Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

A fairly short level with few obstacles. The whole thing, except for the “last obstacle” can be breezed through in 30 seconds, with very little thought spent on getting around stuff. The most difficult part of this first stretch is at one point there’s a small hole in it.
It gets a bit more difficult on the second lap, or for anyone who’s not the server (the level has to be played in Race to work, so the host goes over everything first). There’s a little collapse scenery in the level, which is faster then the route under it, but not by a lot.
Ok, the “last obstacle” consists of (wait for it) PLATFORMS. As in swinging platforms. Which only work in cooperative on the internet. And you can’t play this level in cooperative, as it uses set lap warps. So you’re forced to play it on one computer if you want to race in it.
The layer 4 eyecandy’s pretty good, except for the pillars that sit on top of collapse scenery, but there’s practically nothing other then that.

I’ll give it a 7, because it is playable under one condition, and also race levels are rare. Would have probably gotten a higher rating if the “last obstacle” was different. (very VERY hard.. hehehehe)

I’m not going to rate this, but I don’t think it would get anything high. Why? I’m fairly sure the author spent hardly any work on it at all. It looks like he found an image, inserted it in a jigsaw making program, and uploaded it. How hardworking.

Level 1: Carrotus in the Target (huh?)
As the level begins, you come out of the secret exit from Carrotus Castle (which a Limit X Scroll removes from vision so you can’t see it doesn’t look like a castle), and then you see an army of tuf turtles invading Carrotus. Everyone’s asleep, so your goal is to run around removing carrot signs from burrows, so the turtles can’t find the rabbits and eat them or something. The enemies in this level got really annoying, though, armies of tuf turtles and bats. A few not-too-secret secets, and voila. Did I mention that despite you come from the castle on the left side, you go into Carrotus Castle on the right side? Are you in some courtyard that the castle wraps around or something? The eyecandy in this level is also rather poor. Layers 6 and 7 are used normally, but layer 5 is set to X/Y speed 1, and it’s used EVERYWHERE. It gets hard to tell what’s solid and what isn’t. By the way, for those who are frustrated, one coin can be found underneath the rightside tile of a raddish.
Level 2: Invasion of the Castle
This one’s a bit more normal. Eva has been captured (again) and you must rescue her (again). Thankfully, Eva’s still in the castle, so the whole pack isn’t built around saving her. You just have to find three trigger crates inside the castle, each of which are guarded by enemies and spikes and stuff. This is a fairly short level, and a bit more linear then the last one.
Level 3: The wolf rabbit (no explanation of name)
Suddenly, you’re out on Carrotus with Eva. You slowly walk towards her, and she tells you (somehow she found this out) that a demonic force is attacking, and you should go to see her friend Moonblaze. You didn’t really think Moonblaze could make something not involving him, did you? (No offense to Moonblaze intended) So off you go, into the forest.
Level 4: Sunset forest
The most linear level of them all. You plow through small passages filled with monkeys and dragon flies. The layer 5 problem in “Carrotus in the target” is back again here, in full force. At one point, there’s a pit of spikes, with some tree trunks placed so you can jump on them. SURPRISE! They’re not solid after all! No, the real way to get across are the swinging vines, which are practically INVISIBLE due to the background eyecandy! Did I mention the tree which you can’t get through without being hurt? Or the slight overdose of rocks? Anyway, if you make it through this level (I found myself just running through it madly), you’ll find a tree, which you enter. Done before, but ok.
Level 5: Meeting with Moonblaze
This level shows Jazz standing motionless, staring at Moonblaze, who is standing motionless, staring back, and looking incredibly shocked. There is no background. They’re in a tree! Perfect oppurtunity for a cool background! But no, all the (self made) tileset consists of is them standing there looking at eachother. Jazz tells Moonblaze of his problem, and Moonblaze promises that Jazz will see Devan in hell. (;)) IF Jazz can get him three gem rings to work the magic spell with. Ok!
Level 6: Gem Search
This level uses a modified version of Disguise’s “Nature’s Ruins” tileset. In JCS, it’s called “Nature’s Ruins 2”, so if you wanted Disguise to make a sequel to it, sorry, you’re out of luck. (Unless he does “Nature’s Ruins ][“) Anyway, there are three gem rings, one in a temple, one in the trees, one in a cave. The cave is very dark, and there’s a rock in it which reeks of poor placement. It stuck me in the wall once, and another time it lodged itself in the path, unmovable. Rocks can be cool, Moonblaze, in the proper place. Anyway. The Temple gem ring is a bit easier to get. You jump onto a few platforms, avoid two arrows (yes, Virginia, they are solid), fight a few monkeys, and grab it. Then you try to grab some cherries on the way down. The third one involves jumping on a few platforms. The main thrill of this level is exploring the inbetween area, which, while small, has several enemies, as well as trying to get the cave gem ring.
Level 7: A flame of power
Now it becomes obvious it’s a modified version. Still in Nature’s Ruins 2, you stand inside a small temple, where Moonblaze works magical incantations. The gem rings are nowhere to be seen, maybe he ate them. Anyway, you are told to “Protect Moonblaze”, because enemies keep generating and entering the temple. They have no effect on Moonblaze. Because of a certain secret in the previous level, not to mention enemies give stuff away (like fastfires) when they die, the only problem in this level is staying awake. You have to run back and forth killing enemies for about 5 minutes. Maybe it was less, but it seemed that way. Once five coins have dropped from the ceilling, you’re ready to be sent to hell.
Level 8: Where Bad Rabbits Go
If the name is familiar, that’s also the name of the tileset it uses. And the example level of the tileset. Considering how similar the backgrounds look, I’d say Moonblaze copied the example level and changed layers 3 and 4 without bothering to modify the name. Anyway. This is a fairly linear level with devils and ravens, as you might expect. Fight through them, and you get to fight Devan. Of course, there was a blaster powerup somewhere along the way (I forgot where) so he’s no problem at all. “Thanks for playing” says the rainbow text. Moonblaze is telling you that, I guess.
Level 9: (I forgot what it’s called)
A credits level. You watch credits scroll. Why couldn’t the author just have put the credits in the tileset with Jazz and Moonblaze staring at eachother? Sadly, they are seperate files. It credits a lot of people, and then says hi to others, just like in Tomb Rabbit, except much less interesting. No images or anything. (See, this is another reason Moonblaze, at least, should have been in there)

