Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

These 3 battle levels must be the cutest I have ever seen. The scale is almost perfectly done, yet they’re still fully recognizable as smaller counterparts of their bigger brothers. Our rabbits look like giants in these levels, and it’s quiet fun to just explore them, especially Battle 1 and 2 and 3 (wait, that’s all of them :-P).

These levels were equite enjoyable in public servers, although some of the conversions have gone amiss (like Jazz-unfriendly parts in Battle 3, where some springs don’t go up high enough and Jazz can’t get 50 ammo from the bouncy PU, and a LOT of ammo has goen as well, but I can’t complain on the ammo part, because they just reduce lag). What’s fun is that the level-design flaws in some of the levels are still in this pack, only much smaller, and getting shot up to the two pillars above the seeker PU ledge in Battle 1 was pretty cool.

Some events are useless, like the copters, while many areas gain more importance now that the levels have grown smaller. Camping at the carrot is harder in Battle 2, mass-bouncers near the seeker PU in Battle 3 is slightly more effective, because of shorter travellin time, and the bottom-right corner of Battle 1 is a deadly camping spot with any powered-up weapon.

The gameplay of all levels feel quite normal, despite the smallness, and I’ve got nothing to say about the eyecandy, because they weren’t Newspaz’s levels and it wouldn’t be a very faithful conversion if lots of new stuff were added. Some events had to be moved and deleted due to the small size, but it just makes the shrinkag more realistic.

For those that want some crazy fun in multiplayer, this pack is a must download, but I can’t give the conversion a rating above 8 because of the fact that none of the original levels were actually made by Newspaz. ;-)

I don’t even have to edit my review to boast that I got the longest review. ;-D

EDIT: Hmpf! It turns out that I didn’t get the longest review, so I added more stuff…

Summer review!

Space Sucks is a battle level I had fun betatesting in, and it’s quite a good first attempt at an multiplayer level. At first impressions, the level was quite tight and small, but it has good flow and there are always places to go…even if it is a dead end. ;-)

The gameplay, flow and event placement is this level’s strongest aspects, because the eyecandy hardly takes advantage of all the tiles available in Blade’s Space tileset. There is a measly one animated tile in JCS, which I don’t think is even used in the level, the background consists of grey walls, a canyon/Martian landscape, and a boring, dark sky, while the foreground is mostly just fencing. The whole level is so monochromatic, with moat of the tiles being either grey or white. Space, as everyone knows, should be mainly black space occasionally dotted with stars, but people tend to like to put in flashy nebulae and meteor showers. Space Sucks should really have been more unrealistic, in my opinion… However, everything that is there fits in well, with the exception of a minor tile bug in layer 2.

A lot of tiles get in the way in Space Sucks, but thanks to clever layer useage and float-ups, is fairly easy to navigate this level with all rabbits. Maybe not Lori. There are some dead ends, but they lead to useful stuffness like seeker PUs and carrots. The flow is all right, and I don’t think it can get better than this for such a small and semi-tight level. However, it is darn easy to camp at the top carrot’s suckertube, because of the presence of a blaster PU and fastfires. Using triggers that enables people to shoot in but not out (thus rendering the camper’s advantageous position useless) would be nice.

I think Space Sucks is good for all servers, especially insanely laggy YACR JDC events (mwahahahahahah), and duels, of course. It’s a good attempt at a battle level, and slightly above average. I guess I’ll give it a 6.5…it’s not that great, but you should download it because people are already beginning to duel in it for JDC. ;-P

EDIT: Yay! I got the longest review!

And the most dull…oh well. :-P

EDIT: Level has been re-uploaded with triggers, some eyecandy (I think) and other bug fixes.

Well, I betatested this lvl ages ago, then, yesterday, told myself to review it and reminded myself that you should never postpone until tomorrow what you should’v done today…and then I postponed it till tomorrow. :-( Well, after a loooong time, here is my review:

Cake Cream Snowland (CCS) is a small 71×64 battle lvl. It has 2 carrots and every single power-up that does 2-heart damage, except the blaster PU (that’s 4 power-ups in total). Now that I think about it, 3 carrots would be better than 2, considering the amount of fire-power in the lvl and it’s a pretty small lvl too, so you won’t stay full-health for long. Betatesters screwed up. Again…

The background eyecandy is reasonably nice. The little cake-platforms look nice, although I would’ve appreciated it if they stayed with you at the top of the lvl (make them hiiigher!). The foreground eyecandy is a bit empty and it seems as if the tileset just doesn’t allow Pan Galactic Garble Blaster-type eyecandy. ;-) I still think Arti should’ve taken the opportunity to at least make some foreground platforms inside the many large, thick walls of the lvl, which shouldn’t get in the way of anyone’s sight and still look good.

