Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Funky.

I’m not “qualified” to review such a masterpiece, so I’ll simply say that… in a good way, of course.

And so the discussion comes to an end.

I love the structure of the level and the layout is nice, gameplay is a bit bumby, but i dont mind! :P

It’s interesting to see a tileset I’m so familiar with in such a new way. While the differences are largely subtle, the feel of the classic castle set versus Rage of Aquarius is astonishingly different. RoA converts the castle set into a much more harsh and unsettling environment. The traditional smooth surfaces have become worn and weathered, and the insertion of some of the bone tiles from the hell sets compliments the new style very well. I also really like the new stuff added, such as the holes and the stairs. One thing I can say about that is that, with the new vibe of the set, it almost seems as if the steeper angles should be stairs too.

The example level really surprised me. I guess I just haven’t been around in too long, but there is so much that I’ve never seen before… For one, that little swirly slide thing actually functioning in some way. Also, there were random “do not use” events that somehow became skeletons in-game. A series of alternating weird textures with warp horizon in layer 8 under a strange white tile (which I don’t see anywhere in the actual set for some reason) in layer 7 creates a beutiful radiating sun effect. AND, when I go into the events menu, everything is strange and different… No enemies tab, all the platforms and pinball events out in the open… Needless to say, I’m really confused. Haha. I feel like I’m no longer qualified to adequately review whatever is going on with this set, but I think it’s really interesting and cool. :)

The reordering of the set was definitely well thought-out, putting complimentary pieces in more convienient groups throughout the set. Since it’s a remake with some additions, the usability is definitely top-notch. I especially like how the bones were converted to mesh with the castle set so well, even adding some shadowed tiles with bones in the foreground and castle in the back.

Overall… Well, I was never the biggest fan of the castle set, but I think this conversion really kicks it up a notch. In my opinion, that actually adds even more credibility to this set. For making the castle tileset into something way more awesome, I’ll say this should get a 9/10. :)

that’s an empty zip file…

BollyWorld is a rare example of both the aerial boss battle and the level where choice of character truly matters. The basic premise is that you are fighting Bolly, but instead of a solid ground from which to attack him, you are given a series of sucker tubes that continually shoot you up into the (horizontal and vertical) center of the arena. To aid you in reaching him, two float lizards respawn from beneath the arena, and if you can successfully shoot them, you can potentially use their copters to take you up above Bolly where you may stomp him repeatedly until eventually he gets hidden inside a wall and you fall down to begin the whole process again. There are also a couple of carrots respawning at the top to make the fight more endurable.

To complicate all of this, the level is filled with belt events, alternating in direction by row, so Bolly’s missiles wobble a little and whenever he or the float lizards stop moving (to fire at you) they are carried inexorably off towards one or another of the walls. This makes stomping Bolly much harder, naturally, and even when you do succeed in shooting down a float lizard, their copters will suddenly go zooming off to the left or right where you will have to work hard to catch them. It’s a clever addition, one which you begin to come to terms with after the first few deaths.

You should definitely expect to see the Continue? screen a lot, because the carrots don’t respawn very quickly and it’s non-trivial to reach them anyway, and Bolly will only get in a good position for stomping every so often. Many of my deaths came about by running into shot-down lizards while zooming through the sucker tubes at the bottom — remember to stomp those as well, or shoot them from the corners in hopes of carrots. The bottom corners can be good ways of shooting down lizards, since you’re not in the air at the time, but they’re especially nasty places to be swarmed by Bolly and his long chain of spike balls, which is much harder to deal with when you can neither uppercut nor sidekick them all away in a heartbeat.

