Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

First review in years, here we go! Bioluminescence is a fun CTF level taking place in some sort of odd jungle where super-cool-mushrooms are the focus of the level. It is incredibly platformy, and requires plenty of jumping to navigate. One of my favorite kinds of levels! My favorite part of the level is that there is an obvious path at the top of the level that takes you from base to base with no worries – but it's pretty dangerous to take. You may want to reconsider that route… So to continue on our adventure, you're forced to take alternative routes in this level which wind you around a maze of mushrooms. In the end, it's classic fun with some cool scripting. The weapons are custom, but feel familiar. My recommendation for improvement is to put something awesome underwater. I hate going underwater in levels. I think either punishment or reward should come with it! Another suggestion is helping to differentiate one ways from regular tiles – but that's a very minor thing here and there. Overall, this is a solid 8.5/10.

Thank you for sharing! Highly recommended. Sorry I didn't get to play this with other people. I just played 1 player CTF. It was a good game.

Edit – PS – This is one of the most beautiful levels I've ever seen. GREAT JOB with the background and overall eyecandy! :) :)

Great times, great levels, great people. I remember being so excited to see if my levels made it or not each year.

lol people are silly yellin’ on the internet and all. anyway, great job buddy your contributions are great. i dont get how to use this thing to its full extent, nor do i think im gonna find out given that my time with jcs is short aka no time with jcs, or mlle i should say.

Thanks for the feedback!! Fun fact: phylaxia used to have sucker tubes on each edge, but my better testers said it made the level too similar to EvilMike’s infamous Distopia.

I wish this was good, but it’s just really not. I think the main problem that we’re running into here is that it’s pretty much an exact, tile for tile conversion from JJ1. Now, of course, this was the intention of the pack. But it’s also the downfall of the pack. The events are really the main problem here. All of the ammo events that you shoot in JJ1 got turned into ammo crates, and while this is all well and find, it’s a major pain in the ass because first of all, you can only hold up to 99 ammo (obviously), and second of all, you can’t run through the crates, so you have no choice but to shoot those things. Oh, and I got stuck between a crate and a wall in the secret level as the bird.. That was annoying.

Main things that bug me, well I mentioned the ammo thing, there’s way too much food, we could’ve done with less, and what’s up with including turrets and forcefields in Tubelectric but not making them do anything? Let’s be original here! Play around with some MCE events and make those turrets shoot electroblasters at you or something. The events just kind of ruin everything. It wouldn’t have hurt to stray away from the exact original pickups and enemies locations to atleast make it more challenging and fun in JJ2.

Anyway, this pack does what it promises. It provides a picture perfect conversion of the original JJ1 levels. But honestly, that’s not necessarily a good thing, because it’s just not fun.

I wanna see a Turtle Terror remake. Not a conversion, but a remake.

Okay, so here we have yet another impressive tileset “conversion” by Violet. When I saw that Violet chose Raneforus, I really wasn’t too excited. Those were some of the most unattractive, and frustrating levels in all of JJ1. Like, I hated Raneforus, I used to cheat to skip those levels.

Anyway, so I’m not too excited at all, but Violet never fails to impress, as he came up with the clever idea to include a past, present, and future tense to the tileset. This gives way for a lot more possibilities and all in all makes this worth downloading.

The present tense gives us the basics. Nothing too notable here. In fact, there isn’t even any solid ground. All there is is platforms, which sucks, but then again, that’s all Raneforus had. Platforms and trees. I got over the present tense tileset real fast.

Okay, so the past tense. Now this is cool. In the past tense, we sacrifice some pretty useless looking tiles for stone and gravel taken and edited from Jungrock and Stonar, plus we get some new background to play with. Overall, it’s really awesome. You can make a really ancient looking jungle level with this. The palette is all switched around, and some old school tiles are included to just make this really have a great atmosphere. Cool.

So, now the future tense, well it’s a great idea and all, and Violet pulls it off pretty well, but it’s just not that pleasing to look at. Everything just seems to totally clash. It’s a good idea, but I just couldn’t see myself using the tileset ever. And like I said before about the present tense, there’s no solid ground… There are just platforms. The past tense had solid ground from Stonar and Jungrock which was nice.

So the final verdict,
I’m not very impressed by the Present and Future versions of the tileset, but the Past tense is solid as hell and offers a lot of possibilities for some really cool levels.

Download definitely recommended, just don’t get too excited for Present or Future.

Alright, I’m going to make this brief, as usual.

I reinstalled JJ2 on the new laptop I bought just to play this level pack, really. So, after going through the trouble of downloading TSF (sorry, guys), I finally installed this.

So, let me just start out by saying, this pack has no apparent storyline, and no theme other than pretty much you’re drugged up the whole time, and hallucinating. If you’re looking for a solid storyline or a full episode, this is not for you. If you’re like me and just want to play through some JJ2 levels and kill lots of badguys like the old days, this is definitely what you’re looking for.

