Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Hey WaterRabbit, thanks for the feedback. By pressing DOWN you need to stop the platform. The point is to reposition the platform to climb up higher. Then the camera should move back to the character. If it still does not work then please let me know and I’ll try to find a different solution.

Playing through the new version, I seem to be experiencing a bug. In mo4a_0.j2l when I turn on the switch to make the platform move, the camera doesn’t return to the character’s position. I tried using jjk but then I couldn’t move at all.

Nice tileset chandie! I really like this design. I can use it on my future levels.

8.2/10

Download recommended

Is it just me who prefer the old Inferno tileset more than the final one?
Anyway this is a good tileset

I fricking love this tileset

It’s a good conversion, it’s just that the recolored snow “grass” doesn’t look… right.

I never see a green HH98, you also put some new tiles. It’s perfect for a Hub World in Halloween Hare

I played this pack in small doses after it’s release to overcome the repetitiveness that people were experiencing, but I still like to give it a little review.

This episode basically consists of a Carrotus hub world, which leads to 4 worlds somehow inspired by human history and myths. In turn these 4 worlds have their own hub, or Central Area, that leads to several levels. I love how the tilesets used are Chandie’s own arrangements of JJ2’s original sets, often with modified palettes to serve a different purpose and combined with oddly photorealistic looking temple-ish graphics similar to Tomb Rabbit.

The story is basic but slightly more portrayed than your average single player. Jazz and Eva’s daughter got killed by Devan and original character Merlin will help Jazz and Bonus (the Coin Bunny) go back in time to get it undone. For this they need 4 ‘Time Freezers’ scattered in historic locations. For some reason Bonus wants coins for every warp they make. While silly, I liked that Bonus had some character with funny texts and unexpected places where he showed up.

Gameplay mostly involves you searching an area for a lot of trigger switches, which in turn open up the exit or lead to coins needed to go to the next level. Ammo is plenty but other pickups such as food are very scarce. Some levels like Temple of Sun or Alibaba’s Cave are pretty well designed while others, especially the Central Areas, felt more empty and dull. I also disliked the morph sections where you often had to open up an area with Jazz’s high jump, only to return and come back as Spaz to finally get that coin. That often repeated several times in each Central Area.

So long story short, the hub worlds are kind of repetitive and meh, while most ‘real’ levels are pretty good and well-made as vanilla levels.

Level specific things that stood out to me:
Temple of Sun, among some other levels, had nice animated tile traps, as well as Toaster fire cannons.
I liked the perspective of the doors in Cave of Wonders, as well as the pun on the bosses’ name there.
Poseidon Islands had a nice escape level with flashy lights, and cool stuff like that.
The later bosses, Alchemist and the Devan tank thing, were pretty well made.

Specific things I didn’t like:
West Desert had a very unclear long jump, even with the trigger platform slightly giving it away.
Too many trigger switches is a general problem, but Atlantis Central Area topped it all.
Atlantis’ underwater lab had a very unclear path, and no guaranteed TNT to progress.
In general TNT usage was confusing, and hindered progression in Atlantis.
Buddha’s Temple in particular had confusing tile masks a lot.
The ending felt a bit rushed.

Now for some problems:
In Temple of Sun, the last checkpoint gets you stuck in a wall after dying.
The Arabius Intro’s next level leads to itself after pressing ‘space’, but jjnext does work.
The 2nd time in Atlantis Central area, Bonus has incorrect text ID set.
Tibetius has a tube that exits right under a Demon enemy, and it’s easy to get stuck inside the corners of temple roofs.
The 2 times Chandie knew a trigger door was bugged were annoying (in Atlantis’ ship & Buddha’s Temple). Bonus does tell you to walk back a bit to make it work with varying results.
Some music files near the end may be missing?

Overall I do recommend this if you can enjoy vanilla single player, have some patience, and can look through some oddities here and there. This is not Chandie’s ‘ultimate episode’ or something but still worth a play even if you just jjnext the hub worlds to reach the better levels.

I agree with AvalancheMaster and PJ. I’d just like to whine a little bit more about graphics and gameplay.

Whining about grafics.
I highly appreciate the ideas of writing a proper storyline and creating brand-new tileset conversions, but the realisation of the last isn’t that good. The quality of graphic inclusions is far inferior than of the original Nick Stadler’s masterpieces. I think it would be much better just to combine original tilesets with each other – remember Rage of Aquarius or Scorpio Key? They are so harmonic! It would be really great if the inclusions fit the original drawing style but they don’t. And the quality of the recolors isn’t the best I’ve ever seen.

