Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: A haxor 1337 level that ruxors
Level rating: 1
Rating
N/A

Yet another person who uploads something that they purposefully made bad just for a joke.

No level will ever beat Zappo’s Egypt and Voldard’s Cool Treasure Jungle.

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Boss - The First
Level rating: 5
Rating
5

First time reviewing in a while.

Eyecandy – Poor
It’s not all THAT bad… it gets the job done. Layer 4 has very meager eyecandy. Just platforms, basically, and a glowing catwalk thing with glowing portal things under it. Layer 3 has some sucker tubes in it. All of the background layers have various pipes and other eyecandy tiles in them. Not all that original, but I’ve seen worse.

Gameplay – Poor
Very small level with very evil gameplay. It’s very easy to get stuck, and lots of places have no one ways where you would think there would be a one way, and vice versa – some places have one ways and you don’t know why the heck they have them. The sucker tube system is very annoying. It’s way too fast, and some sucker tubes simply take you around part of the level, then spit you back out in the same place (it makes the level look a bit bigger, I’d also have to say =P). As for the flow, it’s pretty non-existant. As for the concept, I don’t 100% understand it, but if I’m correct in my understanding, it’s not bad at all. Kind of confusing, still… there will be lots of misunderstandings when this is hosted.

Ammo placement – N/A
Kind of confusing. But there are lots of powerups and fastfires.

Anyway, review ends here, I have to go.

No big download reccomendation, but the concept is interesting and you might want to take a look at it.[This review has been edited by labratkid]

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Meganis Meryasta
Level rating: 7
Rating
7.2

I’m extremely bored, so I guess I’ll review this. I’ll go with a relatively short review compared to my others since Violet has toned down the rating removal policy a bit, after many people, including Trafton, asked him to.

Gameplay – Okay
The gameplay is decent enough, I guess. It’s not platformy or linear, which is a good thing. There’s also no flag bug to my knowledge. The flow isn’t bad, but it could be better. In some places, it would be nice to see a floatup or two. For example, you could put one at 18, 45 to help the flow out a bit. But never overdo floatups. It’s good to have to jump, but it’s better to have to not jump sometimes. It’s bad if you have to never jump. The level is on the small side, so I wouldn’t try to cram more than six players in here. It’s probably better to be used as a dueling level, or MAYBE a 2v2 level. There are some balancing issues, though. For example, the blue base is bigger than the red base, height wise, or so it seems. See the ammo placement section for more details and complaints. There are some places here and there with tile bugs, too, mainly in layer 5.

Eyecandy – Decent
For a limiting set like this, the eyecandy isn’t too bad. It mainly consists of some blue cave walls and translucent slim tiles. The background is some mountains and some purple tiles above them, with blue tiles above THEM. One of my suggestions for the eyecandy area is to experiment with making the sucker tubes translucent. Oh, and the tile above 39, 46 looks kind of bad.

Ammo placement – Not so good
The ammo placement isn’t all that good… although there were some good ideas, such as putting a TNT down and then surrounding it on all four sides with bouncy ammo. It looked kind of like an atom, or a molecule, or something. Very original and sxy looking. The main reason I dislike the ammo placement is because it’s not exactly easy to get. I can’t really explain what I mean. If you understand what I’m talking about, that’s good, I guess. The blue base also has the coin warp on their side, which means the blue base gets a place to hide, a seeker powerup, AND a supercarrot on their side. The red base gets a carrot barrel on their side. Never put carrot barrels in your multiplayer levels. The barrel will regenerate after you smash it, even if you don’t get the carrot, so it’s possible to have ten carrots lying under the barrel at the same time. If you have enough free time, you can put thousands of carrots down. It’d be nice if there were more more powerups, too. A bouncy or a toaster powerup might be nice here.

Overall, this level isn’t bad at all, but there are some severe balance issues. No real download reccomendation, but since this is a 7.2, it’s really your choice if you download or not.

