Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

A 9.4 and a 9.5? Sorry, but while this level is solid that is grossly overrating it. It’s a 7.5 for me. Perfectly adequate, nothing major to complain about, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from cooba by now. Don’t think I’m putting level down though, I’m not. It’s a quality piece of work and well worth your time. Download recommended.

thios are a level very hgood

Since this reviewed the contest I felt that it would be appropriate to win it.

This new CTF by Jake level has a lot of interesting ideas in it – probably too much of ‘em, in all honesty, so I’m afraid it’s ended up feeling rather stuffed and overly complicated for its small size. The layout and other technical aspects are pretty solid though, so I’m tempted to say the good outweighs the bad. Give this one a try.

Truly an amazing piece of work. As an avid fan of oldschool 2D platformers and sidescrollers this pack contained a lot of resonant elements for me and almost felt like a whole new game rather than just a new single player episode. The difficulty level is brutal but the sense of accomplishment from beating it is worth the effort. A must download.

I might expand my review here later but for now I’m just dropping off this 8.0 for fear of this disappearing down the list of downloads without as much as a rating. While not the most visually stunning or conceptually innovative level, Black Ninja very much achieves what he set out to do in creating this level – namely, producing a worthy successor to the earlier levels in the once quite popular Wind Meister series, and, more importantly, just giving us one goddamn hard test level.

I was around in the days the first Wind Meister levels were made and while I never managed to get very far in them I always used to have a ton of fun with ‘em regardless. Wind Meister 4 certainly lives up to the precedent set by Black Ninja’s older work, and that alone, combined with a rocking background track by PT32 and perhaps also influenced by a bit of nostalgia constitutes a solid 8.0 and a download recommendation. Granted, if you’re not into test levels this probably isn’t for you, but as far as test levels go this is obviously about as good as it gets.

Incidentally, it’s funny how even when I try my best to keep my comments in a review to a bare minimum I still vastly exceed the quick review max character count. ;P

This is a nifty little battle level, but pretty overrated in my opinion – I mean, a 9.0, what the heck? P4ul’s amazing skills at visual design come through once again meaning that the level has a great atmosphere and, while a bit bleak, gray and empty sure is a sight to behold (and hey, it is supposed to be a void, after all). I’m particularly fond of the music, a nifty little tune by Luigi Electro: it’s a simple tune but it grows on you fast.

Apart from that this level has nothing really special to offer tho’, the layout while obviously solid is nothing out of the ordinary. The pits may be annoying to some, personally I found them okay although you can fall into them real easily if you don’t have a good grasp of the layout. I like the little alcove at the top left of the level tho’, it’s the little details like that which get me. ; )

I might expand this review later as I actually have more to say about this level (or would like to say what I did in more detail) but for now, take a solid 7.0 and a download recommendation.

A clever little novelty, if nothing else. It’s really only good for a single run-through considering you never actually have to DO anything to beat the map, just sit back and watch (it doesn’t always work all the way through tho’). The sheer amount of ways this is accomplished makes it a pretty interesting experience to sit down and look at tho’, and maybe open up in JCS to see how some of it is done. Kind of reminds me of this old text-based RPG I used to have that’d simply play itself – all you had to do was turn it on.

This thing is pretty overrated in my opinion. A 7.0 seems appropriate. Worth a look, if only for the sheer uniqueness of it and all the clever little ways the level operates.

If you’re downloading this, you’re probably just doing it to get Condemned and City of the Sn00ze, which are pretty much the best levels this pack has to offer. Systematic Crash is also a very solid level (partly for being one of few DOM levels so far) and I have to admit I have a soft spot for Ancient Abyss and Secret Forest Shrine simply for their awesome and rather unique visual style… but apart from that, I’m sorry to say this pack isn’t really all that special. Most of the levels have either very generic design or have some original ideas which sadly weren’t implemented very well. It’s a shame, as I was kind of expecting more out of this.