This would get a higher rating, but I simply hate the layer 5.

WALLS AND TUNNELS: Both of them are there. Admittedly the walls are a bunch of green and blue blocks, and the tunnel looks solid, but they’re there. More or less. There’s also some pipe structures.
BASIC EVENT TILES: Uhhhh.. speaking from the example level, there are countdown blocks, a text sign, and a vine. To the author’s credit, the vine can end.
LAYER 8: A tealish texture. I don’t know if it works textured or not, but it isn’t in the example level, so I presume not.
LAYERS 1-2+5-7: There are two different mountain colors in again, green and blue, in addition to purple rain/meteorites. The mountains don’t have enough color or variation to look interesting, sadly.
LAYER 4 EYECANDY: The text sign bounces.
GRAPHICS: The graphics look mostly done by someone who just figured out how to do gradients and noticed everything looks cooler. Next steps – moderation and texture. Everything is basically blocks with gradient lines in it, or pyramid gradients.
VARIATION: There are two colors.
ORIGINALITY: There are some purple raindrops/meteorites in the background, and the text sign bounces.
MASKING: Masking was fine, but this looked very hard to screw up in the masking department.
OVERALL: While it IS better graphically then tilesets like “World of Dreams” by Bunnyelmer, they had more variation. I can’t honestly give this a very high rating.

Sadly, there are so few treasure hunt levels in existance, it’s hard to compare this to other ones.
It is my personal opinion, though, that the official ones were better. Still, this feels nice, has ok eyecandy (the leaves suck though), and not very many gems. The author says 160, counting the gem stomps. Still, gem stomps are hard to find. Thankfully there aren’t any gem rings.
I wish I had some idea on how to rate this.. but for the meantime, I’ll just leave that part of the review blank.

Verticalish.
This level has a lot of carrots, several powerups, and too much TNT. Any TNT at all is too much, actually. The eyecandy could use a little work, there are some sparkly things in the background, giant carrots in the foreground, and the normal background eyecandy gets attached to the ground.
But it’s fun!

