Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I have two pithy thoughts here: the last modified dates for most of these files (mostly 2015-2019) are sad to look at, and it's an interesting pack that mostly reviews itself. The detailed readme gives sonicnathan's thoughts on all these levels individually, written years after they were made, in enough detail that I don't really think I need to do the same. I'll give some general thoughts but I'm not going to touch on every level one at a time, other reviewers may definitely want to though, there's a lot of variation here.

The earlier non-story levels, with the Colon tileset, do some interesting things with frogs and queens and so on, but they're mostly linear left-to-right single player experiences. They have a lot of block tiles, often the wrong ones, because Colon (like most official tilesets) doesn't have dedicated tiles for trigger scenery, and no one in 2015 would seriously entertain the idea of a ColonButWithTriggerScenery.j2t. That's an early way the episode shows its age, technologically speaking. Later there's a warning telling players not to save in a level because it's too big, which is no longer an issue, and the Bees event is used for wall/ceiling spikes, and stuff like that. It's all perfectly playable but one does occasionally remember that some problems have been solved in the last 5-10 years. The readme calls some of this out too, including a couple sequences where you need to shoot empty air to make small platforms appear, which gets you stuck if you happened to be inside the platform at the time.

The shooting-empty-air sequences are a great segue into one of this episode's main design principles, what I tend to think of as "mind reading" design, in that you have to be able to read sonicnathan's mind—or, realistically, just shoot and stomp every surface—in order to progress sometimes. There are a lot of things that would count as obscure secrets in other contexts but here are mandatory. What bothers me about these areas is how large they are, you're not just checking each wall in a room, you're wandering the entire level (that you've unlocked so far). One particular example: in the Ship Wreck, there's a one-tile-wide invisible hole in the ceiling. Initially it's walled off by a trigger scenery tile (which looks like a speed block), so if you see that and take note of it and remember which part of the ceiling it was at, you're good! Otherwise you're in trouble. Sometimes help strings or arrow signs will clue you in when you need to stomp a bit of floor, sometimes they won't. There are several more-or-less blind mazes scattered through the pack as well.

A random thought: for all that this is a single player episode, these elements remind me of something like Cracco World of Coins, or the UR Orbs levels. There, some of the progression is equally arcane, but because many players are exploring the same area at once, they can use chat to share discoveries and get everyone to the finish faster. Here you're more on their own. Also, because checkpoints don't do a good job of saving trigger scenery states, often the pack will make you spend many minutes in a row tracking down secret after secret, all the while dodging enemies and spikes, knowing that death will reset all your progress.

That's the negative. Even when the levels do give you hints, like saying a 'lower door' has opened, the hints are often hard to follow. As the pack progresses, linearity gives way to opaque confusion, the platformer equivalent of pixel hunting in adventure games. It's a distinct level design style for sure, it's clearly very intentional, it's part of the grand tradition of taking JJ2 levels in different directions than the official levels intended… it just kind of wears on me personally. I think without the checkpoint problem, and with slightly smaller areas to explore, I'd be fine, I'd regain the thrill of discovery and exploration, but there's just a little bit too much stacked against it right now, especially in the Top Secret level.

The positive is that there is still cool stuff in here! I'm naturally biased, but the Crysilis level is really pretty! There are so many different eyecandy elements thrown all over the level, and yet it rarely feels unapproachable. Yes, it can be hard to keep track of where you need to go next, but there's inventive design and cool platforming sequences! The background is surprisingly detailed for Crysilis too, and the number of enemies seem generally well matched to the ammo.

The readme mentions inspiration from EvilMike's episodes, and this is particularly obvious in the intro/outro text, but also in the use of specific weapons to gate progress, like descending through the level to find a single toaster pickup to blast through some toaster blocks. This is still rare enough to feel cool, I think! It does have the issue where you'll get only 3 or 6 rounds of a weapon, and need to spend every single one of them on the blocks, and definitely not slip up and kill an enemy instead—but in general the ammo and the blocks are close enough together that people probably won't make mistakes.

The readme isn't kind to the Chemical Labs level toward the end, which is mostly storytelling instead of gameplay, but I like it… it's a good example of level design as storytelling, working together with the more traditional text strings. (Levels in general are laid out differently from each other, befitting their tilesets and their story roles.) And then there's a kinda cutscene level afterwards that feels like an Another Story throwback.

For all that the more opaque puzzle solving didn't fully land for me, again, there's other good experimentation going on, like the queens early on. It's that skill of looking at what an event does and thinking about how it could be used, which can be different from how it was supposed to be used. The boss battles do a lot of this too, using flailerangs as added sources of danger, like the monks from Time Tripping. And there's a lot more pepper spray here than in most custom levels, acknowledging that it can be used as a sort of blaster powerup with finite ammo, good against tuf turtles (but also dragonflies).

I don't have much to comment on about the story, though it's neat that the readme goes into detail about what episodes 3 and 4 might have covered. Some of the asides are neat, like the hologram sequence. In general, Jazz is being a hero and Devan is being evil and has lots of evil plans and resources. It suffers from the same problem as a lot of similarly-plotted episodes in that Devan himself is mostly absent, you just get a disembodied voice from time to time, threatening evil against you.