I was close to giving this an 8.0 for all the sheer effort that obviously went into it despite everything, but in the end it just didn’t sit right with me so, while feeling a bit mean doing this, I’m leaving it at a 7.5 right now. I might change my mind and up the rating later tho’ as a lot of effort obviously went into this.

In closing, take my comments with a grain of salt, as while overall nothing too much out of the ordinary, this pack is by no means bad and certainly warrants a download recommendation. It doesn’t deserve all the 9+ marks it got but I’ll be the first to admit I’m pretty critical in rating stuff so if it’d been anyone else this would’ve probably been an 8 at least. Even if you’re mostly getting it for the levels I mentioned above the other stuff in there is generally solid level design if nothing else and is sure to keep you entertained for a while. ;)

Sanguinary Sanctuary marks the first release of well-known community member cooba in well over a year, and also his first release since the disbanding of his levelgroup IC and his joining of the well-known yet relatively inactive OLC. So, to add some special flair to the occasion, here’s the first actual Jazz2online upload review I’ve written in give or take four years, a good deal of which I was near completely inactive in the community myself. I wasn’t going to review the level at first or not this soon at any rate, but after having the pleasure of playing it online this evening in a game with FireSworD, Bobby, PurpleJazz and others and having a bit of time on my hands I decided to take a stab at writing something on it. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at this baby shall we?

What we have here is a 245×64 (amusingly very close to JCS’s default 256×64 level size) symmetrical capture the flag level using the old but cool Dark Reign tileset by Waz. I think the first thing a lot of people will notice about this level is the sheer size, and yes, this level is indeed quite large. This is actually a very good thing in my opinion; I like CTF levels of a decent size and we need more of them, as this is obviously good for JDC events, thing like the Aniversary bash and big team games in general. That said this level is probably best played in games with six players or more, maybe even preferably eight or more, as said game that I played here was a 3vs3 and while it generally progressed quite smoothly staying alive with the flag proved to be quite easy with only two people chasing you. Still this can also make for some fun games, which indeed it did, so playing with 6 dudes should still be justifiable here.

The entire map plays pretty horizontally and there’s basically three different horizontal levels to the thing with shafts with springs and vines allowing you to move up and down between them. The layout in general seems pretty conventional and at first glance rather unexciting, and while this holds true to a degree it does make use of a few clever ideas and if not the most original still manages to be very solid and fun to play. There’s a lot of space to move around in and the level generally doesn’t get too cramped to allow a generous amount of freedom of movement. The flow here is pretty decent but still leaves a few obstacles out there in the open for you to jump over, which is actually a pretty good thing in my opinion. Instead of just having perfect slopes and float ups to smooth things out and have a perfectly flowing level, I like it when a level designer is actually bold enough to throw a few bumps into his levels to force people to actually put some more thought into getting around, instead of just holding right or left all the time, sometimes hitting a convenient spring or suckertube along the way. The level is inherently neither Spaz- nor Jazz-biased. Spaz can make use of some tricky RF jumps to travel up and down the level faster (which do seem annoying to miss as Jazz but not so good as to be truly abusive) and has some advantages with a few tricky jumps around the middle section. However, all those horizontal surfaces make it very easy for Jazz to move across the level from left to right quickly. I played this as Jazz and after getting over some initial awkwardness, mostly in avoiding some obstacles in making my jumps, I was actually able to move around quite quickly. In fact I beat Spaz players from base to base several times just by bombarding them with Seekers while smoothly coptering over the middle area, or was able to kill them by coptering over the full energy carrot area and shooting Bouncers down below me. cooba also used a nice little trick where he puts springs above bridge events (which no longer crash the game thanks to jj2+) and triggered tiles set to dissapear when the level loads, effectively making the springs float in mid-air and letting you walk a tile under the springs without hitting them. Very clever.