Whining about gameplay.
When I started playing the episode, my first reaction was like “WOW! What a great and original piece of work it is! I wonder why its rating is so low?” However the more I played the more I felt bored and the more I agreed with the rating. After 10th level or so I couldn’t help typing “JJNEXT” just in order to have a glimpse of all of the levels. How many of them you’ve made? 50? Oh, God. Sorry. It’s obvious that you’ve put a lot of effort in them, but the repetiveness kills all the gameplay. It’s simply tedious. Making true single player Jazzers endure this gameplay is like making Usein Bolt search for a lost sock in each of 50 huge and messy rooms. JJ2 is supposed to be a fast paced game, isn’t it?

P.S. It’s not easy to rate this episode as a higher rating could sometimes be given to a small level wich was done in one evening. And you’ve put so much effort in your work. I appreciate your enthusiasm, creativity and diligence!

I agree that the level design is often rather laborious gameplaywise, and visually uneven (some colour mismatching, and that has to be the worst rain effect I’ve ever seen in JJ2). However, I enjoyed the variety of areas and the effort that went into visual storytelling, and I love the Arabius and Tibetius tilesets; alone they’re worth a download.

Any new Single Player levels 20 years after the release of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 are great news. Even more unique is when you get a release so big, it ranks among the biggest Single Player mission packs ever.

However, big is rarely equal to better, and this release is a great example of that. Mystery of the Four Artifacts contains more than 28 missions, and 50 different levels, but the vast majority of it is repetitive and cliched.

STORY

The story hits the same old tropes—Jazz and Eva are married, but Devan has escaped, and now Jazz must once again go back in time to serve justice. This time Jazz and Eva’s daughter has been murdered by the turtleous goon, but this element is just a poor hare’s McGuffin. Anyway, the story is rarely the reason why one plays JJ2, so cliche doesn’t bring down the quality of the levels—but it doesn’t help either. Still, the character of Bonus, Merlin’s ward, is quite original and refreshing.

GAMEPLAY

Most of the missions revolve around finding numerous trigger crates/areas/coins, and unlocking subsequent sections of the level. Unfortunately, this gets tedious over that many levels, and has been overdone to death even before the release of this mission pack.

The same old enemies have been used, with adequate placement that doesn’t bring anything new to the table. The gameplay is way too easy, except when it is not—and when it is not, it provides no challenge but plenty of frustration. Some of the enemies respawn far too quickly, some of the choke points require pixel hunting, and some of the obstacles are way too annoying. Every time I finished one of those difficult sections, I didn’t feel satisfaction but relief—relief that the boring part of the level is over.

There isn’t any proper direction in most of the levels, feeling more like an aimless maze than a puzzle or a platformer. I spent more time trying to find my way than actually playing this level pack.

The boss fights don’t seem to have any resemblance of a pattern. The perfect example is the final boss fight against Devan Shell, in which you battle the evil turtle in a really small room, with no platforms or hiding spots. To make it worse, Tuff Turtles randomly spawn on top of you, and no Carrots appear, even on Easy.

Still, there are some nice moments that feel original and inspired. 12 years later, chandie hasn’t lost his touch for Frog-centric levels, and the small section where you get to play as the Frog feels just right.

There aren’t any awful or unplayable sections in those levels either, so don’t expect any glaring shifts in level design that just don’t make sense. There’s plenty of jump and gunning to do, the problem is that it is too much and too repetitive.

EYECANDY AND MUSIC

Where the gameplay falters, the eyecandy glaringly succeeds. The main advantage of Mystery of the Four Artifacts is its custom-made tileset conversions, each of which blends several classic tilesets with new and edited tiles, as well as an edited Palette, to provide for environments that simultaneously feel completely new and pleasantly familiar. Tibet, the Arabic world, the Aztec Empire, and more are beautifully represented in a true-to-Jazz-Jackrabbit style. I hope those tilesets get used in the future for new Single and Multiplayer levels.

What chandie did with those tilesets is impressive as well. The eyecandy isn’t too obvious and doesn’t distract from the gameplay, but feels natural. The music included in the pack has also been properly picked to complement the atmosphere without distracting.

FINAL VERDICT

While the gameplay is repetitive and uninspired, the new environments provide great eyecandy that is worth experiencing. There are no strictly awful sections in this mission pack, but one can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be far more enjoyable if it was 70% smaller.

nice one (: the story is short but good, i liked some your ideas, i’ll use them in my upcoming level, btw i’ll mention you in credits for inspiration. thank you!