Weapons placement is ok, except that there are not enough fastfires (you’ll never stay alive long enough to get your private minigun :-p) and there are too many power-ups. It would be nice if you could just force players to stomp a power-up or to shoot it with electroblasters, so ppl will actually take the normal 3x ammo and bouncers from the gun barrel.

Gameplay is where it’s at! :-O CCS has much better gameplay than it has eyecandy or weapons placement. The pole kinda slows you down and there’s a lot of open space for ppl to not be able to dodge bouncer, seeker and RF barrages although I guess public server battle freaks will like the carnage and the multi-kills possible in this lvl. Springs and platforms are sensibly placed, except the kind of floating white stairway in the middle, which is Spaz biased and really forces Jazz to either slow down with superjump…or slow down with jumping from one platform to the next. Spaz can just swoop by with one or two doublejumps. Also, the platform at pos 17, 3 is 1 tile too high. You can still run over it, but if you haven’t got enough speed, you’ll just fall down whether you like it or not (UNLESS YOU’RE SPAZ! :-P).

Frankly, I don’t know why the heck I didn’t mention all the above things when I betatested but this lvl is mostly flawless, but its layout fails to give players anything more to do than to launch mini-ICBM attacks on their opponents from afar. Ok, there’s toaster walls, bouncers from above and suckertubes in the mix. It’s an ok lvl, nothing remarkable, but still better than hanging in front of the TV, duelling battle 1 or writing reviews like this.

CCS deserves a 6.7. This lvl is a judgement call but I hope my review will convince you to DL and try the lvl out.

Ahh! So you can use paragraphs in lvl descriptions after all!

Ahem. Anyway, it would be nice if you could suggest improvements, DS, because you haven’t really told me what’s wrong with the lvl. ;-P Thanks anyway, though. Best CTF lvl so far. :-P MY best, you foo.

@The Winner: I hope the reason why it’s not an average isn’t because I “lied”. No, I won’t bother explaining to you why didn’t technically lie because I am writing under the assumption that my lies do not drag down the rating in any way and that you just wanted to call me a liar. :-D ;-P <— double smileys!

I AM SICK AT JAZZ-UNFRIENDLY LVLS! -0.3 FOR JAZZ-UNFRIENDLINESS!!!!!!!!!!111111 Right, now that I have gotten my point across, I can start with my review.

The Corsair’s Coast is yet another battle lvl using Blade’s newly re-named Islands tileset. I’m eagerly anticipating the race for the first CTF lvl using this tileset, guys. :-) For now, I’ll be happy that I won the race of ‘Who gets to review this lvl first?’

When I first looked at the lvl in JCS I was quite surprised at how 3D-ish the tileset made the lvl look (from 12.5% size). The bottom platform is especially large and chunky. The lvl itself is quite basic and consists of 7 main platforms and the rest are just giant ledges connected to the lvl’s walls/cliffs.

There are not many secrets in this lvl (just 1, involving a suckertube, which will hopefully make you double back faster than your opponent can). The rest are just little text messages. The two coin warps are quite fun and however hard you try, you can never, it seems, be able to run out of coins for the warp but I wouldn’t recommend going to the bottom, gold-chest coin warp unless you got plenty of coins, because without coins, that place is a dead end. Add to the fact that there are seekers, PU bounces and PU RFs in Corsair’s Coast, and you have yourself a serious health hazard at pos 9, 86.

The gameplay, as I’ve already mentioned, is seriously Spaz-biased. (And he can reach two of them easily by using sidekick – bet BR’s betatesters didn’t notice that when they tried to make it less Spaz-biased ;-P), reaching all the platforms, etc. For the most part, the springs are well-placed, the float-up useful when you want to go down but suddenly change your mind, and best of all, you don’t have to be Spaz to jump back up :-P, and the water makes for interesting strategies with RFs, bouncers, seekers and hazardous semi-dead-ends.