Event placement, as expected of a weathered level mapper like cooba, is pretty much top notch here. With the level being symmetrical the base placement is pretty standard, with blue and red bases in about the vertical middle at the left and right sides of the level respectively. The bases are reasonably out in the open, each being placed in a sort of broad hollow in a relatively open corridor and accessible from either left, right, above or bellow. cooba told me he wanted to make this level a “base camper’s hell”, and while this may not be entirely true (there being a decent amount of ways to defend with the flag if you’re clever), you can still be easily nailed by RFs, Bouncies or fastfire Pepperspray if you’re not careful, so defending certainly isn’t a no-brainer here like it is in levels such as Security Breach. Being ready to score consistently without getting hit certainly is hard. I especially like the little shafts with the vines right above the bases. They seem like an easy place to be ready to score, yet they’re actually so high up that it’s hard to see what’s actually going on at the base and it’s also hard to attack from up there (Bouncies going down the shaft have a depressingly tiny hitbox) while it’s easy to BE attacked (i.e. Seekers, shooting Bouncies up the shaft, Electro Blaster). Weathered Spaz players can also RF climb up the shafts from the bases to gain quick acces to the one health carrots above.

Speaking of carrots, this level has five of them: that’s right, you heard me, five. There’s four one health carrots and one full energy carrot. Let’s tackle the full energy first. It’s located in the top middle of the level, in a sort of pit flanked by two high walls through which people can bombard you using the Electro Blaster. It looks pretty easily campable on one hand but on the other hand campers can easily be attacked there as well as I described above, so there’s nothing really wrong there. There are two one health carrots located at the left and right of the middle area, and two more located in an out-of-the-way area above the shaft above either team’s base, as I described above. There are actually a number of warps which lead to several of the carrots, which might be easy to miss for some people. They are signified by four large gargoyle statues: there is one a slight walk either left or right of each base, and there are two in the bottom middle of the level. The warps at the bottom middle of the level will take you to the full energy carrot, while the warps at the bases will take you to either the left or right middle one health carrot, respectively. I personally found the warps at the bases the most useful as they allow you to quickly mise both middle one health carrots as they’re quite close to each other. The warps to the full energy also provide a useful way to access the otherwise pretty hard to get to full energy carrot as well, though.

Weapon-wise the level offers you all you need for a healthy bit of carnage, yet is still conservative enough for you to warrant some ammunition economics. Available are Seekers (in small amounts), Pepperspray, Electro Blasters, two Bouncer Powerups and an RF Missile powerup. Apart from the ever-present Seeker Missile, generally the best (most broken?) weapon in the game, the RF Missile and Pepperspray look to be pretty dominant in a horizontal level like this. The Toaster, always a melee-favorite, is noticeably missing, though cooba tells me he did this on purpose, and having to actually think about what weapon to switch to in close quarters instead of just mindlessly spraying fire all around isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The Bouncer powerups are placed at the far left and right end of the level, and have to be accessed by going up a semi-narrow shaft with vines. Interestingly enough, you can exit these shafts at the top and go directly into the gargoyle-warps to the one health carrots, from which you can go to the lower middle part of the level, where the RF powerup is located. This is a pretty clever idea, considering it allows you to both heal yourself and restock your ammo if in trouble, or to just go for a quick ammunitions run after getting killed before going into battle once more. The RF missiles are clearly the most abundant in this level, as cooba makes some clever use of MCE events to place two +3 RF ammo pellets in a single tile allowing you to stock up quite quickly. There is only a small amount of Seeker ammo in the level which promotes economic use of this weapon; I was personally out of Seekers half the time and had to go a bit out of my way to restock, considering the Seeker ammo, while not completely out of the way of the level’s commonly tread routes isn’t so near to key camp spots to just be able to restock the things at will. A last addition I want to mention are the Fastfires, which are present in clumps of five at the left and right bottom corners of the level. These represent an interesting choice for players to take or not: you can either forego them and forsake the possibility of nailing people effortlessly with Fastfire Pepperspray, or stock up and risk emptying half your magazine of Bouncers with a single press of a button. Personally I can’t resist the temptation of trying to machine-gun people with Pepperspray in flat levels like this so for me the choice is clear.

