Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

This level is nothing short of amazing, as is often the case when a skilled JCS’er picks a good tileset like Desolation.

The extreme level of detail proves what the Desolation tileset is capable of in the right hands, and this is just hammered into the player’s mind the longer you play the level.

The ONLY thing I don’t like about this level is that it’s passworded. That is always a mistake, and in this case, limits the level to a maximum of 9.0, but it would get 9.7 from me otherwise.

I’m quite heavy-handed with bad tilesets and stupid acts (passwording levels is a stupid act), but thankfully, this isn’t too much of a problem this time.

[Please rate levels for what they are, not if they’re passworded or not. ~cooba]

Wow thats cool!!!

Funny idea about seasons.
Here my ratting
Tileset – 75%
Level – 70%
Layer – N/A
Excuse me, where i can get
this tileset..?

VERY NEED!!!

I have not time for a longer review, but I just wanted to say good job, most of the fixables were addressed in Crimi and Cooba’s respective reviews. But great concept, fairly nice execution and dl rec!

Now I can rest assured that my claim about Desolation being very flexible turned out to be true…

This level is plain insane. The idea of having gateways leading to different planets is very impressive, and manages to be pulled off fairly well in most instances—Starshine Valley being probably my favorite. The music choice is also contributing to the feel, using the same track as Unreal’s NyLeve Falls is a cheeky reference to how that level and this are very much about exploration.

However, there are some mistakes that break the immersion – the fact that players are apparently able to travel between one area and another without using the gateways, and that most “planets” feature the same white colored background, which which wrongly implies that all the places are located close to eachother rather than light years apart.

Some planets don’t look very appealing either – the Temple of the Ambient Moon, while a well done concept, it falls short in terms of eyecandy, by being rather bland and too open. The hyperstation core one, while it features extreme amounts of detail, overall it looks too cartoony with the red/blue/counter tiles used seemingly randomly.

Now onto the gameplay… I can’t say I’ll be sure to play this level in a game. Six control points is a /lot/, I honestly advise people to treat 3 points as a standard maximum. Anyway, I’m not going to get into all six into detail – what I noticed in general is that they appear in rather cramped spots (Gnome Hyperstation being a bad example), which will cause a bunch of “khaos” in-game.

Some design ideas were just not good: secret powerup stashes, scarce and randomly scattered ammo, ricochets (prone to cause fake health), the water shield (not the best idea in Domination), no carrots (?), a control point that’s randomly accessed (???). I can understand that the powerup stashes were there to put even more emphasis on exploration, but I advise you to fix everything else I listed ;)

Overall, this is a highly inventive level, which unfortunately went further with the idea than with the execution. My final advice is: don’t make more content than is needed, and focus on what you already have — in this case I’d have preferred less planets but connected in more intuitive ways. And don’t stop making crazily themed levels like this!

EDIT: In hindsight, I overrated this a slight bit. A 7 should be okay. Sorry ):

Whadda we have here? A new Domination level? Sounds good, let’s download this.

Gameplay: Very original
I can’t figure out where to start explaining. The concept… wow, it’s just a really good concept! There are six different areas that you can go to, and in every are there’s a control point and a distinctive ammo type. Kind of like a ‘native fruit’ to the area. (Does that mean trading these ammo with other areas will make you money?… never mind…) The six areas are connected by big, red warp zones, which will confuse you a LOT at first. It’s really hard to learn a clear route, which will make a lot of games in this map frustrating, confusing and chaotic. Maybe you should draw a map… Yeah, just a simple Paint or Photoshop job would do the trick, I guess.

The individual areas all seem like a part of a single player campaign. The areas are rugged, not smooth like multiplayer maps. This can lead to getting distracted and losing your run speed in block-y obstacles, straight end walls and warp zones. Especially the Moon zone, where everything is made of brick and slopes are Only used on the upper level of the cave. Holding the jump button will get you across slopes, but it will still be sloppy and when you don’t start at the bottom, players will find themselves climbing brick after brick after brick.

