2006, 20:51 (edited 3 Aug 06, 21:45)
For: JazzDJ
Level rating: 8.6
Rating
8.7

This is a very interesting program which I think is the beginning of some fantastic developments which could be created in the future.

The effects vary a lot- if you were to run this program on one level and then skip to the next level, the next level’s music will all be done using the first instrument in it.

If you only enable it after the music has played for a while, it will use a variety of instruments making the music sound.. well.. DJ’d.

A brilliant discovery. The Jazz Jackrabbit 2 music will never be the same again ;)

It is also very simple to use (of course).

I give it no less than it deserves- 8.7 and definately a download recommendation. This tool is great fun!

RecommendedReview by Blackraptor

Posted:
28 Jul 2006, 10:02 (edited 28 Jul 06, 10:29)
For: Hellsinki
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
7.2

I’m going to start off with eyecandy first since it’s the most noticable thing and I have a lot to say on it.

First, there’s a lot more eyecandy then I expected here. Which isn’t necessarily good. A lot of it (nearly all of it, even) is extremely confusing because you can’t tell what is solid and what’s just for show. Its nice that you tried to make the level pretty, but honestly, I have no idea what the hell is going on sometimes in the level because too many things crowd the screen.

There’s a lot of creative stuff I see though. Some things I know I used in my Chasm level before, while there are some which are fairly new and I haven’t seen before (the pillars at 41,48 for example). Of course, using this tileset and trying to be creative at the same time usually ends up with a load of tilebugs, but I’m willing to overlook them for creativity’s sake because I’d rather have a level that tries new things (minus the confusing eyecandy part and using solid stuff in layer 5) then a level which doesn’t and is extremely limited visual wise or is empty. Some of the tilebugs, however, like the layer 3 bug at 92,30 in jj2 should be fixed (same bug reoccurs in the same spot except on blue team side).

So basically, its creative and look cool in some areas, but too confusing since you used the same tiles in layer 4 and 5, and there’s too much in areas and it crowds the screen and makes it annoying if you’re playing.

As for the layout, it’s pretty much symmetrical. Spaz can quickly get to the bases by RF climbing and not needing to take the tube or extremely long route. Normally I don’t mention spaz biases because basically most people use spaz anyways and he is better in more situations online then jazz is (imo), but this one pretty much makes it seem like you either didn’t know about RF climbing or want everyone to be spaz here because jazz would get humiliated.

I had some trouble getting around too, but that’s mainly the fault of the eyecandy. The way this level is made, with all the layer 3 passages and sucker tubes and warps which are fairly hidden, makes it EXTREMELY hard for new people to learn it, and can lead to a lot of people losing fairly quickly in this level because they weren’t aware of a hidden warp to a powerup, or a sucker tube to the base, etc. If you’re going to have stuff like that, at least point it out. I had no idea about pretty much most of it until I looked in JCS.

Some passages are pretty much useless for the most part. You have a sucker tube, a very quick and effortless RF climb spot, AND coinwarps to the bases. Who would use the slow and vulnerable staircase passage on the far sides of the level aside from just getting loose ammo?

Gameplay wise, I don’t like how this level plays out all too much. It’s extremely easy to get to the base and you can get there in a matter of seconds, making it pretty hard to defend. I think the coinwarps could at least use some more coins to get into, personally. This level can also get pretty cramped and is chock full of very thin walls blocking your path which would make electroblasters at least twice as useful if they were included in the level.

The level includes 3 +1 carrots. I can’t tell if I like this or hate this. The level is definately too small to house a full energy with those +1s being there, yet I don’t really like having to always need 2 carrots to ensure I am not one hit away from death. It could work though, I guess, and I might prefer it to the One Full Energy method which so many levels used before and which basically ensures you’re screwed when youre at 1h and your opponent is camping the carrot (memories of snooze duels go here ;P).

Ammo variety is…limited. I would’ve liked some EBs here since they would kill in this level, and maybe even more loose ammo to make some areas seem less useless and dull. AFAIK there’s two powerups, found in warps which you probably won’t find unless you know where they are, or are just lucky and/or explorative. Powerup choice is well done, though.

Overall, this is basically a small level which is an example of what happens and how confusing a level can get when it overused layer 4 platforms and tiles in layer 5 scenery and overdoes the eyecandy. It needs to be less author friendly (rather, not hiding nearly every useful thing in this level) and an eyecandy facelift, imo. I don’t like how easy it is to get to the bases either, really. Possibly taking out the coinwarps entirely would fix that.

However, the eyecandy is creative despite being confusing and some things are pretty cool. The level is small but isn’t another AYB or something where there’s only one full energy. I’m giving this a 7.2.

Download reccomendation, but mostly to see some creative tricks used in the eyecandy and a lesson to what happens when you overdo it and make stuff confusing and seemingly crowded.

And finally, a reply to Cooba because I half wrote this review for the sole purpose of debating on what he said when he edited that 6.5 review: I think tileset choice DOES matter when it comes to levels, really. Tileset choice affects what you can do with a level, what tiles you can use, and it can really determine whether your level is worthy of an 8 or over. Eyecandy basically depends on tileset choice: you can use a bad tileset and make something creative in it, but it would never really be as good as the eyecandy you can do when using a wellmade tileset. Also, limitations in the set can influence things outside of eyecandy. If there were arrows in this tileset, the warps and the sucker tubes need not be hidden which would definately improve the rating this level gets, but there aren’t arrows in this set so =P. Music choice can matter, but to a much lesser extent. I wouldn’t take marks off for it personally, but I would get annoyed and definately bring it up in a review if a music was irritating or completely doesn’t fit a level.