While I do find this interesting, I have to admit it sucks.
The tileset (apparently) consists of three shades of boring looking bricks (two unsolid), two shades of green, some unmasked poles, a few of those metal stair things from Townhouse, and the rest of it (basically) is logos. I don’t know how many of the logos were actually done by the author, but I’d say it’s a safe bet the cup of Pepsi wasn’t, and I doubt the red and blue circle was either. Michelin might have been.
Overall, unless your teacher wants you to write a long list of companies, there is little reason you should want to see this.

This tileset is deemed illegal by the original creators, so I shall not rate it. :D

Just for what it’s worth, the modified palette colors are intentional, as he told me to do them.

This tileset is completely unusable. Hardly any of the tiles are there, those there are are either poorly colored or not in the grid squares, and the text telling you Catz made the tileset (for some reason, Catz WANTS credit for this?) take up more room then the actual tiles.
(Unsupported rating removal edit. ~Violet)[This review has been edited by Violet CLM]

I love this. I’m not sure of the exact reason, but it’s just cool. Except for maybe the multiplayer levels.
(Unsupported rating removal edit. ~Violet)[This review has been edited by Violet CLM]

Well, well, well, if it isn’t the 2000th upload. :) Anyway.
Waz seems to be unable to use tilesets other then his own. While this does mean he uses tilesets he knows very well, it does seem a little repetitive. The tilesets are, as you might expect, used well.
The levels feel too cramped. They’re full of small passages and a few deadends. There are places where a spring or two would be more convinient, as well. One interesting thing about these levels is that you are basically unable to see the bottoms of the levels.
While these look cool, not enough attention was given to gameplay. Make sure you’re making levels, and not just example levels.

Edit in response to Waz:
2: I know you meant to make them be normal levels, but they feel too much like you’re just trying to show off all the tiles available, and not enough like more playable levels. (Levels by Craccoboy are often good examples of this)
3: Nothing to do with you, but this is the 2000th file uploaded to the downloads section. And because 2000 is all 0s except for the first number, it’s important.[This review has been edited by Violet CLM]

BASIC GROUND TILES: They’re mostly there. The author, however, made three tile wide slopes, and two tile wides, but no one tile slopes at all. He also included tiles for one tile wide structures, but they can’t have bottoms, they must stick out of a larger platform structure.
BASIC EVENT TILES: Vines, h/v poles, text sign, exit sign, cool sucker tubes, arrows, blocks (*, !, Bouncy and Trigger) and hook are there. No spikes, though, or belts (though belts are excusable).
LAYERS 5-8: There’s a working textured backgrounds, and two different mountain ranges. The author obviously either looked at or had in mind the background mountains from JJ1 Diamondus, as these resemble them closely.
LAYER 4 BACKGROUND: In contrast to the green and purple walls, the “tunnel”, as some people call it, is dark blue. It’s obviously a copy of the main wall tile, shrunk and with the color changed, and it’s way too repetitive, but it works fine and you can put everything (I think) on it.
EYECANDY: This is the tileset’s main failing. There’s a not-all-that-well-done slime fall, but that’s really all there is in the way of eyecandy. (Not counting stuff listed in LAYERS 5-8). The whole tileset seems based on Darkened Landscape, by Disguise, which had the same sort of floor as well as tombstones for signs, but also had little eyecandy to speak of. Come to think of it, very few of Disguise’s tilesets do. If you’re going to make a level with this tileset, have a lot of slopes, because otherwise the level will start looking monotous Really quickly.
ORIGINALITY: There’s basically nothing in this tileset you haven’t seen before, assuming you download a lot of tilesets. The name’s interesting, but it seems to have little to do with the tileset itself.
VARIATION: This tileset has very little variation. There is one type of ground, which fortunately you can make platforms with instead of just walls, one type of tunnel, both of which have only one tile for their insides.
MASKING: Masking seems fine. The sucker tubes have their outsides masked, so if you want you can have the player be only able to enter them from the correct end.
OVERALL, I WOULD SAY: While I complain about this tileset a lot, it’s still an interesting tileset I might use if I needed Darkened Landscape with tunnel. Spend more time on this, and it would be better.

Me likesh space rodeo!