There isn’t enough ammo in here. And far too much carrots. Two carrots are too close to each other. I am writing incredibly short sentences. Ahem. Anyway, there aren’t enough toasters, seekers,peppersprays, the electroblasters aren’t close enough to the RF PU, and so on. Not enough ammo, not enough explosions, not enough HAHA-5hks, too much carrots and not a single weapons box in sight. Ok, they cause lag, but just one box for one type of ammo would solve a lot (provided they are placed correctly…but BR knows his stuff :-p).

The eyecandy is about as good as you can expect from a lvl using the newly-renamed Islands, and I just remembered that I mentioned that Islands was re-named in an earlier paragraph. The under-water “hills” should be animated, but since they’re not, I guess that’s Blade’s fault. All background layers are used but there aren’t enough foreground stuff. BR could’ve looked at Blade’s example lvls and put a lot of stuff in the foreground, especially in layer 1 and in the large, yellow, empty sands. It won’t make the lvl look too full and it will only make hapless reviewers like me fall for simple eyecandy tricks and rate 9.2 or something.

There’s not too much to talk about one single lvl. This lvl is basically:

1. Slightly Spaz biased.
2. Has good eyecandy.
3. Apart from points 1, 2 and 3, has great gameplay.
4. Needs more funny text signs (rating not deducted because of an absence of 4).

Corair’s Coast is a solid ****-star lvl. 7.9 and a DL recommendation.

They obviously wanted to squeeze in as much as possible into this upload in order to free up some space in the others.

This is totally unbelievable. Shadow relasing a new battle pack? Is that a UFO outside my window? Shadow releasing it as a new ML upload? I think the UFO is landing. Skulg joined ML a year ago without practically anyone knowing about it? Someone’s coming out! OMG RUN!

So, Street Wars: Redemption is here. So, I failed to run away and have now become brainwashed and a mindless slave of the aliens. I liked the original Street Wars and gave it a 9.2 (back when I was a newbie and couldn’t really get to grips with JCS). I now think that I over-rated it, but Redemption has 3 new lvls which should boost its rating up a bit (say, by 0.2 points……darnit, just gave it away!).

First review? Yay!

I’m actually really confused by the way the lvls are linked up together. I don’t see why Shadow wouldn’t set the next lvl settings to mlnec1, mlnec2, mlnec3, etc, to mlnec5, which will of course go back to mlnec1. Instead, mlnec4 goes straight back to mlnec1 while mlnec5 goes to mluptown and that’s just plain confusing and prevents ppl from playing all 5 lvls in one go. Also, looking in JCS, the 3 new lvls have each got 2 different versions, which makes the whole thing even more confusing. This does mean that each lvl will provide a slightly different style of gameplay, but it would be much easier if Shadow just perfected all 5 lvls and only made 1 copy of each.

None of these lvls are particularly Lori-friendly, which is u.n.a.c.c.e.p.t.a.b.l.e. for TSF lvls. Oh well, screw her. No ratings deducted here, but I think this should serve as a warning to everyone who releases TSF uploads.

None of these lvls are particularly Jazz-friendly either, and it is here that I get annoyed. There are simply not enough one ways, vines or springs of appropriate ‘strength’ to give Jazz at least a decent chance vs Spaz in Redemption. Some places seems specifically designed to force ppl to use double jump, which I take it as making the whole lvl a bit more challenging and interesting for duels but what about poor Jazz? I am not going to screw him off (ahem). I don’t know how much Shadow betatested this pack, but he and/or his betatesters clearly didn’t bother playing properly as Jazz in these lvls.

Hot Town and Rocking Streets are still my favourites when it comes to eyecandy, but the new-comers aren’t bad either. The skies are always of interesting colours, most, if not all, layers have been used and I’m glad to see that all background layers have been devoted to…being in the background. It’s always nice to see that some JCSers, like Shadow, aren’t cheating by using layer 5 as unmasked layer 4, which is a particularly easy and cheap way to create good eyecandy. The lvls do not always use all of the tiles available, but so far, I haven’t seen more creative and original use of Townhouse, probably because there are so few Townhouse lvls…sigh. Sometimes, however, the new lvls’ eyecandy get a little repetitive. Shadow has done a lot of realistic tile-placement, which makes buildings look like buildings, cities look like cities but it make everything look a bit squared, rectangular and un-varied. Downtown is a good example of a lvl that desperately needs urban renwal. (And I’m not sry for the bad joke).