To add to all of this, there is a secondary, hidden strategy that you will probably have to use JCS to discover. There’s a lot of bouncer ammo at the top, and some trigger crates and a powerup are below the arena, as what appear to be random eyecandy to give the impression of lights or something. However, and the level gives no indication of this, the blocks underneath the bottom corners of the arena are secretly destruct scenery, which you can use the bouncer ammo to destroy after making a trip up to the top of the level to collect some. From there you have to destroy all the trigger crates, though the small height of the area means that this secondary strategy should be attempted only by Spaz. If successful, the area with the carrots post-crate-kicking also allows access to an airboard, which renders the rest of the boss fight if not trivial, at the very least much simplified. As a tradeoff for this reduced challenge at the end, it’s much harder to navigate the arena with a double jump than copter ears. The Jazz option of simply fighting the boss feels a lot better put together.

Graphically, the level is… well, functional. Again, there is no real way of knowing how to reach the trigger crates short of JCS, but moreover, there’s just not much in the way of eyecandy. The background is a series of starfields, invoking the “city of lights” aspect of the title, and the sky seems to have some sort of strange window effect going on that I don’t really understand. Either the tileset is holding the level back or the author is holding the tileset back. Perhaps both. I understand that too much eyecandy would serve to obscure gameplay, but something closer to a middle ground would definitely have been possible.

Bollyworld is a very clever idea, coming even with events specific to different difficulty modes (which I confess to not having dried), although the complexity of the arena makes it difficult to know when one is exploiting a bug vs. when one is playing the level as it is intended to be played. If I stomp Bolly while he is almost completely hidden behind a wall while waiting for him to finish firing, am I supposed to be able to do that? It’s hard to tell. With some better graphics, this level would serve as a great example of an Idea that was translated to level form with apparently minimal sacrifice.

No we’re not, Dodges. This looks excellent, Violet :)

I wouldn’t say perfect but it looks great.
Gameplay is average at best, tho.

Full review is already written and rated an eight, but I’ll post it after I played here online so I can tweak it.

just perfect ;D

[Download the level before rating ~cooba]

Eyecandy: Some trees in layer 5 can be confusing because you get the feeling you can step on their branches when you see them (I have the one at 91,57 in mind). Other than that I don’t really know what to say about the eyecandy of a Diamondus level, I mean it’s all trees and bushes. The waterfall at 74,43 should continue flowing at 74,53 as well. Same thing at 111,40. I like how you’ve made the sources of the waterfalls, it’s original.

Placement:
I wouldn’t have put seeker ammo in the top left corner if I were you. It’s a rather campy area and putting seeker ammo there makes camping too easy. The rest of the level isn’t really campy though, you need to be on the move all the time. 17,73 is a bad position for the carrot – it can be shot down with toaster and made unusable. At the top right corner you can’t use Jazz to get some of the ammo. I like how the bottom left carrot is in a very open place, you can’t just camp the carrot during the game and hope to achieve something.

One minor remark: The tile at 134,28 should be one-way just like the other places where the same tile is used, otherwise it can be confusing (I’m not just looking for random things to complain about, I really did try to jump there while playing). There is a certain place near 44,38 where you can get stuck. Tilebug: 89,61. As for the light effects, it should get lighter when you get out of a cave area, not stay the same all the time.

All in all I think it’s a nice level to play and I see you’ve worked hard on it. But considering the issues I mentioned the best I can give it is an 8.

Serbia to Tokio :)

Land of Wrath and Angels, right?

wow ur serbian is even better than mine!!!!!

10 if you fix the diacritics

woah, i know i said i was finished with JCS but this tileset is actually weird enough for me to consider using O_o

It’s pretty weird, but still good..
Layer 6-7 should have more colors maybe.

this file with password how can i open it?and i do not have the password!
this file is so bad. i do not know are two hotels is nice or bad. can you tall me it to tall you nice or bad

thank for reading my review well

Why don’t you make something new? We’re tired of conversions.

I actually bothered to play this with all characters in all Easy, Medium and Hard. Not that it’s really useful to know, but it helps me know how the level works with each character.

Eyecandy:
I don’t think a custom tileset automatically makes it better (there’s some bad custom tilesets out there), but it’s a decent tileset, so I’ll give props for that. I get the theme, it works. I like how the tileset implements health bar tiles. However, there’s so much major animations found it rather distracting. Yes, there’s something called too much EC. So much that I didn’t even know what was solid when I first played the level at some points.