My favorite thing about this pack is that it’s just so old school, and at the same time, it’s not. Most quality single player levels these days are very story oriented, and rely on new concepts. This level pack, however, will take you back ten years with the added bonus of some relatively newly found JCS tricks, and absolutely gorgeous graphics design.

The difficulty of these levels is insane. I played the pack on medium, and I found myself getting pretty frustrated at times. I haven’t actively played JJ2 in at least four or five years, but I’d say I’m still really good at this game, especially single player. And let me tell you, this pack is hard.

Summary; this is a pack of lengthy levels that are all pretty much unrelated. If you want to play some old school style levels with a new feel to them, this is absolutely for you. Think of it like playing New Super Mario Bros. If you’re not so much into that idea, this might not be for you.

Overall I’m rating this 10.. Because Blacky deserves it.

Very impressive, I enjoyed this very much. Sample choice is nice, and I love what you did with a lot of the parts. Would’ve sounded AWESOME if you added like a distortion effect in parts of the song to the oldschool JJ1 drumline. But awesome. I really loved the intro the most, too. Great first impression, comes off strong.

Nice little level. It’s confusing as heck to navigate tho. Wayy too many warps in every direction. The layout is clever though. Def original. Could be really fun for a 2v2 or even 1vs1 game. Looks pretty for the most part, but could’ve used more work. And I really hate it when people put death pits in their levels. Anyway, I like this. Thumbs up

I mean, this tileset is GOOD and all. But it’s not anywhere near great. It’s a clever idea and a fun tileset, but honestly everything looks kinda dull and ugly. I mean, it’s not bad, don’t get me wrong. I reccomend it for download. But I’m not impressed at all by this.

Thank you plunk, I’ll look into that when I get around to volume 2… And yeah, that’s why I didn’t tab out the intro to Damned. =P Plus, I think only synth lead plays that intro, not lead guitar, but I’m not positive. In any case I’ll look at it.

Fun little pack.. Not as good as I was hoping, though. My favorite level was Headbanging. The CTF levels disappointed me, but the battle ones are really nice.

This level was quite enjoyable. The layout was very confusing for the first few minutes I was trying it out, but everything made sense really quick. The level is huge, and relatively easy to learn. I love the way you made some parts of it really Spaz-biased and other parts are completely Jazz-biased. The level looks great, and I love the theme.

Quick review.. I was pretty surprised by how this tileset turned out, everything looks really nice. While this isn’t the most versatile tileset, what is included just looks really nice.

The graphcis style here isn’t at all realistic looking, and at the same time, it’s not entirely cartoony, either. I think this is the perfect environment for JJ2, to be honest, because that’s how all the sprites were drawn, and that’s what I like about this tileset the most.. everything just fits, you can place any event in the level and it just looks at home.

I’d say the name of this tileset is somewhat misleading. Here we have a cathedral of sorts. But it’s not like all depressing and gothic or anything. Everything here looks very cheery and upbeat. The tileset has plenty of arches, alters, statues, brick structures and such that give it a very.. I dunno the word.. churchy.. cathedrally.. feeling.. but it’s not like medieval or anything. It has a very modern feel to it, which I really like a lot, because you don’t see that too often mixed with cathedrals. It just looks really nice. And pleasant. I’d say pleasant is the perfect word to describe this tileset.

As for masking and other miscellaneous things, I saw no real problems.

My complaints and suggestions for improvement, well, first of all, I would’ve loved to see some more versatility (is that a word?). Being able to run outside in between buildings would be great, even if you just added some grass here and there, it’d be enough. Also, I would’ve liked to see pole events (well, just the psych pole) work, but that’s okay, nobody really uses them anyway. Oh, and flower pots. I dunno, the flowers and all look like they’re just kinda floating there, it’d be nice if they had some nice pots to go into. There’s no textured background in this tileset, but that’s alright; the background that’s there fits very well.

My final and biggest complaint is the lack of color. Everything’s just brown and green; you seem to have a lot of talent and creativity, so put that to work with colors the next time!

Overall I’d give this a download reccomendation, to check it out, if not make a fun little battle level or something with it.

Thanks!

I actually played through this last night right before bed, and really enjoyed it. This is a short and sweet level pack, all the levels are very fun and high quality. They’re very straightforward, which is something I liked a lot. There were no obnoxious puzzles. Only complaint is some Spaz biasing with getting goodies. I highly reccomend this.

Great level pack, although I was disappointed to be honest. I liked the others better. I had a lot of fun playing through this pack, and although it was slightly challenging (I played through on medium) it was way too easy overall. Not what I’ve come to expect from the other episodes, in other words.

Good level pack. I liked the level After Dark a lot, especially. Did you have to use the Sluggion theme, though? I hate that stupid song. Anyways, most of these levels were really good, a few of them I can’t say I loved. Download reccomendation, overall.

Let’s review!!