Oh, and as always, I did not proofread this. ;D

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Jazz Jackrabbit 1 menusong REMIX
Level rating: 8.1
Rating
N/A

Bjarni, when an author makes the music format in a module file, rather than a .j2b, you can use it for multiple things. If it’s a .j2b, it will only work with JJ2. At its current state, you can use this file in Winamp, and other things. If you want to listen to this in JJ2, Bjarni, include the file extension when you type in the music name.

In this case, you’d have to type…
Jazz Jackrabbit 1 menusong music remix.s3m
…to use this in JJ2, rather than typing…
Jazz Jackrabbit 1 menusong music remix
…without the .s3m at the end.

Okay, Danyjel wanted me to rate this, but I’m not sure what to give it, so I’ll just comment on it. Anyway, this is a pretty good remix. I don’t like the first 20 seconds all that much, but after that, I like it a lot! =) Good job, keep up the good work. I hope to see more remixes from you in the future. =D[This review has been edited by labratkid]

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Carrot Anyone?
Level rating: 7.5
Rating
7.7

Strato, this level works just fine. Anyway, review time

Gameplay – Good
I like the gameplay here a lot, but it has some flaws. In several places, it’s easy to get stuck. For example, the author put a warp target with a wall right on it’s left side, this making you get stuff when you warp to it. Also, there’s a place with one ways that I got stuck in a lot. Other than that, the gameplay is fun and original and worth a second play.

Enemy placement – Good / Very good
Nothing wrong here, I like the placement a lot. There are some bugs, though. For example, at one point, there’s a tough turtle enemy in a one tile high passage, thus making him walk but not move, which looks rather buggy. There are some other flaws here and there, but none too big to hurt the rating at all.

Food placement – Good
The food placement is good for the most part. It seems that the author forgot to place food in some areas, though. You should try to evenly distribute food around your levels to make them look professional. Pick your food events carefully, as well. I’m not quite sure why there were bananas here.

Pickups placement – Good
My only complaint here is that there aren’t enough gems, but it’s still very nice.

Eyecandy – Good / Very good
Great eyecandy here, but nothing original. There are also some bugs in layer three. Remember to give secret passages a very thick coat of layer three. Don’t just put one tile in layer three for every tile in layer four that is part of a secret passage. I noticed you made that mistake a couple times in the level. The eyecandy has some tile bugs in the boss room, too, but nothing too serious. What I would like to see in the level is more carrots (not carrot events, I mean carrot tiles), turnips (or whatever they are), and perhaps some moth events. The 16-bit textured background could also look nicer. You should usually make your textured backgrounds fade to a color other than black, especially if it takes place during the day. It never hurts to be original, either. Take a look at Blackraptor’s Junkyard level (I believe it’s uploaded under the name, “Some CTF Level,” or something of the sort). It has a yellow textured background that fades to a sky blue color, if I remember correctly, and it looks great.

Overall – Good / Very good

Download reccomendation – Yes, but be prepared to use JJFLY and JJNOWALL to get unstuck in some places.

Replay – Probably.

I hope to see more levels by this author in the future. Nice work. My rating is 7.7. If there were no bugs that made you get stuck, I may have thought about giving this closer to an 8.0.

PS: This review is not proofread. There are probably several embarassing spelling and/or grammar mistakes.

-LAbRaTkiD

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: tutorial level for beginers
Level rating: 1
Rating
1

What… the… heck?

Eyecandy – Very bad
Well, let’s see… there’s really no eyecandy whatsoever. All the ground isn’t even put together right, and the background is a bunch of random blocks. Yes, that’s it.

Gameplay – Very bad
Okay, let’s see. You start off at the very top of the level, and you fall through some floating blocks in layer 3. Then you land on some platforms that aren’t put together correctly. After that, you run across a blinking bridge (or fall through it). Soon after, you’ll find the exit! Yay! I timed myself, and I beat the level in six seconds. Oh, and you can jump over the exit and fall off the level. Turns out that the author did not resize the level either. In fact, none of the layers are changed. The author attempted to use layer 3, but did not change the properties, or so it seems. I don’t think people will learn from this… nothing is done right. I’ve learned more from Voldard’s Cool Treasure Jungle (a classic, indeed).

