I am posting this review out of disgust for the overratedness of this level pack.
All three of these levels are the same thing with the tileset switched. Essencially, this is just one level. I do not appreciate redundancy in level packs. Pick one tileset and stick with it. No one wants 3 of the same level.
These levels do not live up to their collective name. They may have eye-candy, but it is nothing remarkable. The eye candy is merely average, and in some places it is actually quite lacking and flawed. I found many tiling errors, and the background and foreground are virturally nonexistant. I have seen outstanding work done with this tileset in terms of visual appeal. This level does not use the capabilities of this tileset to full potential at all, nor does it look like the authour even tried that hard. There is no creative tile use at all, since the whole level has a generic look to it.
Despite the lack of the advertised eye-candy, things only get worse from there. The level is poorly designed, with a multitude of dead ends and an overall lack of strategic focus. The ammo placement is reasonably well done, but the selection of ammo is not. This level has ice and TNT, with no real use for them in the level. If there were a few springs to freeze or powerups to get through walls, I wouldn’t mind this. Unfortunately, there aren’t any powerups at all. I get the feeling that not much thought was put into the design of this level.
Bugs are numerous in this level. The choice of tiles is poor in some areas due to them being ugly, but it is also poor becuase of the masking in them. It is extremely easy to get stuck in the walls. Also, the left edge of the level has been left uncovered by tiles, meaning that anyone can hide there and be immune to the effects of people shooting. There is an abundance of ricochet events, things which are known to cause 3+ heart kills due to their erratic behaviour and bad coding. The worst problem is the getting stuck, which I explained above. It is so bad that there is one area of the level where pretty much all of the walls like to eat players.
Overall I get the feeling that this level was rushed. Areas of the level seem incomplete. This level also has not been tested well enough, or perhaps it wasn’t tested at all. The layout is quite “mindless” meaning that there is really no apparent strategy here (nothing unique at least).
Please, test your levels with other people and get their opinions before you ask for ours on J2O. While they will offer good advice on how to improve your level, we will just give criticism, possibly negative. If you neglect the advice of testers or do not select ones which know what they are doing, you might get some jerk like me spoiling your nice 7 average by exposing the level as it really is.
Overall Rating: 3.7
Unimpressive.