I’m going to review this, since I’ve lost many JDC assault matches in this ;P.
The zip has two jpgs in addition to the level/set/music. One is a blueprint of…part of the level. Kinda confusing and not very useful either since it in no way tells you where to go, and just names certain areas. The other is a letter giving more backround to the level, I guess. Interesting.
As for the level…
The first area is pretty confusing. There’s lots of places to go and it doesn’t tell you where to go to first, so you either have to memorize the order of around a dozen trigger crates or hope that you or your teammate happen to find an unlocked one. For me in my matches it was pretty much everyone splitting up and running everywhere, with minimal strategy or teamwork involved. The part after that (which was later edited and turned to fans by blur) is pretty pointless imo, and just wastes time. There’s a small area after that resembling a warp test (except with suckers) which kinda screams out desperation for some sort of obstacle. Other notable parts after that include a very narrow airboard maze and climbing vanishing 1×1 blocks. The layout of the level overall, at least after the first part, resemble somewhat of a race level or so, really, instead of an assault. There’s not much teamwork needed for this either as it’s pretty linear and everyone is heading the same way.
Radium pretty much depended on one tile for the tileset use, a 1×1 blue block, with other tiles making very occasional appearances. The tileset use is greately polished up in Blur’s edit of this though, but this is not blur’s edit.
Overall, the level lacks in some areas, especially eyecandy/tileset use, and seems like it might be better off as a race/test level or something. It is nice that someone is making assault levels though =P. Back in 2002 this probably would’ve been a pretty good level, and it still gets the honour (albeit a heavily edited by blur version of it) of being played in various important events today. I’m going to give this a 6.5 in the state it’s in right now, as I don’t want to damage its current rating too much. Undecided download reccomendation, because there’s a better version out there (but it’s not uploaded to j2o).