Enemy placement – Very bad
There are no enemies! Yay!

Ammo placement – Very bad
There is no ammo! Yay again!

Fun factor – Very bad
Unless you feel enjoy falling down a hole, then running across a blinking bridge, and then ending a level, this won’t be too fun. But it’s fun timing yourself to see how fast you can do it.

Anyway, I think I’ve said enough. I don’t know what you mean by not rating the level by tile placement, since this isn’t a tileset.

Download reccomendation: Yes, actually. This is one of those ones that you have to download, like Voldard’s Cool Treasure Jungle, and Zappo’s Egypt.

I think I’ve said enough. My rating is 1.0.

Leole: What should I review the level on, then?[This review has been edited by labratkid]

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Jagged Ectoplasm
Level rating: 7.5
Rating
N/A

I wanted to make comments on the reviews I got at one point or another. does so now

Blackattack: TNT can be good for getting powerups and stuff. For example, if you jumped up to 38, 30 and then placed TNT and ran off, you’d get the toaster powerup without taking a couple seconds’ time to climb up onto the ledge and shoot it. Same with the bouncy powerup.

PHT: Lori can reach that warp via the green spring to the right of it (not that anyone uses Lori anyone… I only know of one person who uses Lori and I don’t think he/she even plays anymore. It was someone I played in a clanwar). If you run into that green spring from the right, it will take your directly to the warp (the green spring doing that is the main reason I chose that place for the warp). The warp used to be under the bridge. You had to kick to the left with Spaz while standing in the middle of the bridge to access the seeker powerup. That was too Spaz biased, so I took it out.

Sonictth: I’m sorry you had to run in this level. Maybe next time I should make a level where you don’t have to run! =D

Nobody in particular: Layer two contains two tiles under the bridge to help out the eyecandy, layer three contains lots of things that are used for obvious reasons, layer four contains nothing! Why would I put anything in layer four!? contains obvious things, layer five contains things that help out the sprite layer, mainly lots of cave tiles, layer six contains trees, layer seven contains mountains, and layer eight contains a textured background.

The end.[This review has been edited by labratkid]

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Skeleton Castle
Level rating: 1.7
Rating
N/A

@Cooba…
Response from someone whose not an admin but is going to act like one for lack of anything better to do: As you might know, you get three warnings on J2O before being banned. You get one warning if you rate your own level. However, Violet doesn’t give out warnings. Only Trafton seems to. So Olsen can rate his or her own level four more times before waving farewell (he or she will be banned on the fourth time; more than likely temporarily. Very few users have been permenantly banned. The user who was permenantly banned most recently, to my knowledge, was Nick DC). I still don’t suggest rating your own levels in the first place. Even if you didn’t get a warning for it, it ruins your reputation.

I probably spelled permenantly wrong. I’m too lazy to go to Dictionary.com. If I spelled it wrong, please PM me ;P If I spelled it right, don’t.

expects to recieve 302489 PM’s
(Violet’s response: I have the power to give warnings (I.E. I am able to reply to a topic), but I usually don’t. Why? Warnings usually aren’t required. A simple PM without anything official usually does the job, unless the user is actively trying to get in trouble. ~Violet)[This review has been edited by Violet CLM]

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Letni Remix
Level rating: 6.6
Rating
8.5

Alright, let’s see… I don’t review music often, so this will be a short review, obviously. I’ll try to come up with a rating system as I go.

Faithfulness to the original song – Very good
There is a good balance of unfaithfulness and faithfulness here. While it’s not one of those ones where someone speeds up or slows down the tempo and than changes some of the instruments and calls it a remix, it’s not one of those ones where people make a whole new song using the same instruments as the song they’re attempted to make a remix of. This makes it perfect in this area.

Other stuff that I can’t think of – Very good
Okay, so, anyway, this is an overall great remix. My only complaint is that it’s a bit long. I’ve never been a fan of really long songs. However, it’s not one of those songs that are like one minute long and then they repeat the exact same thing maybe only with a tiny change three more times, and then the author says they made a three minute song. At one point, the song changes, so it never gets really boring. It’s already going through my head. I plan to use this in one of my levels if the theme of it matches the theme of this song.