The overall visual style of the level is quite good-looking and very compelling. Earlier this evening I remember cooba giving a general description of the theme he was going for, which went something along the lines of “a decayed, decrepit place, abandoned since the dawn of time” with “dark mountains and an ocean of lava” in the background. Overly dramatic as that may sound, and with the coincidentally convenient weaponry and CTF bases lying around taken as a given, I don’t think anyone here will argue with me when I say that Sanguinary Sanctuary looks pretty damn good. cooba makes very effective use of Waz’s 400-tile Dark Reign tileset, and while the set makes it a bit hard to strongly break the mold and create a unique visual look with it (I know, I’ve used it in the past) cooba still manages to churn out a level with a reasonably distinct look.

Spikes portrude from the floors and ceilings, ragged curtains hang from tarnished stone, and an impressive variety of pillars, bridges and arches make for some good-looking and well-structured pieces of architecture. Not a single space is wasted as even solid floors have contain network of chains and pillars for you to gawk at. The aforementioned mountainy background looks pretty nice and it took me a while to notice the “ocean of lava” positioned underneath the mountains actually moves at a slow rate when you’re standing still. cooba also used some cool tricks with the tileset I haven’t seen before such as the broken wooden bridges in the middle of the level. I especially like the giant brickwork skull in the background of the full energy carrot area, a la Toxin Twister and very cool looking, it makes for a recognizable landmark within the level and adds to the theme very nicely. There are a good amount of nifty little details, like the gargoyles signifying the warps to the carrots shimmering slightly if you look close which is a nice touch indeed. Apart from this there’s sadly no other tricks with ambient lighting or even a basic 80% start lighting setting or whatnot, which is a shame. Just about everyone plays online with lighting disabled anyway but I still think it’d have been a nice add to the atmosphere.

The overall visual style may look cluttered and confusing to some people but I generally don’t have much of a problem with it. I found it perfectly playable in high detail but for those who prefer a faster framerate or a cleaner look cooba actually made the level fully compatible with low detail, with no noticeable layer 5 cheating or weird backgrounds that suddenly show like you find in some other levels. In the end the whole visual style makes for a good-looking gothic, dreary, decrepit sort of setting which is very well realised.

For his music selection cooba makes use of a nifty jj2+ feature which allows mp3 format files to be used as background tracks. The music used here is a nifty little mp3 track simply called Ether, released by Damballah, a music project by Michal Moskal under the Polish Kaos ex Machina netlabel. The overall sound of the music is very sullen, dreary and menacing and in that it adds rather nicely to the overall feel of the level. At first I personally found it rather repetitive and honestly a bit dull, and while part of me still thinks that I do feel that cooba made a good choice here as the music still does a very good job in adding to the level’s overall dark and foreboding feel. He told me the level was at first gonna use Shutdown.xm, an old trance/industrial module by Teque, which would’ve been decent but honestly sounds too “techish” for this level to me (if that makes any sense) so cooba made the right choice here in the end I’d say.

When thinking to myself what kind of rating this level’d deserve I was at first somewhat undecided between a 7.5 and an 8.0 (this being in my current opinion the highest mark a single-level release can get unless it STRONGLY manages to impress me), yet I was already leaning towards an 8 simply because of the sheer amount of work that obviously went into this title. After playing this in an online 3vs3 game tho’ I found the level was actually a lot more fun and interesting to play than I thought, so I now feel an 8.0 is fully justified. This is pretty much the rating I feel is deserving for levels I’d actively go back and play a decent amount and Sanguinary Sanctuary surely fits this criterium. I might actually go back and raise the rating slightly after playing this more (though at the moment I mostly subscribe to the Aiko school of reviewing in preferring to only give out whole or half points) but at the moment just go and take a high and VERY well deserved eight points!

