Capture the flag, by 
These levels aren’t as conventional as they might appear due to borrowed concepts from other levels, which can fool you into thinking there are no original ideas. If you look closely, you can see that these levels shine in lots of aspects visually.
Demon Rampart:
Demon Rampart may remind you of “The Temple of Suffering”, but upon closer inspection you notice that every area was added to complement the look of another; if you were to move specific eyecandy elements to other locations, they would look drastically different. Demonic structures are in the level, and they don’t look cartoony due to the surprising amount of detail added to them, in my opinion. I disliked certain ‘patterns’, but that probably can’t be helped with jj2’s limitations, and they sort of add more personality to the level.
As for the gameplay, the level is a completely different story. It’s like a paradox, because the essential items like carrots and bases are so close to each other with a relatively large amount of playing area all around (the top area is almost useless, but with exceptions like having the “higher ground”). In duels, I imagine the level probably favors RFs and Bouncers over Seekers (which is kind of a good thing). The top area is not safe, because there’s 4 ways to get up there, so players that use it will likely be blasted with RFs, and that takes away the use of it being a good spot to lure people there. Players might feel that they should stick to the middle area due to the concentration of carrots, thus making the entire gameplay hanging around there, and they will only go to the bottom left and right sides occasionally for powerups. The top area could be useful for luring people away from the middle area, or to grab a +1 (the area is big enough to allow this), and possibly come back for another to get full, but it’s risky. If you’re playing someone smart/skilled, he/she will wait for you to get impatient and own your (butt) once you get down from the top area (hopping down to the full nrg is likely to be suicide). Players will probably prefer to play a fast paced match by using the middle area a lot (which is roughly 30% of the level), and they will probably avoid getting stuck at the top with an uncertain outcome. If there were no arrows to help guide a person to where the flag carrier is, then I think this concept could work out nicely without such a large risk. Also, the middle area is tedious to defend: it simply wouldn’t be fun to move back and fourth with your opponent, and wait for him/her to make a mistake; I’d rather play DW, because I won’t have to put as much effort to move. If anything, it may encourage the defender to waste seekers, and decrease the risk. All in all, the top area just makes the level tedious to play in, but the level would probably function chaotically without it (or when players decide to just play 30% of the level). In team matches, I don’t see any reason for the flag carrier to move around much, and the top and bottom areas can’t be exploited to a great effect.
Now onto Distorted Research Site:
The thing that struck me the most about this level is the tileset. To accentuate the theme, P4ul used the metal/pipe tiles quite a lot, and although it may look easy, it’s actually a challenge to work with them effectively, so he resorted to using a lot of patterns. Some of the patterns around the right side are a bit clever, in my opinion. P4ul went crazy at the bottom area, and you can tell that he did just randomly place tiles, and hope for the best.
The gameplay… Ok, first of all the layout consists of many relatively small platforms, so… I normally despise layouts of this variety, but the lack of a seeker powerup may save this level from being chaos. You can get a shield for 25 coins, and that’s alright, but considering the layout, I think players will be too focused on offense than defense to even care. There are pits at the bottom, and you have to open them by using tnt on a crate. You could restart the level if some idiot decided to open them (assuming you don’t want them) during a private match, but in public servers, there’s just no say in the matter. The level will probably be hell in jdc events. So yeah…not much to say about the level here.
Death Facility III (i thought there were only two versions of this; where have I been?) is a large improvement over the previous version I played in every aspect:
The last one has some neat eyecandy imo, but this one has eyecandy in epic proportions, and even in the little ways things were done to enhance the level’s appearance (although in my opinion Demon Rampart seemed to have far more mastery).
The level is, in my opinion, more playable than the last version, but it still lacks the aspect of ‘using’ the layout against the opponent. It’s probably boring for duels. In team matches, I hate the base placement for the fact they are easier to defend than even sbv2 bases (that should tell you something).
Overall these levels have neat, brilliant eyecandy (alone almost earned 8.6), but they fall far short of masterpieces due to the fact the layouts have bland, tedious or simply uninteresting gameplay. I guess you could argue that more stimulating gameplay would sacrifice the way these levels look, and is a fault of 2d level design or jj2’s gameplay style in general.
Agony is a must to download. It shows the epitome of what can be made with these sets. The levels should also be fun to play in public servers and possibly events.
