Journey through the Carrotus

  • Rating: 7.2

Reviews and comments

    troglobite 31 Jan 2009, 05:48

    7

    Gameplay: 4/10
    The levels are very open, and there are tons of paths. This is a very nice feature to have, but unfortunantely, it’s overdone in this pack. Almost every level can be beaten mainly by holding down run, jump, and shoot. It’s fun to explore the levels and find the massive amounts of secrets, but there is very little point if you just want to finish. There are more carrots than could possibly be needed. (I think there were 8 1+ carrots right next to each other at one point) Power-ups are also too easy to get. There was a rocket turtle, but he can be ignored, because there is no need to fight him. He merely leads you to the end of the level. Also, the last level just ends. No boss. Which is kind of a let down. The one cool gameplay moment was a fight against a Bilsy and two stand monkies, which was surprisingly challenging compared to the rest of the levels. The secret level is also very good, because you have to find coins, which gave you reason to look around and appreciate all the little nuances of the level. If the other levels were more like this, and there were less goodies, gameplay could rock.

    Eyecandy: 8/10
    Not too much to mention here. The tileset choices were good, and eyecandy was nice with being particularly outstanding. There were a few small places where things seemed too square, or ended to abruptly, giving the level and artifical feeling. I also noticed that at position (78,51) on Lv5, there’s a six-legged jaguar. I nearly blew by it when playing, but something looked out of place, so I stopped and examined it closer. The extra legs fit surprisingly well, and, although I’m not sure if jjlover intended for it, it’s pretty cool.

    Buglessness: 4/5
    When I first tried to open the level through home-cooked levels, I got an error about running out of animations, and the game crashed. Not sure if this is just me, but opening through JCS fixed it anyway. Also, in the last level, there’s a bird morph. If you die while you are a bird (kinda hard with the full health carrot) You can respawn as a bird, and have to redo the start of the level as a bird. This will also prevent you from collecting two power-ups, which can be frustrating.

    Total: 16/25
    16/25=64.0%=6.4/10

    If you take the time to appreciate these levels, they are a great download. However, they offer little in the way of unique features or interesting gameplay.

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    cooba 1 Feb 2009, 11:32

    7

    (I ran this pack under TSF to overcome the animations error)

    This is a pretty standard JJ2 romp, with several details making it stand out from the rest. The first level greets you with a variety of available paths which must be taken before advancing further. This, combined with the amount of goodies found everywhere, encourages exploration, which is an important aspect in most of these levels—the earlier ones at least.

    The levels are also pretty standard on the visual side. There’s no overly revolutionary tile work, though using custom tileset edits made a few levels feel fresh (I liked the background in the first level a lot). The use of JJ3 music also helped, though some of the track choices were questionable (Basement Boss in a dimly lit swamp?).

    One thing I noticed is that the overall level quality seemed to go down as I progressed through the pack. The first level felt cool and well polished, where as the final level was a big letdown. It uses a stock tileset, the music barely matches, is very linear, has a number of unfair challenges (namely the bird morph sequence), uses instakill without any forewarning, and has no endboss?? Combine this with several bugs in the previous levels, namely the Rocket Turtle who completely failed to work for me, and you have a buggy, unpolished SP pack.

    Conclusions? An above average pack that starts out promising and goes steadily downhill, yet not to the rock bottom. Download if you’re bored, or if you want to look at the pretty first level =P

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    Cobra NF 10 Sep 2009, 01:21 (edited 11 Sep 09, 15:46 by Violet CLM)

    10Recommended:

    srry but ill have to say i give it a……9.7!!!!!!

    VERY GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!

    [Review changed to quick review. – Violet CLM]

    This is a short review. It has less impact on the upload's score.

    FawFul 31 Jan 2009, 08:49

    i also got the bug for the first and the 4th level that it ran out of animations.. i couldn’t play the level. not from JCS nor home cooked levels.

    SPAZ18 31 Jan 2009, 17:00 (edited 1 Feb 09, 11:32)

    I too got the Internal Animations error, except I was getting it in Levels 1 and 3.

    EDIT: I have just tried these levels in TSF (1.24) and they work fine there. I can’t understand why they won’t work in 1.23 since they weren’t made in TSF JCS.
    The too many enemies error confuses me since I’ve played levels with thousands of enemies and they WORK. How odd :O

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