In conclusion, Sanguinary Sanctuary is a good-looking and very playable CTF level, that everyone should consider for their 3on3 games and beyond, or for just hosting on a public server for the heck of it. It may not be the most innovative or exciting release ever but it is a very solid product indeed and it’s obvious a lot of work went into it. Everyone, go download this level now!

Bloodlust is finaly released in a 1.23 compatible version: so on occasion of this, here’s the first review I’ve written in probably well over two years. It’s been a long time, but here goes…

Bloodlust is a quite old (I believe it was first released in 2002) battle level, made using the Death Metal tileset by our favorite German tileset artist, Skulg. This medium to large sized battle level is probably one of White Rabbit’s finest creations, and as he is already one of the more talented mapers around, that should acount for something. I remember beta testing this level before it was released and loving it, and two years later I still think it’s a great level.

The level, as I mentioned before, uses the Death Metal tileset by Skulg, which is basically a combination of often blood-stained looking metal bars, and a lot of eerie looking skulls and bones. The tileset has a somewhat dismal and creepy look, and the same holds true for the level. Tileset use was basically flawless; I couldn’t discover any tiling errors, and even if I’d examine the level more closely in JCS I’m not sure if I would. The eyecandy, though offering nothing different from what you’d ordinairily expect from the tileset (which is ok, as this was one of the first levels to use it), looks great; the dark red sky, the mountains in the background, the skulls and bones and bloody pieces of metal give this level an enjoyable eerie atmosphere. The music, Shutdown by Teque and Trauma, is a rather old mod from the year 1997. It fits the level nicely, adding to the well-made atmosphere.

The level’s layout is quite good, not spectacular. The level consists of a number of platforms floating freely in the crimson sky. There is no aparent intended structure to the platforms that I could find, but that’s allright. The flow is generaly good, though not perfected; at times I find myself bumping my head against walls or narowly missing ledges. This is actualy somewhat of a good thing though; lots of levels lately are so well polished that, using suckertubes, slopes, spring and float-ups that sometimes the only thing people have to do to get from one place to another is change direction once in a while. This level’s platformy design style promotes a lot more jumping and overall conscious playing, which is a nice break from what most levels have been like lately. The free, open layout also makes for some Jazz-friendlyness, which is something that is always good to have.

Event placement is also well done. Most useful powerups (as in RF, seekers, bouncers) are present in the level. This isn’t really a bad thing; the level is large enough, and battle games have you start with five hearts in contrast to CTF’s three hearts, which warents a larger powerup arsenal. The powerups are scatered nicely across the level and all require you to have electro blasters to reach them, so it’s all good. The two carrots are both positioned at the left part of the level; it would have probably been better to put them at the left and right sides respectively, but with the large amount of powerups and easy to navigate layout I guess it isn’t too much of a problem. General amunition is scatered well throughout the level, not too severely clumped together but also not too sparce.

There’s not really anything more I can say about this level. It’s simply a good, enjoyable battle level you should certainly add to your collection. This level gets the rather high rating of 8.5 and a download recommendation from me!

Hm, interesting. I’ll get around to rating this if I get a chance to see if it actualy works.

Argh this sucks, whee yay.

Okay, now that I’ve got that out of my system, on with the review.

Okay, an UT2K3 tileset by Bunnyelmer. First of all, I have to agree with Lab Rat Kid, that making conversions from a 3D game is generally a bad idea, since I haven’t seen a single good conversion from a 3D game. Second of all, I don’t have UT2K3, so I’m not really able to compare it with the tileset. But alright, here goes.

