Battle, by 
Hi there dudes, I’m mass advertising my super uncool long reviews that serve no purpose other than to make the target sad and really make him or her want to quit level making forever. (Ahaha, you believed me didn’t you?). Anyway, this review was requested in that review my level thread thing, so here goes.
On first glance I thought this isn’t very pretty, but it just takes some getting used to that’s all. It uses the set quite standardly which probably is why I wasn’t too used to it, and also, it contains some very unusual characteristics for a battle level, such as a Full NRG in the level, which often means +4 health in a battle. Anyway, onwards!
ONE AND A HALF HOUR DR. PEPPER
(I didn’t quite get the name, but I’m assuming it follows the same trend as those other levels where I never understood the name, you know, 24 hour coffee, 12 hour tea, 6 hour energy drink and erm, so on) (-EDIT: I JUST REALISED ALL THOSE LEVELS ARE IN THE SAME SET!!! OMG SO COOL! AND THEY ARE TIME INTERVALS IN HOURS AND THEN A BEVERAGE NAME!)
Eyecandy
Rating: 6.7
Well, I’ll start with creating some sort of contents-type thing for Eyecandy. It’s gonna look like this in chronological order: background/foreground, sprite layer, originality, overall theme and finally tilebugs, THE WORST PART OF ALL.
So, the background is (if I am correct) a load of green tiles with holes in it just pulling up, reminding me of some form of elevator. Strange and probably hasn’t been done like this in this set before, although I don’t pay too much attention to the older levels that used this tileset. It seemed to hurt my eyes and confuse only, I dunno why, I just wasn’t very pleased with the background, it just goes up and makes me confused, but that’s probably only me. The foreground consists of some cool small pipe things which you don’t really notice in game, (which is good) but it is there as eyecandy (which is even better). My only complaint though it’s not a major one is that the one going accross the bottom may look like a platform as it stops shifting as soon as you get very close to the bottom of the layer 4. The foreground eyecandy also has many a crystal shard accross various areas of the level such as the bottom, under platforms, on platforms and anywhere you name it. Looks like a load of stalagmites and stalagtites if you ask me. Ah, so moving on, I like the foreground usage.
The sprite layer is a whole ‘nother story. (don’t you just hate it when people say that? A whole ‘nother, god it’s ANOTHER. YOU IDIOTS. Don’t laugh if you read this review or I will incinerate your body parts in a furnace). Alright, I did not like the tubey pipe things because I kept thinking they were walls when they weren’t. I eventually got used to the blue ones being passable and the green ones aren’t. I thought it was a tad annoying but it looked alright once you knew that it wasn’t or was masked. It kinda would have very whacko gameplay if they were all masked. I guess I’m not used to levels in that set. The eyecandy is sufficient, although that is probably merely a limitation of the set and not the level itself.
I guess if you are used to the pipe things not being masked and you saw them as eyecandy like I soon did, it’s quite an original thing when you think about it as I probably haven’t seen it before and I don’t think many of you guys have either. Well done on that. Other than that, I didn’t see too much else originality in the level, and the tubes are probably just scratching it.
The overall theme in the level wasn’t established too strongly, and to me it seemed more like some random green place than anything else, but again I feel like the tileset is restricting and causing that to be like this. To me I think the level was in an elevator (ator), and erm it reminded me a bit of the “Mean Green Elevator Machine” ground force level that Blur made. It seemed to be one strange elevator probably inside some sort of mine area or something, explaining the crystal shards. Yeah the level was very greenie and platformyy. Anyway, moving on…
One thing that makes me amazingly thankful is that after thoroughly searching through the level frantically for tilebugs, I found absolutely none, so I won’t comment on that as you have done me very proud Crimi meh boy. (I bet you don’t want me saying that)
Just to rap up on the eyecandy, it wasn’t too complicated and it wasn’t too special, so I’ll leave you with a 6.7. Sorry if it seems low or anything, it’s just how I work.
Gameplay
Rating: 7.5
As with all of the reviews I do, I usually do the game-play part of the review like this… It’s set out accordingly: Bias [teams], Bias [rabbits], Strategy, Layout, Flow, Defense/Offense and how fun it is to play. That section was copied off my previous review, just to show the contents. Here we go.