The gameplay of all lvls are generally good to great, if it weren’t for the fact that Jazz unfriendliness prevails. Some springs can get in the way, but at least they’re easily accesible. The semi-secret passages are pretty cool too, and they also serve as eyecandy. The different versions of the 3 new lvls make for different kinds of gameplay and weapons placement. Uptown (mluptown) shows ENORMOUS differences from mlnec3 and it is clear that mluptown is the better version. It’s got better placed springs, more ammo, more eyecandy, etc, which makes me wonder what mlnec3 is there for. Get rid of the bad versions, I say!

The weapons placement seems to focus on getting the player killed and preventing him from getting healed. The bonus warp is a REAL PAIN to enter because there are too many easily accessible power-ups and far too few carrots. And carrots, btw, are for wussies, not *ussies. Shadow should consider his use of language. Sure, everyone has enough ammo to blast the whole Townhouse tileset to smithereens but hardly anyone’s going to be alive afterwards. Well, they’ll respawn, but you get my idea. Another weird thing is that the bonus warps sometimes give players power-ups that they could easily stomp/kick/shoot/uppercut/TNT/freeze for free, outside the bonus room. The bonus warps, which are a hefty 50 coins, are clearly not good value. Shadow has one or two lessons to learn from Tesco, ahem.

I still think the original two lvls are the best of the whole pack so I don’t see why they should be “redeemed” by lesser lvls. It still means that Uptown, Downtown and Metropolis Carrotius are good lvls and all TSFers should DL Street Wars: Redemption. 8.2 and a DL recommendation. Now, let’s get that taser out and free my brain…

EDIT: @Shadow: In that case, why haven\‘t you noticed that you keep falling 2-3 tiles short every time you make a particularly large jump? Or that Jazz almost always need a second step when it comes to some red springs? And, btw, the reasons why Spaz players don\‘t complain is probably because the lvls work fine with Spaz. ;-P

J2o no longer allows multiple reviews.

This lvl is quite useful, but also a pointless upload because ppl can easily create screenshot lvls for themselves. It would also help if you added some arrows to tell ppl where to go, or enabled low detail so that ppl can see where they’re going before wandering around getting lost. Apart from that…er…yeah, this lvl does its job well because everything’s black…and that’s it. There is a suckertube at the bottom, just for fun. ;-P No DL recommendation, however. :-p

The nxt lvl setting doesn’t work. You might want to fix those kinds of bugs before I start reviewing. ;-P

EDIT: Hey, wow, look, I still haven’t reviewed. How careless of me. ;-(

Yeah, he must be in a bad mood.

I think this lvl is quite good, actually, and it does remind me slightly of non-new lvls. ;-P It brings back memories of Disguise’s example lvls, Cmdr. Dats battle lvls, stripe’s CTF lvls and Carrotus Squash. :-D

A couple of things seem to have been borrowed from Carrotus Squash, namely the position of the bouncer PU and the fact that there are many crazy springs around the place.

I think I should start with the springs: the point is, some of them limit the gameplay. They force players to go up and since it is usually blue springs that take them up, players often have no choice but to go up or crash into a wall. Pos 64, 60 is a good example of a blue spring you should remove so that ppl can go left if they choose to. Overall, however, the springs are well-placed and the red spring near the carrot solves the problem of the dead end easily.

The eyecandy is great. My two main objections is the ambient lightning, which is too dark, and the usage of the tileset, which, basically, is not complete (i.e. use all the tiles in the tileset: that’s what they’re for! [Especially the text signs]). There are plenty of foreground and background stuff, everything flows around smoothly and the animations should keep idlers busy.

The gameplay, if it weren’t for some of those annoying springs I mentioned earlier, is ok. There is no main battle arena because of the fact that the platforms are more horizontal than vertical, so, most of the time, you just run in straight lines (unless you decide to jump). Horizontal running isn’t itself particularly interesting, but it’s good that you are are making sure that the player runs a bit all over the place. I’m a bit displeased at the severe Jazz unfriendliness of the whole lvl. Some vines are too high up, as are some platforms.