Overall, this is definitely an episode with highs and lows, and I'm having trouble condensing all that into a rating, a number. It's a custom episode in the grand history of many custom episodes, a struggle between good and evil, a classic that we almost never got to see. It's a tour through complex layouts in varied locales, with puzzles to solve and enemies to kill (though that's rarely the focus). It runs a full gamut between basic linear design and whatever the opposite of that is, and therefore, no matter what your favorite point on that scale is, at some point in this pack you're going to encounter areas that are NOT that.

I’m not thrilled with the secret level entrances, particularly the Tubelectric one, but I guess they’re not horribly out of line with existing JJ2 secrets… if this were really part of the game, eventually players would have found them over a period of months or whatever. Still, more visual cues would have been nice I think. But whatever that’s not the focus here.

Far Out is actually pretty good in terms of new event placement while sticking to the existing psych3 level. There’s a decent variety of pickups and enemies, and the little pipe organs on the platforms after the warp target are a good touch that make that area much more interesting to navigate. The new parts of the layout kind of lose me, though. The idea of warping through a bunch of little rooms (kind of like in Medivo1) is nice but eventually I got tired of hunting for trigger crates, and there are too many invisible warps and weird blocks that need to be destroyed or removed in unpredictable ways.

The other, all-new level here, though, Pinball Land, I actually really liked. Toward the end it gets annoying in the part when you track down four trigger crates behind lots of layer3 and stuff, but the rest of the level is I think a really good take on a Tubelectric secret level. There are clever pinball tables, and crucially, they’re not all at once, they appear from time to time within the level so they don’t get stale. There are spike platforms, one of Tubelectric’s other main unique features. Goodies feel fairly plentiful and the graphics are nice and varied. This is a nice one.

Did you know that if you run with sugar rush into a laser, you will fly up, and your score will be increased greatly? :D

Hey PT32. Since this is so helpful why didn’t you rate it 10 or any other greater rate than 5.3?? I say that every guy on j2o interessed to make a colonius level should get this thing. It rearranged the ornamental bircks that were such a drag and it has some other stuff that helps a lot. I think it deserves a 7 to 8 so I give 7.7. Haha, “7.7” looks like a face of an emo guy crying.

Nice conversion,congratulation!
(Sorry my eng im kid)

I downloaded this tileset and I liked it.
Congrats.

(Sorry for my English, I’m Turkish.)

most of these come from the converting process. Not much i can do. Also birldland wasn’t meant to changed. It was only make assessable from the first labrat level.

there’s a problem.
1) In far out in most of the places JCS gives error and stops responding and in gameplay soon after start i get access violation.
2) I don’t see anything changed in Birdland.
3)On psych 3 JCS on save & run sais there are unknown references.

cool levels!

Yeah well it hardly matters. The whole idea was to just rearrange it made it easier to use as I made 2 levels with colonial, and it was hell. Also it hardly matters for added tiles, I only had like 12 more tiles I could add anyway as I was on the tileset limit. :)

This is a good fix of the Colon tilesets.
Everything is re-arranged so that you can find the tiles more easily.
However, it could probably do with a Keyhole block and the V & H-Poles.
One noticable thing about this set is that the flames can now be used in the Day version.
If you find Colon hard to use, I recommend getting this tileset.
I did help out with this though, so it’s probably best that I don’t rate this.
Still, this is a good fix of the original Colon sets which were messy in terms of how the tiles were arranged.

Well, I promised a review, so here is a review!
At first glance, Sonicnathan1’s fixup of the Colonius tileset appears to be simply a rearrangment of the tiles, along with some clever masking speeches. And after examining it myself, I have come to the conclusion that…….that’s all it really is. Not to offend SN, who happens to be a chum of mine. I do have to admit, though, it IS a good fix. The tiles have been set in a much more accessible and more friendly way [the tileset was pure crud before in terms of organization], which is good. Colors are okay, not really any noticeable bugs, it looks pretty good.l However, there really aren’t any fluff tiles in this set, like custom eyecandy and the like, which saddens me, considering the enormous amount of possibilities for this there are. Still, it is a great fixuppage of the set, and I will give it a 5.3 and a DL rec, if just because it’s a promising reconstruction of a nice set. Gj!

Well we got some good, some bad and some ugly here.

Good: I love the concepts behind these and they are very fun to play, and appear as Epic would have done them

Bad: Masking is buggy in places, excessive enemies in places

Ugly: Although they work in Jazz2, most will not open through JCS{specifically Labrat1, Psych2, Psych3). AS well, there are several places where it looks like there was supposed to be tiles but they are missing.

I would rate down alot because of that, but these are both negative side effects of using ZapS’s TSF to 1.23 convertor, as for now i will assume it was converted from 1.24.

Despite this, try it out using homecooked or captain cook (or even replace in your campaign) as these are all entertaining in the classic campaign sense.

Ok, so I helped create this, and I guess I can’t rate it. But I would like to leave a comment.