..read Trafton’s review. The only good part of this tileset is that the graphics are good, but you can’t see any of the graphics unless you use low detail, at which point everything looks bland.
Oh, and the masking mostly works, though even it has bugs. Yes, it’s 40 tiles, and he didn’t get the masking perfect.
(Unsupported rating removal edit. ~Violet)[This review has been edited by Violet CLM]

Ten (I think) basically random single player levels, with (AFAICT) no real plot. At the start (assuming you’re able to read the story text on top of the background), it says Devan’s on the loose, and you’re sent to stop him, but after that there is no inkling of plot. You just play the (often quite short) levels.
The Carrotus levels are quite badly done in the graphics department, and their gameplay isn’t all that good either. Having bats come out of the ceilling would be nicer if you weren’t so close to the ceilling.
The Diamondus levels (you go to Diamondus after finding carrots in carrotus (as I said, there’s no real plot)) are noticably better. I paticularly liked the place where you climb up through lots and lots of trees.
The Colonius levels aren’t as good as the Diamondus ones, but not as bad as Carrotus. Two short levels going in and out of the sewers. Lending strength to the “no plot, I just wanted to try this” idea, is that they start with you being thrown out of the window of a house and being told to never come back. How did you get there? What did you do? Sorry, there’s no explanation.
I’ve never been a big fan of pure boss levels, but I’ll admit this one was better then it could have been. You fight Bolly, with two generating Tuf Turtles, and maybe crash into some platforms.
The bonus level is poor. Tileset use bad, and you go through a layer 5 maze (so just use low detail) before going to the credits level, which I won’t talk about.
Overall, this pack had potential, but the lack of plot, poor eyecandy, short levels and annoyingness prevented it from getting a higher rating.

Look, it takes some skill to edit official levels. This is not evident in this.
Is this a Battle level? Any level in existance can be called a battle level, as its only requirement is at least one start position.
Is this a good Battle level? Not at all. It’s extremely linear, has bad ammo placement, and it’s hard to get around.
Is this a CTF level? I think so. There’s a blue base, anyway. There might be a red base, but I got stuck trying to find it and gave up.
Is this a good CTF level? Not at all. There’s only one (basically) path, it’s hard to navigate, and it’s too hard to go from red to blue.
Is this a Treasure Hunt level? In the loosest definition of the term. One secret contains like all 100 gems, and there are a few other hidden in other secrets, or left over from the original.
Is this a good Treasure Hunt level? Not at all. I think you already can tell why.
Is this a Cooperative level? I doubt it. The author removed all the enemies, for a start, so you just wade through the awful level.
Is this a good Cooperative level? Not at all. It plays terribly, lots of blocks don’t have events for them..
Is this a level with eyecandy? Technically. But the eyecandy seriously sucks.
Is this a level with gameplay? Technically. But it, like the eyecandy, seriously sucks. Same goes with design.
Is this a level with good points? Yes. But they’re rather rare, and I won’t list them.

Yes, it has a lot of bad guys. Sadly, the author focused a little too hard on this. Along with exclamation marks..
Anyway, this is an ok single player level, using the unoriginal filename “Crazy.j2l”. Like the author’s other level (uploaded today), it starts out better then it ends, The level dissolves into fighting huge armies of enemies, and it’s rather short. However, I love how if you open the door of a house, the enraged owner punches you.
This level has foreground eyecandy (which is annoying) but no background eyecandy. Interesting.
Jeffrocks, I think that your main problem is that you try to make the level all at once, and run out of inspiration after the start. If you feel the level isn’t as good as it was previously, take a break. Work on it later when you’ve got some new ideas. And try to make it longer.

Yes, you can. Fancy that.
“Colon3” (actual level name Untitled) starts out fairly well. Decent tileset use, gameplay, enemy placement, design. It gets worse, though. The author starts making errors with the tiles (though the sewers, except for the exit, are done well) and the design gets worse (near the end you go through a long empty passage). There are several layer 3/tile bugs, and the level’s fairly short.
On the good side (did you know that, in general, it’s easier to find bad points then good points?), the level’s ok. I wouldn’t recommend inserting it into your normal single player game, though.

I evidently liked this level a bit more then Chandie did.
It’s a medium-small length level with quite a few goodies and secrets. It uses the tileset fairly well (except in some spots in the background), and has a variety of stuff.
Now the bad part.
It’s seriously easy. There are WAY too many extra lives (and they’re way too easy to get), and the enemies are usually in places you can walk up to them and shoot at them. The end boss is about the same, but Bubba’s generally easy anyway. You can get the silver coins and the coin warp without hitting the trigger crate, and there are some layer 3/tile bugs.
Still, especially for a first level, this is good. I’m too mean to raise the rating for it being your first, though.