Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

YaY, I’m the 1st reviewer! ^__ Here goes:

Installation went fine, with a readme.

INSTALLATION RATING: +

Great eyecandy. Could’ve been improved a little in some places, but, eh. Close enough. Good job.

EYECANDY: 2.7/3

Well, navigation varied in levels. Most were fairly difficult, and others you mainly jetted around in tubes/warps. I wouldn’t reccomend beginning on these levels for CTF (who does? =P), but they can be great for an advanced group. Interesting form, too. The weapons had fairly decent placement, but lacked synchronization with the carrot(s) and powerups were kind of an issue in number and placement. The carrots were placed well but sometimes overabundant or too sparce.

WEAPONS: 1.3/2
NAVIGATION/CARROTS: 3.1/4
SUBTOTAL: 4.4/6

Nice but hard. Had a polished feel. Super. The tube level and slight difficulty brought it down a tad, though.

OVERALL “FEELING”: 0.8/1

Strong d/l reccomendation. You’ve got some solid CTFs, some of which are very worthy of your string. Mucho fun awaits.

TOTAL SCORE: 7.9/10
ROUNDED SCORE: 8/10
[This review has been edited by SteelTalon]

Agh, look what a night gave me. I would’ve been the first to review this, but, eh. Here goes, in my special new Race rate format:

Installation went fine, with a fairly decent readme. ^__
The only downside was all of the levels showed in the Custom Level menu and there wasn’t a level to start at (at least without reading the readme). Overall, not perfect, but over-average.

INSTALLATION RATING: +

Eyecandy wasn’t too bad, but nothing special. Enough to stay away from the blandness feeling and the occasional great eyecandy… it needs a bit more work in the “white spots” to get that 3, though.

EYECANDY: 2.2/3

Track design was varied. Some were very enjoyable, some were boring, some were buggy, and some were just plain bad. Weapon placement was either overdone or not there at all (sometimes not really needed) with the occasional good placement… not much to say without saying too much, if you get what I mean. Some levels had so many tubes etc. you barely got to PLAY the level, you were mostly watching, hehe. A bonus fraction of a point for being largely original, too.

WEAPONS: 1.2/2
TRACK DESIGN: 2.4/4
SUBTOTAL: 3.3/6

Music choice was excellent, and it felt pretty good but rushed in some areas. But you actually finished a decent sum of levels. Nice. O__o

OVERALL “FEELING”: 0.8/1

My closing comments? Download this. It may not be the best Race pack you’ll ever play, but it certainly is fun and worth it. Good job.

TOTAL SCORE: 6.6/10
ROUNDED SCORE: 6.7/10

Well, I’ve been behind on my Rate of the Week lately so I thought I’d give one out early. Oh, I also rated how easy it was to install/download/the help file, now, too (called the install rating). It doesn’t go towards the level rating, tho. It is basically an out of three thing, with the highest rating +, then =, then -. If it is just so bad it doesn’t even deserve a rating it gets a _. Not too hard. Here goes:

First off, the new catagory. Well, the levelmaker convienently added the music file in the .zip… the one that came with JJ2. I had to sit through an extra few minutes of downloading (notice my slow modem) because of a file I already had. Marked off heavily just for that. The installation itself went smoothly, though, thankfully. On the other hand, though, the .txt file was brief, had no information about the level and was more of a plea to me on how to do “hollow stuff” than to help me or give me any information even remotely useful.

INSTALL RATING: -

Ick. Just eminates the feel of rushing. At least the background was original, and at least he tried to put out eyecandy, but it didn’t really put together smoothly. Not alot to say here, except “NEEDS WORK”.

EYECANDY: 0.5/3

Ooh, it hurts here. Bad design for a battle level with crates… just to get to useless TNT?!?!? Powerups were littered everywhere, and it looked like a mess. The layout itself wasn’t too bad except the carrot placement sucked and it needed to be smoothed out in a few places to be adequate for a Battle level.

WEAPONS: 0.2/2
NAVIGATION/CARROTS: 1/4
TOTAL LAYOUT: 1.2/6

Eminated cruddiness, as said before, but surprisingly it didn’t feel that bad. Probably because the effort was there. Effort is what really counts here(to some extent, heheh), so that’s why it’s fairly graded high here.

OVERALL “FEEL”: .7/1

Closing Remarks: I’m sorry, but this is definitely not worth your download. A bit of the trouble was lack of experience with JCS (“how do you do hollow stuff?”), but that doesn’t make it any better. Heck, this is worse than my first level, and that thing SUCKED. Ironically, it’s not as boring, but at least mine was PLAYABLE. Nice try, but really, I think you should have kept this as a test level and put your resources into a project the public would actually want to play.

TOTAL SCORE: 2.4/10
ROUNDED SCORE: 2.5/10
INSTALL RATING: -

DADADADA… it’s time for ST’s random rate of the week again! This time, it’s early! YaY.

First on the agenda is eyecandy. Good, but could be improved in a few places. There were some annoying tricks and a few monotonous eyecandy pieces.