To be entirely honest, when I first learned what sonicnathan was trying to do, I had no idea why. I never thought of Colonius as a particularly broken set. I rarely used it, but didn’t notice mask problems or anything that seemed to be in need of a change. The levels I had played with it seemed perfectly good.

However, as I started to make the mask, and really had to pay attention to the details, I understood the fix. I found a couple of random problems in masks, such as inconsistencies in the benches, and a section of the background that was auto-masked (I’m not sure why it was masked at all). Also, when I would look for a specific tile so I could find exactly what the mask was supposed to be like, they were in really random places. The fixed tileset would be way easier to find tiles in and build levels from.

Therefore, I’d definitely recommend a download if I was allowed to.

PS, I don’t think I deserve too much credit for this. Sonicnathan was the genius behind the ideas, and all I did was some copy/pasting for the tileset.

I will play it with a detailed review

Edit1: This level’s name is “Ep.1 The war begins” by sonicnathan 1.
This level is well tructured and it’s worth playing.
Lvl 1: intro
Lvl 2: This level is very good. Firstly i did not figured out how the get out but the level was ok. I also got killed once which proves that the enemy placement is good, nice eyecandy,nice music but there weren’t too many goodies like carrots 9/10
Lvl 3: the first part was complicated and once i got stuck and couldn’t get out but the rest was good and you’ve put the queen at end which is also good (not to many goodies).8/10
Lvl 4: the level was good but quite buggy. There are things form layer 4 mixed with layer 3(the caves)which didn’t came out right. 8/10
Lvl 5: This lvl was kinda big and almost half of it is just covered space but i have to admit: I almost got lost in there. But there is still a problem: too buggy! I got stuck again. 6/10
Lvl 6: This one and Lvl 7 were very complex, but you could just use Hurt modifiers those rays not bees, but they hurt too. 8/10
Lvl 8: was nice too and you’ve put the schwarzenguard as an end for the level pack.9/10
Fine music, good score 10/10
Downlaod recommendation: yes
(must have it)
rating:57/70=8.1

An update of Sonicnathan’s episode.
Eyecandy looks good. Gameplay has been improved, there is not as many invisible mazes as before. Crate puzzles are not too hard.
Loading a game in Area 51 causes Access Violations and Stack Overflows so a Save Point before that level would be a good idea.
DL Recommended!
Rating: 7.5

This is an edit of the last version [I don’t know if it is still up], so I will address the revisions:

Masking bugs: most of these have been fixed. There’s one tiny spot in Castle Escape, but it’s not very big and can slide.
Crate puzzles: These have [for the most part] been made a lot easier. The Carrotus Gate one is still tricky, but no longer hopelessly so. The Castle Escape one is equally tricky, but now at least you can SEE the crate…
GJ, Dl rec, and an improved rating of 7.2!

I think this is a very good tileset by Sonicnathan 1. The set is good, but needs an example level. I told you about some other things [textured bg, doubled arrows, etc.] in my pm, so no repeating necessary.

Colors were excellent, masking good as well, gave me the feeling of being in Deckstar. But, not a huge amount of fluff tiles, [I did not say NONE, I said NOT A LOT] and only one type of background make me sad. It seems to be missing something, and this might be it.
There was an example level in the previous one, but not this one. That can be hard, as I had to place tiles in a usable level myself. Still, good set, worth a dl.

Argh, frustrating. oO This level is actually very short, but the playing time is increased significantly because you either die all the time or don’t know what to do.

It uses Blur’s Castle edit and doesn’t look too shabby, with a cool background and nice tileset use. What bugs me is that the level is very hard in a frustrating way. The paths are very narrow and filled with enemies, collapse scenery, spikes and more objects of torture. There are also many barriers that have to be broken either by finding trigger crates or the right weapon to shoot them with. Those keys are often hidden evilishly, and I found myself running (and dying) around a lot until I found one of the secret passages. At one point pretty early into the level there’s a text sign reading that you have to destroy the blocks in the order 4,5,6,0. I stood around puzzled for quite some time until I realized those numbers described the weapons I had to find and use (4=seekers, 5=RF, etc.). The endboss, which came earlier than expected, was a bolly with a few tufs in an arena that made me just stomp bolly repeatedly next to the respawning carrot instead of fighting “honestly” with my gun.

I like challenges, but this one is just too frustrating. And while it won’t take too long to beat it if you try, it’s still rather annoying being lost as what to do or killed all the time.

I had prefered a longer level that is less crowded with evil stuff, so the hard parts could alternate with some less bloodthirsty ones to give the player a break.

Download if you like.

edit

Before I forget, the level is actually hidden from the home cooked list, so it requires you to go into JCS and edit it first. I don’t get why people are doing this all the time, why do you check options if you don’t even know what they do?

A nice decent Single Player level. Backgrounds look great and I love the lightning effect.
There are some nice puzzles where you have to find Trigger Crates and also get certain ammo to proceed.
Some players might find mazes a bit annoying but all in all, a decent level.
Boss arena was not too hard as there were plenty of carrots.
7.8/10