Ammo is dispersed in distinct areas (for example, for RF ammo you should go to the Starshine Valley). This is fun, since you will be able to tell where someone has been, and… yeah you go for the control points anyway… Sorry, my bad.

An odd thing I found about the ammo placement is a little… well, I think ‘secret’ by the designer, plunK. There’s a certain place where the heroes of RF-climbing gather and steal all power-ups… Muhahaha… Luckily, none of them have any regenerators on them, so it’s a one-time job. May the fastest RF-climber take thy price.

Another odd thing is that plunK actually put a shield in this level. I mean, come on, this isn’t 1998. Shields are considered overpowered, and this one is available with the Electro Blaster and with TNT. The delay is even set to 31, which is, in my opinion, way too little concerning the latest JJ2+ update, if you even ponder to use a shield at all. In my opinion, it should be removed, but hey, who am I?

That sums up the gameplay, I guess. It could use a few flow-upgrades and stuff, but otherwise, pretty massive concept. Chapeau!

Atmosphere: insert some joyful statement here
Okay, let me state this really simple. plunK took one tileset, made six different areas and put them all in one level. All of the areas look good, some look amazing, but most of them just look damn fine.

The way he linked all the worlds without a main hub was really good. It felt as if I was traversing enormous lengths of space, since the environment changes drastically every time you warp. Take, for instance, the ‘Random Pipery’ area. This looks like a part from a submarine (or a Dubbed Marine…? Okay never mind) that has been left on the ocean floor to decay with the flow of time. Entering a warp, only a second later you find yourself in a grassy patch with a beautiful skyline, only to see, seconds later, a bridge swinging over a high-tech city in the background. The feel for each area is distinct, clean and well considered. Chocs to you!

The music fits.

Yeah, the music isn’t really anything special, because it’s hard finding music to fit 6 different areas. plunK went for the ambient approach, which I often use myself too. Nice song, goes with the theme a bit (if not exactly) and does the job.

Overall: Good
An overall good level with a high confusion factor, which can be helped by making a map. The DOM points are well distributed over the level, each having advantages, whether it be easy to take or easy to defend. A few flow issues and a shield to spice things up a bit, if not to an unfair level.

Download Recommendation: Yes
Even if you don’t like DOM levels (or just don’t like this level), it’s worth taking a look at. It’s interesting how everything in this level fits.

Score: 8.2
A really well laid out level with a really well concept. This is just fun to play. Chapeau.

I’m Calle by the way. In J2F I am under the title “Beyond”

yeah, sure is.

making your own music is such wonderful :D

hmmm….

[Review changed to quick review. – cooba]

This level has clever ec ideas, and cool looking designs. However, the layout does not flow well, and the overall design is too simple for a level. In other words, the level is just one big circular pattern.

Still, DL this. I hope to see more levels by this author.

plunK showed me this level after a couple hours of work when only a couple platforms were created, and later again in the late stages of beta-testing. It’s a nice, symetrical level with a fairly dark atmosphere.

Gameplay: 8.5/10
This level has a set of powerups that can be accessed only through shooting certain tiles. The triggers are global, which means everyone gains access to the powerups at the same time. This gives the fighting a cool, dynamic aspect. There are a few little places where the tunnels feel a bit constricted, and the level doesn’t flow perfectly in a couple places. Overall, this would definetely be a fun level to host, probably with about four to eight players.

Eyecandy: 9/10
This level has a very good atmosphere, and lots of nice details. It even looks like an eye on JCS when zoomed out. The only reason I don’t give it a perfect ten for eyecandy is that in a few places, walls or platforms can almost blend into the background.

Bug-Free-ness: 5/5
I didn’t find any bugs. There could be some, but everything looks good to me.