Download reccomendation : Definetely. Keep up el work de godo.

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Townsville ][ Evening
Level rating: 7.9
Rating
N/A

Ooh.. I like this version =) I always thought the night version was a bit too dark, but this one is just right. Everything has a sort of orange tint to it, like in the evening version of Swamps. Despite all this, the textured background doesn’t look all that great. It’s decent, though. I like the mask messages, as always.
Download reccomendation.
——————————————-
PHT, check all these things.
1.) Flipped animating tiles.
2.) A textured background with no tiles.
3.) Tile width and/or tile height set on layer 4.
4.) One of the ambient sounds that crashes the game placed (see Stronghold: Jazz for a list; look on the links section. Or you can look for my upload with a list of these).
5.) A song that is either too big in filesize or too long.
6.) An insanely large layer size (like around 1000×1000 or something… really big).
7.) If you freezed a gem ring while testing (probably not it).
8.) If someone hax0red your computer and joined your single player game and lasered your server.

That’s really all I can think of now… check all those and tell me if that helps you out.[This review has been edited by labratkid]

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Jazz Paradise
Level rating: 9
Rating
8.5

The last time I reviewed, the Germans were in the process of capturing Berlin (a long time ago, okay?). So, my comrades, it’s time to review.

Good tilesets deserve long reviews, I always say. I was originally planning for this to be long, but I’m going to cut it short, and turn it into a medium review.

Colors – Very good
A nice, colorful tileset. I see red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, grey, sea green, turquoise, tan, white, maroon… you get the idea. Very colorful.

Graphics – Good
There are a lot of colors, yes, but the graphics aren’t very detailed. They still look nice, though. Simple graphics can look better than extremely detailed graphics sometimes. There’s tons of stuff in this tileset, ranging from fancy orange and red carpet (I think) blocks to colorful and blocky, blinking conrete (I think) blocks. The carpet blocks have 45 degree slopes, 60 degree slopes, and 30 degree slopes, while the concrete blocks only have 45 degree slopes. Most level makers will probably use both varieties a lot. There’s a dartboard, balloons, destruct blocks, hooks… but, what’s this? Moving hooks! The hooks are placed on balloons, and thus you can make them hover up and down a bit. There are pillars, fireworks for the background, a large variety of coins, some mix and match signs (for example, you can write “WE ALL LOVE DEVAN and WE ALL LOVE DEVAN, and so on. Lots of fun there. There are palm trees (that blink, yay!), some clear brick-like tiles (unmasked). There’s a castle with mountains for the background, and a nice blue textured background. We’ve got spikes, flowers, neon signs with Jazz, Spaz, and Lori’s mugs on them, giant cards, giant dice. Oh, yes, and there’s water for the background in addition to the castle and mountains. There are giant pool balls, neon blinking arrows, and… I’m really wasting my time. Why don’t you just download the tileset and find out for yourself?

Animations – Very good
I like the animations here a lot. There are tons and tons of them. Probably the most I’ve ever seen. Neonius, this tileset, and Reactor Core have probably the most animations in any tilesets. They all look great, excluding maybe the coins. The coins could use more frames in them. It looks like they spin around a bit too fast, especially when they are approaching and leaving the state where they look like this… | … you can only see the sides of them. At that state, you can chose to have the backside of the coin look differnet. In other words, you could have a coin with Spaz on heads, and Lori on tails, Jazz on heads, nothing on tails, etc. Very customizable. There are loads of other animations, too, but I’m too lazy to write more about them.

Masking – Very good
Masking is great, very smooth. My only complaint is that you didn’t include any balloons that you could stand on top of. That’s probably the only thing that bothered me at all in the mask. Other than that, it’s awesome.

Palette events – Good
Jungle poles work and psych poles work. The other poles do not work. The snow is blue, and looks good. I’m not sure if the snow being blue was accidental or not, but it matches the background. All the pinball events look great. Good job there.

