Single player, by 
Playing levels like this makes it clear the vocabulary we have for describing pieces of single player levels is incomplete. We say a level is linear, meaning there’s only one path from start to finish, or it has branching paths or is nonlinear/multilinear, if there’s at least one time when the path splits in two or more directions and one playthrough will see different areas than another playthrough. We talk about secrets, little hidden optional areas on the side of one path or another, which are usually dead-ends but occasionally loop back onto the path, maybe at the same spot, maybe not. But what about when they’re not hidden? What if those optional areas are not secrets but rather in plain sight, containing a few goodies just off the beaten road, maybe cordoned off by no more than a few destructible blocks?
Because, clearly, that’s the defining feature of this pack. Such alcoves(?) are everywhere here, to the point that the actual main path of each level can feel like little more a ride to get you to the next set of optional bits. Often the destructible blocks guarding the goodies are bound to specific weapons, such as RFs, but I never found myself hurting for ammo, so this read like theming, not like a potential punishment for attacking enemies too much. Other times there’s no such explicit marker that something is not the main path, so you try a few directions and eventually make some progress, if that’s the right word. Or there are places that do feel closer to traditional Secrets too, novel interpretations of windows or springs or whatever else for you to explore.
Regardless of how you find and enter them, though, the theme is clear: going directly from Point A to Point B is neither simple nor desirable, because there’s so much to see along the way.
Now, goodies in JJ2 always run the risk of not being entirely useful… gems in particular do absolutely nothing besides give you points, and ammo eventually stops making a difference if you’ve been hoarding it. With such a vast number of pickup hideaways, inevitably some of them are better than others, and oddly the reward does not always seem correlated with the difficulty of getting there. I remember a lengthy detour to reach a single blue gem, compared to a much quicker discovery of many blue gems at once. So perhaps in some cases the player needs to value the experience more than the actual reward.
I’m pleased to report that despite the vast range of direction options at almost every turn, I was usually able to find the exit without difficulty. The only time I had a real problem was toward the end of the lengthy Beach level, which requires you to fall down a random pit to find a trigger crate, then another pit to find what the crate did. That wasn’t great. But otherwise things kept seeming to work out, for me at least. I could imagine a version of these levels with more explicit transitions between stages, like in Rayman Origins or something, to make it clear when you’ve entered a new stage and can’t go back and get lost in the old one anymore, but I suppose (vanilla) JJ2’s tools are somewhat limited in that regard. Anyway, there are some neat tricks along the way, especially in the second Colon level, with its columns of manhole covers to be stomped.
In terms of traditional difficulty, this pack is not hard. There are not a whole lot of enemies and there’s plenty of ammo. Graphics too are plain and honestly sometimes kind of empty. Layout seems to have received by far the bulk of attention in designing this pack, resulting in a very unique experience, but if you’re mostly just looking for any other component of JJ2 levels here instead, you may be disappointed. But if you want to keep having more and more stuff thrown at you, from all angles, with lots of attention given to all the appropriate layout features for each tileset (sewers, water, vines, caterpillars, cheshires…) this is worth your download.
