I think the new Labrat levels may actually be my least favorite of the pack… probably in part because I’m less attached to the tileset, but also because they seem to deviate less from the standard JJ2 formula and show less of the author’s experimental side. Experimental level design has a long history in JCS, not all of it positive, but the author’s earlier work always fell on the side of enjoyable and memorable. These Labrat levels are not without their good points, but they also feel more ordinary, though by no means bad. An uninspired FarkasUrdung level is still better than a lot of other stuff out there, but the Labrat levels feel less purposeful and more thrown together. I definitely appreciate some of the efforts being made here, though, like the serious take on a bird gameplay section, and a lot of the work with springs and weapon blocks and such, as always. I had fun and I’ll probably play them again. There are lots of pickups and enemies and that’s great. But I’m not sure they’re the best of the bunch.
Ürdüng Chronicles #1
Single player, by FarkasUrdung,
requires version 1.23
Description
This is a level pack I created for Benyoboy on youtube over the past 2 years. It’s sort of a remake of the original Jazz Jackrabbit 2 first chapter in my own style. It also features 3 levels per location instead of 2.
I’ve been uploading it in 3 level packs as I got finished with the locations.
The castle levels can be found separately here: http://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/7415/urdung-levels-castle-chapter/
and the carrot levels here: http://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/7598/urdung-levels-carrotus-chapter/
This one features all those and then 3 labrat levels for the sake of completeness. I apologize for making a mess. I wanted your opinions after completing each location to give me a basic idea of what not to do.
Please concentrate more on the labrat levels when writing a review.
Contains 19 Files
 readme.txt |
1.00 kB | |
| readmeEng.txt |
0.99 kB | |
 Ur0x00.j2l |
Felkészítõ | 9.13 kB |
| Ur0x10.j2l |
Toronyugrás | 16.24 kB |
| Ur0x11.j2l |
Kurva Denevérek | 18.94 kB |
| Ur0x12.j2l |
Elvarázsolt Kastély | 21.42 kB |
| Ur0x20.j2l |
A Répaföld | 16.09 kB |
| Ur0x21.j2l |
Baljós Ég | 15.63 kB |
| Ur0x22.j2l |
Esti Zivatar | 17.29 kB |
| Ur0x30.j2l |
Kísérleti Nyuszi | 10.02 kB |
| Ur0x31.j2l |
Madárka - Madárka | 8.76 kB |
| Ur0x32.j2l |
Szerepcsere | 12.74 kB |
 CarrFix.j2t |
Carrotus 1.5 Day | 230.61 kB |
| CarrFixE.j2t |
Carrotus 1.5 Evening | 230.64 kB |
| CarrFixM.j2t |
Carrotus 1.5 Midnight | 230.66 kB |
| CarrFixZ.j2t |
Carrotus 1.5 Zombified | 230.66 kB |
| Castle2.j2t |
Castle 2 | 209.44 kB |
 tower1b.s3m |
tower1b | 57.91 kB |
 _cover.jpg |
164.25 kB |
Write a comment or review
You must log in to write a comment or review.
Reviews and comments
Violet CLM 14 Jan 2017, 08:14
Slaz 26 May 2016, 14:22 (edited 26 May 16, 14:26)
Featured
If you don’t mind, I’ll review this entire episode as whole instead of spreading it through 3 downloads, as I haven’t played your Castle and Carrotus levels before and a lot of points apply to all of these levels.
Well then, surprisingly this pack starts off with a recreation of the “Rabbit in Training” level you get when playing the original levels on easy, and I guess it’s mostly doing a better job at it aside from the weird Layer 3 platforms you unexpectedly fall through. Are these to explain secrets in the walls? The text is all Hungarian so it’s hard to tell.
Anyway, from the first real level on, you immediately get the classic JJ2 vibe, yet it also has a tone of it’s own which I like. The levels are better designed around the rabbits jumping capabilities and special moves, as well as proper usage of weapon-specific destruct scenery. Some of the levels (especially Castle3) felt a bit too “mazy” for my taste, but on the other hand I really liked trying to find my way into the many secrets in the walls. Speaking of Castle3, the use of poles to break through walls felt fresh and actually made the poles useful.