Oh, and the tileset has plenty of eyecandy tiles. I’d like to point out to everyone that the reason that this is TSF is because of a combination of large size and a surplus of animations. If this were 1.23, you wouldn’t be able to fit in very many animations. I’m not even sure if you could fit this into 1.23, anyway. I would use this if it was 1.23 and 1.23 had room for more animations, but I’m afraid this is TSF, and I don’t want to make levels for TSF. Most of my major beta testers only have 1.23, anyway (Blacky and FS, for example).

Anyway… .Download or not? I guess so :-)

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Invisible Battle
Level rating: 1.8
Rating
2

No scrolling marquee allowed on J2O. D= I think. Anyway, I haven’t reviewed in a while. Here goes.

Gameplay – Very bad
Well, I can’t even SEE where I’m going. Other than that, the level has no real gameplay or flow to it. It could be remotely fun, but not for long. If you ask any good battle / CTF level maker, they’ll tell you that the easier it is to get around a level, the better (in most cases). This one is extremely difficult to navigate.

Eyecandy – Very bad
It’s not like you’re using any visible blocks besides some number blocks in the foreground and background, and a non-textured background in layer eight. You could’ve atleast picked a tileset with a working textured background so the level would look SORT of good.

Ammo placement – Okay
The thing I like the most about this level is the ammo placement, simply because it gives you a hint (a rather small hint, but a hint), as to what’s solid and what’s not. Electroblasters can be fun to play with in here, since you can shoot through the invisible blocks with them.

Overall – Bad
This level looks like around a 2.0. Maybe that’s a little too high, though… don’t give up making levels. Everyone starts somewhere. Take Snooz for example. His first levels were awful, (no offense, Snooz) and now he’s a great level maker.
Download reccomendation – No

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Commander Keen 4 (re-uploaded three times)
Level rating: 7.8
Rating
N/A

Niek: There are poles in this tileset (V-Poles, H-Poles, Diamondus Poles, Carrotus Poles… basically all the poles). The backgrounds were taken from Commander Keen 4, not JJ2. The textured background is heavilly edited and was orginally from my Earthworm World tileset.

Sonictth: The music used in the example levels is the exact same music used in Keen 4. You’re not allowed to take off or give points for anything example level rated, anyway.[This review has been edited by labratkid]

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: No Sense Station
Level rating: 6.1
Rating
N/A

Lies. What I said was that if people take off points for the seeker powerup, you don’t have to worry about it.

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: A funny game with Spaz and Carrots.
Level rating: 3.7
Rating
N/A

I think that you are trying to bump the carrots so they will stay up. You don’t want the carrots to touch the bottom.

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: The Updated Version of Welcome To Garden and Garden At Night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Level rating: 4
Rating
N/A

Well, since I don’t have time for a review, I’m just going to comment on these levels since Bjarni asked me to. They’re pretty fun to play, but they’re really small. The eyecandy isn’t all that bad, either. They’re really small, though. Bjarni, you should try to make bigger levels. The bigger the better, most people say. Overall, these are two small, but fun levels. No download reccomendation, really, but if you’re a Bjarni fan, you can download these.[This review has been edited by labratkid]

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Mez Reloadet
Level rating: 3
Rating
2.7

I’ll give this a quick review because I want to even out the ratings. 8.2 is just too overrating this tileset.

Graphics – Most of them are ripped and edited poorly. Very ugly looking.

Animations – Not too good. There are some neat animations here, but I must say, the fire looks like a guy with really long red hair headbanging to Mudvayne.

Masking – What is not automasked, which isn’t much, is masked really oddly. I’m not too sure why the waterfalls were masked with numbers, for example. There are lots of rough edges and other bad stuff.

Stuff – Well, there’s no background, so that means there’s no textured background. Pinball stuff, poles, snow, etc. do not work, either. There are no vines, hooks, although tile 6, 38 could ALMOST pass for a vine.