Story (8 / 10):

Good, although a bit strange. Or maybe just because of this.

Enemies (9 / 10):

Sometimes difficult to avoid. Always well placed. The difficulty level is very variable but generally adequate.

Pickups (8 / 10):

Well distributed, especially carrots. Worse is the case with the ammo, which is not much. Diamonds and food are just OK.

Eyecandy (7 / 10):

Some places look pretty badly, but it is much more positive than negative. I like it.

Fun (7 / 10):

Spaz was not quite intended. Of course, it also can pass the levels. But in several places he seems to have an advantage. But Froggy Quest is cool. I had a lot of fun playing it.

Total (39 / 50):

Great job. Waiting for the second part (I hope you do it).

• Sorry for my English, I used a translator .

Very intresting,though like other levels is kinda easiy

Yay,that level has exelent…
I got only one little rider on music.

[Review changed to quick review. – Cooba]

I got bored and decided to review something. So here goes.

“The Froggy Quest” is an interesting little pack based around a rather simple story of rescuing a frog and stopping an evil plot. The majority of the levels (or virtually all of them discluding the cutscenes) are based in various edits of the castle tileset, and are all rather similar.

A prevaling annoyance in the pack was the narrowness of the levels. They’re built on a very small scale and there’s hardly enough room to move around in some areas. The crowded appearance does no benefit to the eyecandy either, and makes the levels look really weird. This lightens up a notch in the latter levels, but is still an issue found throughout the pack. Placing springs amplifies the problem, because it looks really awkward when there is a spring placed 3 tiles under a ceiling with some ammo under it. Surely jazz can manage to jump 3 whole tiles by himself.

The difficulty was at first mediocre. There were too many carrots and the main source of damage were annoyingly placed bats (which camouflaged with some of the tilesets). Later on the enemy variety slightly increases, and there is a lot more emphasis on platforms, spikes, and spike balls. On the whole I’d say the difficulty was alright (starting out very easy, then getting challenging), but the carrots could have been toned down a bit.

I have mixed feelings about the eyecandy. As I said before, the crowded feeling of some levels does no help to the eyecandy, and more layer 3/foreground eyecandy could definately have been used to improve the grading. Some areas looked rather creative, but others gave off a feeling of amateurness. All this balances out to average. Hooray.

The levels use some interesting gimmicks, but many of them are reused way too many times. I’ve lost track on how many times I’ve had to push a crate to some TNT, or navigate platforms and avoid the spike pits (and spike bolls) beneath. However, there were some unique and interesting parts, and playing as a frog was nice. I also liked the structure of several levels (minus the ridiculously small scale). Some levels could have been longer though, and perhaps the scope of the pack could have expanded beyond the castle areas.

Overall, this was a short pack with some nice ideas incorporated into it. However, many things could have been touched up and nothing in particular stands out a great deal. It was enjoyable enough and didn’t stall long enough to get boring, but more variety could have been introduced. I don’t particularly agree with the high rating it currently has, although it was fun to play when bored, which is why I am reccomending it for download.

~Blacky

This Level pack has a very fun story:D

EYECANDY
The levels look very nice, especially the level where you have to escape from the castle. The red sky, the layer 5/6/7 background and the overall realism make this level one of the best levels I have ever played.
10/10

GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is best in the level where you play as froggy. It had some good crate puzzles and very good level ideas.
9/10

LEVEL DESIGN
The level design is very good in “Crate Zone”. You had lots of trick and traps and it was not too easy but not too hard.
9/10

TOTAL
28/30= 9.3

I think Xmas Bilsy would be a great idea. However if i put an xmas bilsy, my puzzle would crash. Because you can’t escape Bilsy’s fireballs while you’re flying. Also Bilsy can pass through the TNT blocks. So Tuff Boss was the best choice for the puzzle.

there are very good levels and the story is also interesting.the eyecandy is good,but not so good in the level with the author’s tileset palette.gameplay:terrific!!!there are lots of enemys,very good placed!
item/enemy placement:item placement good.the pickups were very good placed like the enemys.the only bad thing is that coin warp in the level with froggy playing charecter.the bosses were also fitting perfectly with the story.

download reccomendation:yes!!!!!!

~~~andyjackrabbit~~~

the Xmas bilsy boss would fit much better than the schwartzenguard