Well, this was kinda fun. HURRAY!!

~Blacky

Edit: Fixed a few wording errors that made one sentence pretty much not make sense. That’s what happens when you review while being half awake I guess.

RecommendedReview by Ischa

Posted:
27 Jul 2006, 18:35 (edited 27 Jul 06, 18:37)
For: Hellsinki
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
8.4

Rating Hellsinki:

To start:
Very well Capture the Flag-level for lucky people and people who remember good.

Mysterious paths:
It seems that there are in this level many paths present… but that is not correct. You would THINK that it are paths, but it is background… Lucky people have no problems with that challenge… because if you choose a wrong platform, you’ll fall down… At people who much luck it will not happen often.
In fact also a type Memory, because you must really can remember: which paths are real and which paths not?

Strange Title:
The level is called ‘ Hellsinki ‘, probably named to the capital of Iceland. (Helsinki therefore) So, Peter and I thought that it was in the snow… but no, was in the shelter of Devan Shell, there was everywhere magma!

One thing is unfortunately:
It is a pity that the one flag left and other right in the level is. My favoriete Capture the Flag-levels are he where you really must search the flags.

Conclusion:
In spite of this disadvantage this is a very well Capture the Flag-level with a strange title.

Mark: 8,4
Download recommendation:

Review by Arti

Posted:
27 Jul 2006, 17:12
For: Hellsinki
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
N/A

I finally get reviews and they don’t even make sense :(

Review by WerBack3>>

Posted:
27 Jul 2006, 14:44 (edited 28 Jul 06, 11:36 by Cooba)
For: Hellsinki
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
N/A

Poor level at all.

First, the Eycandy sucks. Too much of it or sometimes on wrong plases, it just sucks.
-1.5

Second, The mask positions sucks:P.
It’s better than other levels, but it still sucks. A simetric small level with 3-4 ways in it is not a good level
-3.5

Third, the tileset sucks. Bad tileset, bad usage… What can I say… Some lava, some masked tiles, some sulls…
-.5

GOOD POINTS

The ammo placement is good! Not too much, just enought ammo to make the game hard.+1

The warps and winds/sucks are good placed. Really cool idea to put a warp in the skull!+.5

Music is cool! Half point for that!+.5

CTF bases placement is good, but it can be better( I think it’s because the level is small)
+.5

My comment is that: If you like small levels with no area to walk, download it!

I like small levels, but there is no enought stuff.

Download recommendation? N/A…
I don’t like the level, but other people will like it. Download at will!

[Rating (6.5) clearance. The reasons provided were entirely irrelevant of the level quality, again. Do *NOT* rate music and tileset choices, thank you. ~Cooba]

RecommendedReview by Ðx

Posted:
25 Jul 2006, 20:49 (edited 27 Jul 06, 19:53)
For: Hellsinki
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
9.2

Hey all!
First of all! This level is awsome! Perfect for duels. This level is a big step of leveldesign for you Arti!
Eyecandy
It’s perfect! Don’t add more or less! It fits the level, and you use a lot of different things. You also used all the layers, really good! Sometimes it’s a little confusing because they look like walls but that’s okay.

Gameplay
Very cool! Very nice idea to get to the base’s. I like the secret ways. It’s kinda Spaz based, but Jazz would get itself out of the jumping case’s. There’s nice flow but its kinda confusing sometimes like the tunnel with coins and the suckertube.

Ammo
Good placed, and enough ammo there is. Also when you need to go up to the base, you can use the ammo if somebody attacks you from below. They aren’t really in nice shapes but that not bad.
Overall: Your best level!
9.2

RecommendedReview by Yaxo

Posted:
29 Jun 2006, 10:19
For: NinChippie DS
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
7.5

Okay , a review by me!
Let’s start with the gameplay…like Dx said , this this smooth and easy to play. Meaning the flow is kind of good , you did a good job here. Only problem I found were some float ups which irritated me , but for the rest it’s okay!
Eyecandy…hmmm , I like what you did with this tileset , especially the background ,also the numbers are quite cool. The sounds are quite fun too , I don’t know how you made that. Hmmm , ammo placement could be a bit better , but that’s no big deal. I’ll give you a 7,5.

RecommendedReview by Ðx

Posted:
17 Jun 2006, 16:54
For: NinChippie DS
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
8

Alright! Arti is back :D!

Eyecandy

There is enough eyecandy, i like the secret tubes (are they secret?) The 0 and 1 numbers are cool, and the BG can use some green stuff.

Gameplay

It’s smooth, fun, and easy to play in! You can just hold on shift and run in different ways!

I like the sucker tubes, and the error thingy is awsome! :)

Ammo

I missed some power ups, but the rest is fine placed. Awsome sound effects and great bumps.

The carrots are well placed, but mayby some more?

Overall: Nice level and great to host sometimes!

8.0! Well done!

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