Some levels may have too many respawning enemies (although that may be opinion-based here), but overall enemies were placed strategically enough to make other weapons than the blaster useful. The bosses were good too, all 3 of the original first episode are there and all have been made harder with a simple twist in their arena (which I won’t spoil here). The least fun to me was the Schwartzenguard in Carrotus, though the idea was certainly nice.
Speaking of Carrotus, the least favorite of this pack to me was Carrotus1, as the level felt more “plain” than the others with less secrets and interesting pathways. The best one may either be Carrotus2 or Labrat3, even though the Bird section in Labrat3 had it’s tedious moments. Also, the placement of the Bird Morph is a bit off, as dying will reset you to a further savepoint. Luckily I had my Gun9 ready to backtrack and shoot the Bird Morph through the wall. And lastly, the part in Carrotus3 where you move on spikes using Inv carrots worked well!
Here are 2 places I got stuck too easily:
By stomping into the Steam and moving right
By running near the wall and jumping
I recommend downloading this if you’re in the mood for some classic unscripted JJ2 goodness. There is enough personality and variety in here to keep it interesting from beginning to end, but it’s lacking a story (well, other than part of JJ2’s original story) and about 90% of all text lines are in Hungarian which I can’t read. So long story short: play this if you enjoy JJ2’s singleplayer, but don’t expect a Devres or Dreamscape.
Blackraptor 6 Apr 2017, 06:10 (edited 6 Apr 17, 08:17)
Blacky’s Single Player Catch Up Review #1:
I decided to review this whole pack since I haven’t played the earlier levels seperately before and they are included in the upload with the newer stuff. I’ll give out my general thoughts first and then specifics about each episode.
I enjoyed these maps but they are too easy! I get why you made the difficulty this way since its your take on the original Jazz2 singleplayer levels, but they were less engaging for me to play since I’m already familiar with how singleplayer works and used to playing more difficult custom content. They are pretty standard maps, without angelscript but not without creativity. What I really liked was all the secrets you put throughout the pack, the most fun I had playing this pack was finding them. I liked the occasional puzzles, gemstomps, and weird textstrings (the ones I could read at least…), and got a bit of nostalgia for the original single player campaign. The eyecandy is generally average throughout, but never bad. My biggest complaint with it is that it sometimes looks bland when you don’t put enough tile variation in places. I already said I thought the gameplay is a bit easy, but I like that you bothered to use difficulty modifiers. I didn’t like some of the ways you chose to increase the challenge by placing regenerating enemies or making it confusing to know where to go by obscuring stuff. I thought things could’ve been indicated better in general, especially events since you used things like sucker tubes and warps without visually telling the player that they are there. Both the Schwarzenguard and Robot bosses were too simple – all you need to do is buttstomp repeatedly to win. Now onto specifics:
Castle Maps
My favourite here is either “Kurva Denevérek” or “Toronyugrás” .In general I thought these maps were too easy and breezed through them. The only time I felt challenged was when I had to stop and figure out where to go, since some of them were quite mazey. I thought there was too much reliance on hidden passages obscured by foreground, and lots of times I just happened to stumble onto stuff since there was no indication what to do or where to go. Unlike finding the myriad of nice secrets in these maps, this didn’t feel rewarding since I had no way to deduct that a warp event or a one-way would be there, or a hidden passage within a hidden passage was the correct route to progress. None of that bothered me until the final castle map, where I felt it got too out of hand. The music in that map also drove me nuts while I attempted to figure out what to do – I reached a dead end near the textstring “a nyilak hazudnak” and unsure of what to do, hit the savepoint through the wall with gun9 and promptly killed myself. Not long after I got stuck inside of tile 224,36 and had to kill myself again. I’m not sure if that was the correct strategy to hit that savepoint or if I had skipped a portion of the map by doing that (it looks like I did?), since I kept getting stuck inside of the destruct tiles in the next segment and, slowly driven insane by the music, ended my odyssey of finding the exit to this map. The visuals in these levels were decent, mostly tilebug-free (occasionally I ran into a foreground layer ec bug or some tiles just looked weird), my only real complaint regarding them is that the tile placement got repetitive at times and looked bland.