Weapons placement is good but you won’t always have enough if you don’t conserve it.

Yawn. This review took me several hours to write…I think.

Pros:
1. Great eyecandy.
2. Good gameplay.
3. Generally ok weapons placement.

Cons:
1. Jazz-unfriendliness.
2. Annoying ambient lightning.
3. Lack of choice when it comes to some of the springs.
4. Not all tiles are used.

7.5, the moment you fix the things mentioned in the Cons area.

For now, a 7.2 and a DL recommendation.

For me, the Wind Meister tests have always been excellent, challenging (extremely Jazz-friendly :-)) tests and all 3 have provided great entertainment. Although I can hardly notice some of the new stuff when I look in JCS, I can see that everything has been revamped without changing much of the good stuff.

The eyecandy for the first 2 lvls are average and, for some tests (mainly lvl 5 in WM2 and the last few lvls in WM3), using low detail helps you out. I consider this to be cheating but there’s nothing to prevent ppl from doing this, which kinda lowers the difficulty. The 3rd Wind Meister is definitely the most awesome looking. There are plenty of cool stuff and the eyecandy there is way above average for a test lvl.

The gameplay for all 3 lvls are great, but it peaks at WM3 because of a more thoughtful layout and well-placed springs/warps/triggers, etc. In some places the areas can get a bit small if everyone tries to do the same test at the same time, but that’s Wind Meister for you.

Only WM3 has a story, which involves a frog with a computer (?). I don’t understand the story and I don’t see why it is important to the lvl but it’s still nice to actually have an objective for each test.

The difficulty varies for each WM lvl. WM3’s last lvls are surprisingly easy while the last lvls of the other two are really, really tricky. The whole test is long and they are quite varied, so no matter the difficulty, ppl will always find something they like (or hate). I also like some of the non-wind tests in WM1 and WM2.

Overall, all 3 tests are superb and each has got its own cool end-lvl rewards. Anyone who hasn’t played these superb test lvls must do so NOW and anyone who has should…well…do it again. :-P

Download recommendation and a 9.

Before I review, I’d like to now what exactly is in the pack, what kind of lvls they are (Reptile didn’t mention any of that ;-P) and stuff like that. Is battle or CTF?

Wow! When I first was Toxic Bunny’s 3D-ish War Torn I wasn’t as impressed as the rest, though I still liked the tileset. Here’s yet another 3D-ish tileset, Chateau, and it looks pretty cool! :-D

Have you ever looked at Epic’s Castle tileset and thought “I wished I could make a REAL castle, not just the interior, but also the exterior! With medieval-like turrets, walls, gates, bridges and of course a lush forest”. Well, now you can! Toxic Bunny’s latest tileset, Chateau (should be Château, but whatever), is the best thing so far if you want to create a real Medieval castle lvl. :-)

Though it seems as if TB’s castle is under-equipped and in no condition to unleash armies or withstand a siege (because for some reason, the castle is COMPLETELY devoid of armaments and knights in shining armour), the rest looks AmAzInG! The tiles are unbelievably detailed!!! :-O Some more than others (the trees and stained glass windows do not match those of Heaven and Castle) but it still looks great! Everything looks polished-up and the whole tileset, and any lvls made with the tileset, will be a pleasure to the eyes!

The tileset has all of the necessary tiles (except suckertubes, but you can improvise…) and it all feels very atmospheric. You can run around barrels, old wine-storage…er…areas, chandeliers and lots of other old, comfy stuff. The outside area is quite limited but it has some forest background tiles, some tree tiles and some ground and grass tiles. There are cracks in the walls, beautiful towers and battlements as well as a HUGE amount of different sorts of tiles. All wall tiles! LOL!

For some reason, the tileset has its background tiles masked, meaning you have to use layer 5 (as seen in the example lvl) to provide background. This limits the amount of layers available to the JCSer and forces him to use layer 5. While layer 5 is usually used for background stuff, it would be nice to give ppl the freedom to choose what they want to do with their layers instead of forcing them to stick to set layers because the tileset isn’t “generously” masked.