This is a battle level, so there is no bias between the teams as the ‘teams’ would both spawn in the same places more or less and they don’t have any sort of bases or anything to possibly cause any bias over the other team unless the team just has some awesome players and some really crap players. Anyway, the level for the rabbits, the level has little to no bias, as there are no incredible bonuses Jazz or Spaz get over eachother, and anything Spaz can’t do Jazz can’t do and vice versa. It’s quite well balanced and would promote players to play as both rabbits when they do wish so. It is quite well balanced. Woo.
There are no real strategies in this level, but I did notice some amazing tactics which could be used and abused very well with one gun, my favourite gun, it’s the bouncer! Because of the fact that this level has very thin walls, and quite a vertical gameplay, it almost makes bouncers dominant as you can shoot them down, and through walls, the creator probably noticed this and therefore did not put a bouncer PU as it would have been slightly overpowering. If not, it’s all good anyway. )= The bouncer powerup can be shot through most walls in the level, especially the potential camp spots, like the seeker PU area, the toaster PU area, and the rest. Another little strategy is to camp the Full NRG. To be honest I think the level’s gameplay is probably based on the fact that there’s a full NRG but I believe it somewhat distorts the gameplay as if someone is quite good at avoiding hits and can just hog that carrot once in a while, he has a massive advantage over the rest of the players.
The layout of this level isn’t very solid, however it isn’t quite platformy either. It does however, create several dead-ends, some of which are rectified by warps (which I don’t like too much either but it’s better than nothing). There are some dead ends (which might be warp targets or something but I really don’t like them. These are: [48,07], [22,25], [1,15], however the final one isn’t as much of an issue of the other two, and it has a clever trick to it if you learn it; you can use the spring from underneath to get up, but you can’t effectively get up without it. I suppose its fair enough.
The level flows quite nicely as running off certain ledges would get you directly to the next, as it should, and also, the movement is fairly easy, with the exception of the one area for Jazz, but its not really a big problem, this would be near the top right corner as there is a platform he cannot uppercut to while Jazz can double jump to it. The movement is quite easy and the springs are placed very well. I liike it a lot. =]. I’d do a borat accent but I’m really bad at that. I’ll just… do a happy face =].
Eh, the defense/offense isn’t really for battle, so I’m gonna move right onto how fun the level actually is to play. I like the level but it seems chaotically small to possibly have a Full NRG or a future event or even a crowded server in this level. This partially changes my mind. Maybe 3 carrots MCEd or something on the top would be nicer, but +4 (or more) health is just too much for battle. The two powerups are probably quite suited to how the level plays, and a seeker powerup is always fun. My only complaint is that the bouncer PU would have been really brilliant in this level, but I guess the non-powered up bouncers will do. The level is very greatly designed in terms of gameplay. Take a hi5. hi5. Yeah. That ruled. Im so cool. OMG THAT RHYMED. IM A POET AND I KNOW IT. Anyway moving on…
General Placement
Rating: 7.7
I liked the way everything was placed, probably didn’t like what was placed however. I didn’t like the Full NRG because of the fact that it healed so much and provided such a massive advantage over the other players to the one who would obtain it. I also didn’t like the warps, although they are placed well, they seem to me, to appear as just a way of quickly changing a dead-end to something else. Nonetheless, that doesn’t make it a bad thing, it’s just not to my taste I guess. The powerups are placed in mildly campy locations, but this can easily be overcome with a bit of wits and with use of the warps to do it quicker. I like this a lot, and I guess this does make the warps good. The spring placement is very good, and I like the level a lot, as the ammo is also dispersed quite nicely, and the level only has 4 types of ammo, fun. =]. Love it. Yeah. Weewwwt. Probably just needs a few more seekers. =o
Originality
At first I didn’t find much about the level original but after a while I began to like the tubes and also, the way the level plays is quite unique and different to your traditional battle level. 2 originality points whaha. I like it a lot and the originality is sky high bro. Whew. Yeah. Nice lev.
Overall
7.4. It would have been 7.3 but I felt the level deserved more. I liked it after playing it more. It’s quite a fun level and I hope to see more from you in the future Mr Crimi. That review just took away fourty five minutes of my precious time. Now I feel bummed out. Oh well. Rag was here. Nice level.
~*Rag*