6 Hour Energy Drink
Wow. I love this level. Like, I’m not kidding. There’s just something about it. The layout is so simple and boring, but I just love the way this level plays. The tileset is used wonderfully, the level looks absolutely gorgeous. Really, this level is fairly small, but at the same time it’s not cramped, and you could have a decent chase in it. There are soda cans placed around for you to get a sugar rush on, or in this level’s case, energy drinks. Very clever. I like this level a lot. Gave me a really good first impression of the level pack.

Darker Remains
This level’s okay. I guess maybe I just had higher expectations because I liked the first level so much. Anyway though, I enjoyed this level. The layout’s nice, and there’s plenty of room in this level to fit a bunch of players in. I defiinitely give Dark Sonic props for using this tileset. It’s really, really hard to use. Overall the level is pretty, but some of the places look really, well, ugly. I dunno. This one tile is used in a lot of places that just doesn’t work at all. Look around 85, 15. That tile’s just really overdone. Overall, this level’s good, but nothing I’d host.

Scrap Brain
This level’s really great. The tileset is used really well, the level looks really pretty. But that’s not why it’s great! The layout is just awesome. Like, I dunno. Again, it’s nothing special. It’s just a basic layout. But it’s just done really well. There are a million and one places where you can suddenly stop short, change your path, and confuse your enemy who was chasing you. You can jump into a few walls to grab carrots, cut a jump short and climb down some wires, or just, like, I dunno. This level’s just really good. I’d love to have a duel here, I think it’d be really fun. The downfall of this level is the music. If you know me, you’ll know that I absolutely hate the Sluggion theme. I think one time I attempted to rate a level lower than it should’ve been because they used the Sluggion song, but I’ll let you off and just mute the music if I play this level online.

Mixxed Up
I dunno if we have two different versions of the tileset with different masking, or this level just wasn’t tested properly, but when I was trying to test this, I kept falling off the bottom of the level. I dunno. This level is nice and all, it’s pretty, but you fall off the bottom of the level, and that’s never a good thing. I’ll cut my review short on this one because obviously something’s going on here.

Unreal Surreality
I dunno, I really don’t like this level. It’s too cramped up, the eyecandy is confusing, and the layout is boring and symmetrical. I mean it’s not a terrible level but I just really don’t like it. I don’t think you could have a decent game in this level. The base placement is clever, but not pulled off too well, it’s just annoying. It’s too hard to get around the level. I don’t mean to bash it, but I just can’t find anything I enjoy about this level.

Colorful Compact
Another level I just can’t really bring myself to like. This one’s better, but I didn’t enjoy it. The layout seems very confusing, and the eyecandy, although it appears a lot of time was put into it, is just very ugly, to be honest. This level flows okay, but I really don’t like the layout all that much.

Street Pass no. 3
I’m not at all familiar with this gametype. In fact, I couldn’t figure out what the heck to do in this level, so it’s hard to write much about it. I dunno. Again, a very hard tileset was used so I give a lot of props for that, and the level looks really pretty. I particularly enjoyed the flow here a lot. Everything seems to go together nicely. I’ll cut the review there, though, since I have no idea with Flag Run is.

Overall, I enjoyed the battle levels that Dark Sonic made for this pack, but the CTF levels were very disappointing. I’d reccomend this for download.

This tileset is just really good. It’s super hard to build with, but if you put time into a level, it’ll look amazing. 9.5 works for this.

Ok, we’ll do a quick review here.

This level’s fairly solid, and has an interesting concept that I’m not sure if I’ve seen before, especially in a battle level like this. When you spawn, you are assigned a random class, rather than choosing your own. There are a few classes that are assigned. Great Ballz of Fire gives you bouncy ammo and a toaster powerup, wallhacker gives you RF missile ammo and a bouncy powerup, Rocket N00b gives you seekers and an RF missile powerup, and napalm gives you toaster ammo and a seeker powerup.

I’ll have to add that I am very satisified with the balance of the classes. The way the level is layed out, you may get a powered up weapon that works great with the level’s layout, but then your secondary weapon that you simply received ammo for will be fairly useless. Take the napalm class for example. Most people agree that powered seekers are pretty much the ultimate weapon in any level. However, along with the powered seekers, you get toaster ammo, which is pretty useless in this level because it’s so open, and there are so many slopes.

As for the overall gameplay and the layout, it’s not bad, but it’s not great, either. I was a little disappointed by the overall layout, I think all in all it seems a little too open and boring. Nothing too special going on with the layout. I mean, like I said, it’s not bad, but it could be better. The level flows nicely, overall. It’s more than milk, but not quite a milkshake, ya know what I mean?

Eyecandy.. Well, it’s certainly interesting. I didn’t design this tileset to be used this way, let’s put it that way, hah. I kinda like it. Anything wrong with the eyecandy in this level I take partial blame for. All in all, everything just looks really weird. Like funny shaped trees, and cave formations all over the place. It works, it looks kinda cool, to be honest.

Overall, this level plays pretty nicely, and I wish I got a chance to play it online. But I didn’t. So that’s really all I have to say on this. Overall, I give it a 7.3 out of 10. Slightly leaning towards 7.4, but we’ll do 7.3.