Event-Placement: 8/10
The powerups are at the center-top and center-bottom of the level, and cannot be accessed immediately. The rest of the level has a few carrots, and ammo scattered about. The ammo is fairly sparse, which can be a good thing, because people will have to conserve their ammo, adding an extra factor of strategy. The carrots are maybe a hair too easy to access, although with enough players, this wouldn’t be a problem. The biggest potential problem I see is that the blaster powerup is right next to a pile of fastfires. Since the other ammo may be hard to conserve, whoever got this powerup could dominate for a while. However, once one person can get the powerup, so can everyone else, which should cancel this out by the end of a battle.

Total: 8.7/10

This is a very cool level, and definitely should be downloaded and hosted frequently.

Well! nice level here, with some different “minigames”, ranging from find your way out, to get the coins, to climb the water tower [yes, WATER TOWER], there’s about ten different games. The tileset is a bit bland, as is the music, but the level itself, it’s pretty good quality stuff. Eyecandy would also have been appreciated, but it’s good for a preliminery run. Go ahead and DL, folks. It’s great!

Okay, so here we have some pretty sweet stuff. As Bob said, 3 levels, 3 sets, 3 songs [one is a default song], and all of them fairly well done. Pedistal is basically 3 metallic towers, with a deathpit beneath them. This gives it the sort of feel Sector Probe 68-A conveyed. Cage Rage was an industrial/fighting kind of level, with control points inside of boxing ring-like structures. The flipside of this was that once you were inside the cage, there was no leaving until you died. Daemon’s Eye was a castle level, with points inside the castle. Overall, eyecandy was good, music good, tiles good, minimal bugs, but the pack seemed a bit short. Maybe include more levels next time? I dunno. So anyway, I will give you a 8.6!

No 1.23 support. Crusher meh server :(

Add 1.23 support!

thanks for the advice. this was mostly a test to see if the concept was good. When i made it i just used the first 10 minigames ideas i had, although i have about 25-30 to pick from for a final version. I will most likely do like 3 versions of the final product and get testers to pick out the best.

A minigame compilation pretty much lives or dies by its minigames. The concept of having to complete games to win a race is very cool, but many of the minigames here are pretty awful. Im not sure I completed mutation lab correctly (and it also felt quite slow), vault doesn’t seem to work right (and is impossible to return to the top to change the combination), the warp/spring one, the frog game, and moneybags are frustrating, dull, and far too time consuming, and the maze is kind of confusing (why are there two exits if only one works?).

Some people here will be like “focus on the eyecandy!” and I’m here to tell you “NO.” Do not listen to those people. They are bad. For two reasons: 1- This is an in progress proof of concept. 2- Even if they looked pretty, most of these games woukd still suck. I liked the signpost one although the final stage was a bit too complex (there was about 4 different ways those arrows could be interpreted) and I liked the water leveling one.

I think for a race-minigame hybrid to work, the minigames need to be challenging, but at the same time fast-paced. Adding some freeze events into the Signpost game would add some challenge and still keep the speed intact provided the player minded to avoid the hourglasses.

Axe everything but the signpost, water rise, and cat minigames (since those would work well, however at the same time all need some degree of fixing), and try coming up with some speedier concepts for minigames.

I have a seperate idea on how to change the minigame select mechanic although its not really necessary at this point and I doubt you’d want to hear me ramble about it anyways.

WTF? For me, the cuboid crashes the game after about 10 seconds of playing!

PlunK: nope, no weird effects. I just start playing… 10 seconds… CRASH.

I did Know that. I just think they are cool to use as alternative bosses, and I know they aren’t knew, but I haven’t seen them used very much. There is alot of cool stuff you get make usng MCE’s for thosse who know what that is.

For Kax: Is it the screen flicker effect? Part of the cuboids is the screen will go completely multicolored bars( like TV fuzz )and the more you make go berserk(kill all cubes)the more often and longer it lasts. It might be what crashes

For your information: these bosses not exactly new as they’re just respectively old Devan, Bolly, and Uterus with misplaced (uncached) sprites. If you were to put a Devan in the first level, your “Hyper Jazz” would become a Devan. Etc.