EYECANDY: 2.5/3

Now, about layouts. If I could sum it up in one word, it’d be "almost". This level feels a bit loose and open in some places. It almost seems like if you pulled a drawstring it’d tighten up and be great. Carrots were in niches, and a few places were one-way streets. Pretty average. Weapons were very overused and in funky formations. No useless TNT, though. Coins were a bit hard to get, and I didn’t like those sucker tubes just in the middle of the ground.

WEAPONS: .8/2
NAVIGATION/CARROTS: 2/4

TOTAL LAYOUT: 2.8/6

The overall feel of this level feels incomplete. The level gives off a sense of being thrown together and basically, "missing a roof". You’d think it was half-done if you were going on gut feeling alone. Good, but it’s missing something…

OVERALL "FEEL": .5/1

Closing Remarks: It’s got it’s "15 minutes of fun", but it isn’t really tight and smooth enough to put on your "favorites" list. Nice effort, overall. I still can’t shake that there was that notion to get a polished feel on a half-finished level, though…

TOTAL SCORE: 5.8/10
ROUNDED TOTAL: 5.7

And it’s time for ST’s random rate of the week again. A day late, but still here. A few minor changes from last week’s episode, but they don’t amount to much. Oh, BTW, if a score comes out that isn’t on that pulldown bar, it gets rounded to the nearest # (although that didn’t happen today).

Okie, first off, eyecandy. Nice. The food helps for eyecandy (at least it has somewhat of a use). Everything else looks great. It ain’t perfect, but it’s darn close.

EYECANDY: 2.8/3

2nd stop: Layout. I’m pretty happy with the layout in this level. It’s really easy to get around, and a good, varying amount of building style. The carrots are placed fairly well (although not perfect), too. In some places it’s a bit too easy to navigate, sometimes a slightly low jump seems a bit too repeatitive, or an extra spring here or there. Overall, the problems are VERY minor problems. The weapons are the weak link of this level, though. They are very overused, and the the large amount of fastfires right by the blaster powerup is just ASKING for a broken combo. The warp spots, including the bonus bunny, are LOADED with powerups/ammo. I think a few powerups shoulda been taken out, and placed where some of that food was. Oh, there was also useless TNT in here. I always mark down a tad if there is TNT in there and it isn’t really useful.

WEAPONS: .8/2
NAVIGATION/CARROTS: 3.7/4

TOTAL LAYOUT: 4.5/6

In summary, this level is great. Quite an improvement from the original, I must say. Mmm, nostalgia. =D The only thing that brought down the “feel” was the food, which annoys me in multi. Overall, a good download it. A good level for a few games of fun, although the slightly-above average replayablity isn’t as stunning as, say, Where Warriors Fall (ironic I’m comparing this, heh heh heh) or Battle1.

OVERALL “FEEL”: .7/1

Closing Remarks: At least download it for the nostalgia. It’s a good level though, even if you weren’t here when it was originally released. =P

TOTAL SCORE: 8/10

And it’s time for ST’s random rate of the week (now using the patented UnBiased RateSys™Technology!). Yes, I will be doing a random rate using this "technology" (actually my rating system) every week now. Woo.

First of all, I’d like to say this was a great effort w/ the Psych TS. A bit underused, and a bit hard to use, but Distruct defenitely used it excellently, putting everything in their right spots and not overusing any/all of the tiles.

EYECANDY: 3/3

The layout, though, is where it starts to fall apart. There is only 1 start pos, if my testing was correct, and it seems a bit one-dimensional playing (a bit more interconnection via suckertubes may have been nice). I personally don’t like this navigation (ZA style) used this heavily, so the mark goes down there a tad, too. And I think the weapons were just a slight bit too sparce, but not too bad. The carrot was well placed, though, may I say something in favor of the level.

WEAPONS: 1.2/2
NAVIGATION: 2/4
TOTAL LAYOUT: 3.2/6

In conclusion, this was a pretty fun level, but it really didn’t "hit the spot". Try for a little more variety in the tight/loose gameplay department, and the variety of events should be expanded just slightly.

OVERALL "FEEL": 0.5/1

Closing Remarks: A good download. D/L it and host it for some variety in your servers. ^__

TOTAL SCORE: 6.7/10

He rises again to update his review…

Installation was fine. Nothing special but good.

INSTALLATION RATING: +

Great eyecandy. Eyecatching original efforts and great use of tiles. Several minor errors knock this down ever so slightly.

EYECANDY: 2.9/3

Perfect routes. Period.
Perfect carrot placement. Period.
Perfect weapon balance. Period.

WEAPONS: 2/2
NAVIGATION/CARROTS: 4/4
SUBTOTAL: 6/6

More spit-polished than a shoeshine rag.

OVERALL “FEELING”: 1/1

Such insanely good levels. Download, download, download!

TOTAL SCORE: 9.9/10
ROUNDED SCORE: 10/10[This review has been edited by SteelTalon]

Awesome. Everything is great… only thing that could make it better is some new tilesets etc… but of course kudo’s for actually getting your pack DONE (unlike me, I mean) stripe (and with so many levs). =)

Ok, so I’m slightly biased, ELM is good. Wait, no I’m not biased, these levels ARE that good! =)

(this review goes a tad down because of confusing Jungle backgrounds, and that cheap water route in Happy Desert)