What Chateau has in quality, it lacks in quantity, I’m afraid. There is a GIGANTIC potentional for this tileset. There could’ve been much more armaments/armour and war…stuffness as well as more forest tiles and OF COURSE A REAL MOAT, DRAWBRIDGE AND DITCH to create that pure, true castle-feeling. The more you look at this tileset, the more it reminds you of a beefed up Castle tileset made lighter(?). While it has more outside and more castle-ish stuff than Castle, it lacks the variety and eyecandy Castle has.

Chateau should, however, not be compared to Castle because there is a difference between castles and châteaux. ;-)

A very well-made tileset with good eyecandy and many, many different kinds of lvl-possibilites. It’s still quite limited but it’s better than to make one lvl with Castle and one lvl with Carrotus. :-D Chateau receives a download recommendation and an 8.5. An 8.5 is slightly higher than usual (I would probably give this 8.2 any other day) but since it’s Christmas Day, I’ll be extra, extra generous. :-D

MERY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR + I got the first review! :-DDDDDD

P.S. Make better example lvls, TB. ;-)

Look at layers 5-8. The two lvls have EXACTLY THE SAME BACKGROUND LAYERS! Look at 1 to 3. The two lvls have EXACTLY THE SAME LAYER SIZE AND LAYER X + Y SPEED!!! Anakin’s lvl hasn’t got the tiles, but it’s obvious he just erased them from This Level Is Untitled. Way to steal a lvl and then not cover up, Anakin. :-P You could’ve gotten away with this if you had just changed a few settings and tiles. :-P

Christmas Blast, by CraccoBoy. Yay! Merry Christmas!

This is a small CTF lvl using Craccoby’s own tileset, Santa’s Snowy Zone. I have the old version of the tileset but the new version has quite a funny palette, making everything look different. Green is red, apparently, and most colours have been darkened or changed slightly, which makes the whole lvl look very goofy, not to mention the fact that green RFs are red so I thought I was shooting powered up Rfs.

The eyecandy is as good as the tileset allows, though not many foreground tiles exist in the lvl. The mountains and forests are well-placed and there is a very obvious Christmas atmosphere in the lvl. Comfy. The eyecandy varies and you’ll be able to travel from snow to rocky ground and encounter lots of nice, Christmasy stuff, but it’s just that some walls are very thick, and you it’s a waste to keep them empty. It would look better if there are some foreground tiles in them to make the whole place look a bit…wilder and more natural, rather than just a big snow platform.

The gameplay is ok, with some Jazz-unfriendly areas (there are not enough springs in the lvl and Jazz has a lot of trouble moving around because of this). The springs that do exist are well-placed and so are all of the platforms, vines, etc. I’ve noticed a couple of masking problems with the tileset, which slows down the flow, but it’s no big deal. It’s also annoying that the bases are in dead ends and Jazz is forced to go into the dead end and jump out again because he, lacking doublejump, cannot just directly to the platform above or on the side of the base.

Weapons placement is actually really good. You never have to work hard to get ammo and the power-ups seem nicely balanced. There is an abundance of ammo, but it’s not over-done, so you’ll always have enough seekers to blast your enemies to smithereens.

It’s a shame that this lvl is a bit small. 140×80 would suit the kind of gameplay and ammo placement Santa’s Snowy Zone has. It’s still a good lvl, however.

Er…since this lvl isn’t that original actually and what distinguishes this lvl from the rest is:
1. Weird palette.
2. Very good weapons placement.
And that’s it.

Still, a fun lvl to play and some excellent camping spots. >:-D

@Jarno vos: Ahem. Any lvl you want. ;P Just run one and see how it loops, hehe. :) There is no “starter-lvl”.

@Reptile: Gold Rush Mountains has NO dead ends. You must shoot the doors and windows to get out!!! ;-)

@Everyone else: Either review, or don’t post anything here, plz, thanks!!!

CHRISTMAS EVE TOMORROW!! YAYAYAYAYAYY! :-DDDDDDDDDDDDDD

CAPS LOCK DAY TODAY! WEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

(I’M GOING TO KEEP THIS REVIEW SHORT…JUST IGNORE THE CAPS!!!!!!!!)

SORRY I’M LATE WITH THIS, BTW!!!