Gameplay:
The basis of the gameplay consists of collecting 20 coins to meet the boss while avoiding his attacks, I actually thought it was going to be Bolly Boss before I played this, considering he does look a bit like sparks (at least the eye does, anyway).

I have mixed feelings…actually, there is quite an amount of issues. The idea itself is good, but not that well implemented. I don’t really like how the enemies are somewhat hidden behind from where they generate, so by means you barely have an idea when they’re actually there. Also, spawning carrots is a bad idea for single player. Why? You can pretty much stay there and wait to recover, it’s not that hard to dodge the Boss attacks while waiting for the c’s to respawn. And I’m not sure if you know about this, but there’s a lame Spaz sidekick bug which allows you to infinitie sidekick the boss if you get close to it, killing it in seconds by holding the down and jump button. And it’s not too hard to perform here.

Now about character balances. I actually found Lori the easiest to use (heck I passed Hard in one try with her while with Spaz it took a few tries, and didn’t bother with Jazz as I explain why later), considering killing the spark enemies are a lot easier to kill with her kick, not to mention you can easily turn back with it but I don’t think this was intended to become a somewhat Lori biased level, because I don’t even think the creator of this level has TSF himself, so this won’t really impact on the rating. So I’ll only compare Spaz with Jazz here.

Spaz can get up a few places faster. Helps a bit. Then you got the sidekick boss bug with him, which I sadly don’t even think the creator even knows about.

Ok…Jazz just isn’t very useful here. Took several tries to finish the level with him, And the uppercut and sidekick blocks don’t balance anything. Why? Same rewards, in the same place. Not to mention uppercut is the slowest special move to perform.

Music:
I think the default Boss music would’ve done just as well at fitting, but I suppose it’s nice to hear something fresh every now and then. It’s okay music.

Story:
No story here. I suppose it’s possible to make a story about this level although I think improving the gameplay is far more important.

The tileset is a cool little gimmick worth seeing for a while but the gameplay leaves such to be desired. If you don’t mind hidden spawning enemies, with waiting for c’s to respawn then you might like it. By the way, character balance isn’t all that important in SP, but it’s nice if you can, although it’s not really a big issue. I just wanted to say that, because the low-ish rating is not mainly because of the somewhat imbalancedness.

This is a very profound level. Profound not in the sense that it radically changes gameplay, or introduces a new concept to J2O. Profound in the just plain profound sense.

For one thing, the level is HUGE! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a multileveled stage, where you just keep going up and up and up…

Very tall, in other words.

Eyecandy was bizarre, but fit the level, in a strange way. I guess that’s just a side effect of building a level with the Psych tileset.

The background visuals were nothing short of groovy, jiving perfectly with the Psych set and concept (a funky land). I always wanted to do a layer 8 bg that could change colors, but never felt the particular itch to do it. Blacky did, providing a veritable movie of colors in the distance.

I also loved the “easy mode” deathpit. I don’t know how Blackraptor executed it (and since he passworded it, I never will), but it was a genius idea.

I was, however, very disappointed by the difficulty in mobility this level had. Sure, it may have been big, but it was VERY hard to move around in, having only one or two routes upwards and these being pretty hard to use properly. The righthand tunnel from the beginning is the end of a vertical shaft, making it a dead end. I was quite surprised that such a well-planned out level had that kind of an issue.

Nonetheless, the rest of the level was good, and I will join the clamour of the other reviewers and recommend a download. It’s a psychodelic experience, all right. Come find out for yourself.

@Sean,

There is a powerup. You just have to look for it.

As for size, it’s supposed to be a 1-on-1 duel level, not a melee brawl. I already explained this, so what the heck

The eyecandy may be a little ‘overpowering’, but it’s not oppressive. I thought I did an adequately good job, to be perfectly honest.

I expected my level to get this type of review, I really did. But please be accurate in your review.