Carrottus Maps
I enjoyed these more than the castle maps, its hard to choose since I liked all 3 of them but the second map is probably my favourite. The layouts were better (more straightforward while not necessarily linear) and the maps looked prettier. There was less single tile spam throughout these like at the end area of the second (evening) map, I had no problems here with the visuals besides what I mentioned above and that the rain in the third map looked bad. The pumpkins could use some consistency though, sometimes they are solid and sometimes aren’t, not a big issue however and I’m guilty of doing this myself :P The boss fight here was tedious, because it wasn’t ever a challenge (all you need to do was buttstomp) but it took longer (all you could do efficiently was buttstomp). Maybe some platforms and other hazards could’ve helped complicate the strategy a bit.
Labrat Maps
“Madárka – Madárka” is my favourite map in this pack so far, the difficulty was engaging (I almost died!), and I struck the motherload of all purple gems when I entered the coin warp. I got stuck in the beginning of the third map, I played as Spaz and hit the morph so I could uppercut the destruct blox. It turned me into Lori and never respawned :( There was a sucker tube in the top right of the level that shot me out directly into spikes, it was the only way out of the box I was in and I was at 1h and died. When I respawned at the last checkpoint I was Spaz again, and could reach the water shield without finding the tnt and get through the box puzzle area without having to solve it. Overall I thought these were pretty ordinary Labrat maps, I enjoyed them but wish they could have some more of the creativity present in the Castle maps but without the issues I had.
Overall I think these maps deserve a 7, which I think is fair because they are well done for the most part but not exceptional. There were aspects I really liked and some things that I didn’t and also which annoyed me, and sometimes I ran into bugs and had to cheat. I think your work is best when you combine the experimental creativity you used in the castle maps with more consistent layout design like the Carrotus maps, while avoiding the frustration of the third castle map and the generic-ness of some of the Labrat map areas. I would still definitely recommend this pack to players who are relatively new or just starting out with exploring custom singleplayer content, I think I would’ve enjoyed this more myself if I had played it several years ago instead of at the point I’m at.
~Blacky
Bloody_Body 9 May 2016, 16:27 (edited 9 May 16, 16:30)
I’ve already rated your previous works so this time I’ll rate just the labrat levels.
Gameplay.
This time you don’t have to waste too much time on finding your way out, so you can relax while playing labratory levels. Gameplay is various so you definetly won’t feel boring. For example playing as a bird which isn’t able to fire bullets makes you to avoid enemies and spiky balls wich is really challenging.
Secret placement.
The main challenge deals with reaching the secret places. However sometimes these places are empty, like an area near the exit from the 2nd level- there is nothing but a text on Hungarian, as I understood it explains that there aren’t any goodies. I also liked original desicions like a spring and a hole in the ceiling which isn’t situated directly above the spring so you have to make an effort to reach it. Many goodies situated high above your head can be reached by buttstomping the floating suckers or simply by shooting up with a modified bouncer.
Enemy placement.
I also liked the placement of bats (they are the same colour as the stone labratory is made of so it’s often difficult to notice them) However the boss is still pretty simple to defeat though the area is smaller and there are some spiky balls.
Eyecandy.
The levels are tidy, there aren’t much bad tiles. The design of the levels also has some original desicions like lamps placed into the giant bulbs.
Conclusion.
This levelpack surely worths downloading. All the singleplayer fans should like it!
ForthRightMC 23 Jan 2017, 10:16 (edited 26 Jan 17, 14:58)
I like these chronicles! The levels seem very interesting! I recommend to download this. By the way, I’m already translating this episode to english version. I also used custom music and an AngelScript code on final level.
Dragusela 26 Apr 2020, 14:13 (edited 6 Aug 21, 10:42)
It’s like the 1st episode but bigger and more difficult