REVIEW OF NOEL’S PASSAGE:
THE GAMEPLAY IS QUITE GOOD IN MOST OF THE AREAS AND THERE IS A LOT OF SPACE TO JUMP AROUND AND COPTER IN. SPRINGS ARE WELL-PLACED, THERE ARE ALMOST NO JAZZ-UNFRIENDLY AREAS AND THE PLATFORMS ARE ALWAYS WITHIN EASY REACH. THE FLOW IS ALSO GOOD, BUT SOME AREAS ARE A BIT REPETITIVE AND DUE TO BAD MASKING OF THE TILESET, IT CAN BE DIFFICULT TO JUMP AND RUN CONTINUISLY IN SOME AREAS (MAINLY THE UPPER-RIGHT CAVE WHERE YOU HAVE TO JUMP FROM ONE PLATFORM TO THE OTHER UNTIL YOU REACH THE TOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

EYECANDY IS ALSO PRETTY NEAT!!!!!!!! :-) THERE IS SNOW, MOUNTAINS, A LOT OF TREES AND COOL-LOOKING BACKROUND CAVE-STUFF…THINGS…AND OF COURSE SANTA ON HIS REINDEER SLEIGH FLYING ACROSS THE SKY!!! THE LVL USES THE TILESET TO GOOD EFFECT AND ALTHOUGH THERE IS NOTHING ORIGINAL ABOUT THE EYECANDY, NOEL’S PASSAGE IS A PLEASURE TO THE EYE.

WEAPONS PLACEMENT IS ABOUT AS GOOD AS THE GAMEPLAY BECAUSE THE AMMO AND CARROTS FOLLOW THE GENERAL LAYOUT OF THE LVL. AMMO IS NOT VERY SPARSE BUT YOU WILL HAVE TO CONSERVE IT, WHICH WILL LEAD TO A MORE “THINKING”-APPROACH TO BATTLE RATHER THAN THE CONVENTIONAL MASSIVE SEEKER STRIKES FOUND IN MOST OTHER BATTLE LVLS. YAY FOR CAPS!!!!!!!!!

TO SUM UP… NOEL’S PASSAGE IS A SMALL, WELL-DESIGNED LVL WITH GOOD EYECANDY, OK AMMO PLACEMENT AND GOOD GAMEPLAY. IT’S DEFINITELY FUN TO PLAY IN THIS LVL BUT THERE REALLY ISN’T ANYTHING NEW OR ORIGINAL ABOUT IT (SOME SECRETS EXIST, HOWEVER). A 7!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOORAY FOR CAPS LOCK DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The music is great for singleplayer lvls. It starts off quite slowly and doesn’t set the pace for battle or CTF lvls. At first I could only hear a few instruments, maybe just 1, but the more I listened the more the music came out to me. It doesn’t sound as good as music like White Hare or the other Xmas JJ tunes because the whole thing is very loud and it doesn’t sound that happy or Christmasy until about the middle and then it still sounds like…well…big drums…invading army…mushroom cloud in the horizon… lol… I don’t know! :-P I recommend DLing this music if you want something new apart from the official JJ Christmas tunes.

Well, admittedly Xan isn’t the reatest lvl maker in the JJ2 community, but he has improved a lot (just looks at his previous Coca Cola lvls! :-D). These lvls have very rough gameplay and flow, meaning that things seem to be in the right place but it’s not what’s there that bothers me, it’s what is not there. Many stuff do not have on ways (mainly in Intellectual Killer), more springs are needed, more ammo, more, more eyecandy, more bug-fixes, more, more, more, more, more!!! You never make good lvl by being lazy. Da man, you da man ;-P, you’ve already pretty much described everything I wanted to say, so I’ll summarize a couple of stuff and leave before I make Xan sad. :-(

Eyecandy – Some tile and placement bugs, mainly in Intellectual Killers, otherwise all right. Could do with less confusing foreground tiles in Bulletpoof.

Gameplay – More stuff needed! Not enough springs, float ups, platforms to make the lvls easy to play in. Also, some stuff, mainly float ups and very tall buildings, hinder the player more than they should.

Weapons placement – More stuff needed. There is simply not enough around. Also, the seeker PU in Bulletproof, and the toaster PU, is too close to red base.

5.5. These lvls could do with a lot of improvement, but, believe it or not, if Xan keeps the general lvl structure, fix all the bugs, add more stuff, he could push it all the way up to…a 7!! faints

There are 3 carrots actually, one is partially hidden. ;-)

Now if only I could get enough ppl to review this… and push it up to 8.6 or at least back above Golradir.