COLORS:
Most of the tiles look sort of low-quality, and the entire tileset has pretty boring colors; its mostly light brownish. The colors of the background look especialy messy. Not much more to say here.
Pros: None that I can think of.
Cons: Boring, some messy colors.
Rating: 1/5

MASKING:
None to speak of, the entire tileset is auto-masked. NEVER, NEVER auto-mask a tileset.
Pros: once more, none that I noticed.
Cons: Auto-mask. Whee argh.
Rating: 0/5

EXTRA TILES:
Apart from some animated warp thingy that reminds me of MEZ03, a few letters and numbers, some rain and some Level/Tileset by Bunnyelmer thingy, none to speak of. Slopes have been added, though.
Pros: Slopes!
Cons: No vines, destruct blocks, poles, etc.
Rating: 1.2/5

APEARENCE:
This apears to be some sort of Egyptian tomb or temple, with wall painting and the regular stuff. The brick tiles look decent, and so do the painting things. Sadly, I’m afraid that if you’re going to use anything apart from the (pretty ugly) sky background it’s going to be hard to tell the background from the foreground. Also, the sky background doesn’t fit together properly unless you flip it, same goes for the palmtree that, I’m asuming, is ment for layer 5/6/7.
Pros: Most of it looks average/slightly below average.
Cons: The entire thing isn’t exactly gorgeous, and some tiles look rather ugly.
Rating: 2/5

USERFRIENDLINESS:
This tileset seems easy enough to use. Thats for the most part because there’s not much to use, though. ‘Nuff said.
Pros: Easy enough to use.
Cons: None, really.
Rating: 4/5

SIMULARITY TO ORIGINAL GAME:
Can’t say, don’t have it.
Pros: N/A
Cons: N/A
Rating: N/A

OVERALL:
Overall this is a below average conversion. It looks somewhat ugly and dull (though that could partly be blamed on the game it came from… I wouldn’t know), its auto-masked(!!!1111), and has litle to no usefull added tiles.
Pros: Nothing in particular.
Cons: Nice for keeping one amused on a (very) rainy afternoon.
Rating: 2.85

FINAL RATING: 3.0 (rounded)

DOWNLOAD THIS?: Um. No.

An extremely usefull program for people who like hosting CTF (like me, for instance). It does what it’s suposed to do flawlessly, and can be very usefull for things like JDC, so admins won’t have to shout at everyone that they have to bleach their names. 8.5, Download recomendation.

Nothing much to say here; just don’t download this unless you wan’t a red version of castle1.

This is a nice JJ1 tileset, containing most but not all tiles from the origenal world, but it has a lot of drawbacks which made me lower my rating from a posible 8.0 to a 6.2. There are some tiles mising, like the blue-red planet in the background of the origenal levels, and a few tiles from the walls.

Furthermore the colors seem to be a bit messed up, as if Violet made a few palette mistakes when copy/pasting the tiles; for example, you can see shades of green and purple on the magnets and crashed rockets, and the background’s red shades don’t seem as smooth as they should be; also you can see some dark pixels in the arrows.

Some of the animations aren’t complete, like the fire coming out of the small rocket, and yellow/green/blue wires in the wall aren’t animated like they should be, and the lamp only consists of 2 tiles when animated, making it look very ugly.

Also I would like to point out that this set, though having most of the tiles from the origenal JJ1 planet, misses any updates at all to make it a good conversion, like poles, vines, tubes and a textured background: the least you could have done was to make the origenal background work when textured, like I do in most of my conversions.

Though it may seem that I complained a lot in this review, which I did, I would still advise you to download this set, even if it would only be because its the only version available.

PS: Three Scraparap levels? I haven’t been able to find a third. Is there a secret level?

Bah. He beat me to it. Anyway, Enigma’s latest level is very good, especialy if you consider that the author thinks he sucks at making levels. The layout is very fluent, there is good ammo placement and eyecandy, and it uses the nice Depeche tune by mel o’dee, the traditional music file for Heaven levels.