Download reccomendation – Nope[This review has been edited by labratkid]

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: Enemy Arena
Level rating: 1.5
Rating
1.5

Simple enough… a small part of the level is just a normal single player level, and a smaller part of the level is a place where you just endlessly shoot at generator enemies with toasters and electroblasters (there are also 1-up and gem crates). If there’s anything else, I missed it.

Eyecandy – Very bad
Most of the tiles are used incorrectly. The background is also rather ugly… there’s not much to say about the eyecandy here since it’s such a small level.
Pros: There have been uglier levels.
Cons: Hideous.

Gameplay – Very bad
Like I already mentioned, the gameplay of this level consists of a small part and a smaller part. At the end, you just fight a bunch of enemies until you die. You could just stand at the left side of them and hit the fire key for hours on end and not die. If you tried to play until you got a gameover (and you were actually trying), it could take weeks. It’s also rather Spaz biased, because Spaz can take out the whole line of enemies in one kick (including kicking the gem crates, getting gems, kicking the 1-up crates, getting 1-ups, and kicking the powerups).
Pros: None.
Cons: Too small… and the level never ends.

Ammo placement – Very bad
This level contains a box of toaster ammo, a gun crate that generates every five seconds, a toaster powerup that generates every five seconds, an electroblaster powerup that generates every five seconds, a gem crate that generates every five seconds, and two 1-up crates that generate every 5 seconds.
Pros: Yay for remembering to put SOME ammo in the level.
Cons: Boooo.

Enemy placement – Very bad
The small part of the level has two sparks and one normal turtle in it (the normal turtle is placed right up against a wall, thus making it so it can’t even move). The smaller part of the level has two tough turtles, two fat chicks, two skeletons, two doggy doggs, two demons, and two stand monkeys (all generating). The demons will not move unless you get near them, which involves you jumping with Spaz, so they are not going to give you trouble. The monkeys don’t seem to like to move, period, so they won’t give you trouble, either. If you jump up and shoot the monkeys and demons, though, they will begin to generate on the ground, making the level a bit more challenging, but still overall easy.
Pros: None
Cons: ;(

Overall – Very bad

I’m giving this a 1.5… I’m not sure if it even deserves that.

Download reccomendation – No[This review has been edited by labratkid]

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: The Life of the Foundry
Level rating: 5
Rating
3.5

Quick review here. I wouldn’t review if the author wasn’t breaking so many rules. Those who break rules must be SMITED ;D

Eyecandy – Okay
Rather ugly… there’s not much, I’ll tell you that. Put some more decorations and such in the level.

Gameplay – Bad
Bad gameplay… easy level, and it’s really small. It takes about 1 minute to beat the level. Make the level bigger, harder, and more fun in general if you want a higher rating from me here.

Ammo placement – Bad
What is there is placed in really big groups. And there isn’t much. Overall, the ammo placement is really bad.

Overall: Bad

Download reccomendation : No[This review has been edited by labratkid]

Review by Lark

Posted:
Posted more than 20 years ago
For: The Cola Wars (Episode I)
Level rating: 3.2
Rating
3.5

Quick review here, again.

Eyecandy – Very bad
The tileset is not used correctly. Many people try making the ground out of blocks rather than just using one block for everything… that probably confused you. In other words, don’t just use the same block over and over again. ..whatever. Anyway, the background is not good at all. You could’ve put soda bubbles or something… what you have there is just a plain old layer 8 background.

Gameplay – Bad
Buggy and bad. The level is also rather small. It’s possible, at one point, to jump off the edge of the level as Spaz. It also took me a while to figure out how to beat the level. Jazz will have a hard time beating this, unless you know how to use his super speed.

Enemy placement – Bad
Way too easy.

Overall – Bad
This level is fun, but it’s way too small. Make bigger levels and I’ll give you a higher rating. Don’t be discouraged. Keep making levels.

Download reccomendation – No.

Dx: Not neccasarilly (sp?). In Doom, episodes are 9 levels. In Quake, episodes are all different amounts of levels. In JJ2, the episodes are 6 levels, except for Flashback, which has 7. Lots of people call levels episodes (like my dad).[This review has been edited by labratkid]

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 19