The layout of this level is, as said before, very good. Its not too complicated. It is like to other levels you see these days, but also pretty origenal in its own way. The level basicly consists of an outside area at the top and corners, and 2 underground halls in the lower middle. The carrot and an RF powerup are placed in the lowest hall, and the seeker powerup in the upper hall. The bouncy powerup is placed a bit close to the red base maybe, like MoonBlaze already said, but still the powerup-carrot-base balance is good enough imo. The layout is also very fluent; springs and such are well placed, and there are also a few float ups in the right places.

Ammo placement is also very good in this level. A lot of ammo crates were used, more then in most other levels, but still nicely balanced with the normal +3 ammo, well devided across the entire map. The powerups and carrot are, as said before, well placed; nothing more to say about that here. A few fastfire guns were used, but you can avoid those if you don’t need them.

All in all, this is a very good level, and I highly recomend you to download it. High 8.2 points.

This level has been around for some time now, as some people may know, but luckily Rage finaly decided to release it.

I must say I like this level. Its got a nice layout, small as it is, though its a bit claustrophobic. The level is fun to play, and has a lot of routes you can choose. The level isn’t that incredibly origenal, but it still has some interesting ideas. Both bases are placed at the same side of the level, at the top and at the bottem, which is something I haven’t seen before, and is also very well done, since the level still has a good basepath. To balance this the powerups and the carrot are placed at the other side of the level, which creates very interesting gameplay. I’m not sure about the warp at the blue base, since it gives blue a slightly faster basepath then red imo, but its probably ok. The bases are both well defendable in their own way, which is always a good thing.

The carrot is well placed, like I said before, and also well defendable, though there are also enough tricks to take out campers. The same goes for the powerups. Ammo is well placed and divided throughout the level in groups of mostly 3 to 6 +3 guns; nothing much to say about that really.

Rage used the ETs Planet 2 v3 set, and in a very good way. The eyecandy in the entire level looks terific. While the bottem of the level is a sort of cavern with burning torches, the top of the level consists of rusty metal blocks. A lot of waterfalls are used, which makes the level look even beter. There aren’t any foreground layers used apart from layer 3, but that isn’t really a problem, since otherwise the level might look a bit confusing.

Overall I should say this is a very good level, which I recomend you download right away. High 8.2 points.

Well, we had to wait some time for EvilMike to release his Untitled level, but here it is. And I must say I like this level. Its got all a good CTF level needs, and a bit more to go with it.

I would only call the layout semi-origenal, but it still has some nice tricks that I haven’t seen before or rarely see. The trick with going through the tubes with the copter is easier to do at the red side of the level, since at that side there is a copter practicly next to the tube, while the copter on the blue side is next to the blue base, and thus further away from the tube and more likely to disapear before you reach it, which could give the red team a slightly faster basepath if lucky. There are some nice float ups under one of the trees for if you dont quite make it with the spring, which is a nice idea.

The seeker room is well hidden, and well campable, though there are several tricks to deal with campers. The full energy carrot is well placed, though maybe a bit close to blue, but then again the +1 carrot is closer to red, which sorta balances it nicely. The layout is well playable, very fluent and is easy to learn. The other powerups are also well placed and divided throughout the level. Ammo comes in large groups of about 12 +3 guns at a time, so means you can get your gun filled up fast after you die, which is always a good thing.

Eyecandy is also very nice: Mike certainly did what he could with Disguise’s great WinterlandWonder tileset. The ground is nicely textured, with some white rocks in it. The trees look very nice, and EvilMike did some interesting effects with the tree branches. The big mountian that the tileset provides is in the background layer 7, and Mike put some nice moving snow in layers 5 and 6. The level also features a traditional textured background, giving the level a most charming look. One thing that might have been added would be a slight blue or purple fade colour to the textured background, to make it look even beter.

EvilMike also found a great music file for the level, namely My Wonderland by The Ravebusters; a great rave/trance tune that fits the level very well indeed, and gives it a nice playing atmosphere when playing with music on. I must say I really enjoy this level, and look forward to playing many more fun games in it. A high 8.5; keep up the good work Mike. =)

what mike said
8.0