Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I can’t remember the number of times I’ve mentioned how great this pack is.

Not a fan of the genre of music that “Apocalyptic End” uses, but that doesn’t lower the grade that it gets, what with all of that fire and lava.

“Intercity Grudge Match” is just spectacular. Not only does it use UT music, but the combination of BlurredD’s skill and the Desolation tileset makes it truly awe-inspiring.

I can say as much about “Dethroned” as I did with “Intercity Grudge Match”. Again, another amazing piece of work from BlurredD, and also proving that a person can produce a truly amazing result from one of their own tilesets. The same can be said for “E. Prime”.

Not many of the other levels jumped out at me as well as those, but they are no less awesome than the ones I’ve stated.

What we can see in this pack is the true capabilities of BlurredD, the brains behind JJ2+. I am aspiring to you, BlurredD. Your pack gets a 9.5 from me.

Okay, simple review.

Art Style:

Unfortunately, I’ve seen too much of the crazily good tilesets like Desolation, 7th Lava Fall, Swamps of the Sleeping Jaguar, WTF and all of those to give it a good rating for the visual look of it, so I’ll be fair and give it a 5.0

Diversity of Tiles:

Quite a wide selection of different pieces of terrain, a good number of animations, plenty of eyecandy and detail to go around, good work there. This section’s worth about 7.8.

Layer Management:

Quite good at using a small number of layers for the main part of the level, leaving more room for more distant scenery and background detail. Worthy of a 7.3.

Environment:

Half-city, half-resort appearance to the tileset. Looks okay during the day, but evening and night variants look quite a lot better and more atmospheric, especially with light events dotted around the place. This one nets a 7.4.

Result:

Art Style – 5.0
Diversity of Tiles – 7.8
Layer Management – 7.3
Environment – 7.4

Total —> 6.875
Final rating: 7

Nice work on that, I’ll be sure to make good use of it.

woops, saved it one time in 1.24 jcs, but I made it in 1.23 xD

Edit: Converted it back and reuploaded it…

Why bother using the 1.23 version if you made the level in TSF?

I had 20 minutes to kill so I decided to play this, since the preview of the level interested me. Interesting and original use of the swamps tileset (though this style has been done before) and I liked the eyecandy and cave-like atmosphere; it was a refreshing change from the typical swamps level. Also this was challenging to play (I wouldve got a gameover if you didn’t hide all those extra lives here) though i thought some of the enemy placement was kind of cheap. However, the ammo placed throughout made this a lot easier (seeker/toaster ftw), though unless you are really skilled at this game you’ll probably find that instead of using any strategy, just spamming seekers everywhere is the best way to go. Save points were generously placed here, but i think they were needed since the combination of hard to hit enemies and death pits would get frustrating otherwise. I also really liked the boss battle here. Not much else to say really, good eyecandy/innovation, ok placement of pickups, good level of difficulty and fun to play = 8+ and a download reccomendation.

-blacky

SE dying a lot in SP = SE giving a high rating

On the other hand, I didn’t enjoy surprise enemies, enemy generators and very large amounts of seekers in this level. I was able to shoot almost every enemy on my way with seekers. Also the boss fight was way too easy imo.

Nice and original, however kinda repetitively looking use of the tileset.

Fine enough.

As I promised I would like to rate this 9.5. Everything is almost excellent.

jjj

[]

hmm this level is nice for “ your first level “ (KiMO)
Good job

level is too small , but nice try
then make it more big….

Narsist,
Exit is hidden ;)
Foreground layers are usable .
There is a trap where are the bosses(devan and 2 bilsy)
and a ‘end’ event too.
Try to find it :P
Soon i’ll finish an amazing ctf level :D
Hmm , i’ll try to remake(make it more longer) the level and to delete some enemies.
Thanks for review ;)

i agree with SPAZ18 this is too much bad use of jj1 tileset
its being overrated with evil overraters
and yes we are not poor ill just give 1.2 for a minute if
effort

@Flawful: An upload is supposed to be without flaws, as one can betatest it first to remove them. If it still contains flaws after being uploaded, just give the upload a lower grade, it got to do with the skills of the levelmaker.
If people reupload things they improve ofcource but reviewers have to edit their review. This can be annoying when it happens multiple times.
So to all uploaders: Take time in testing your file/map, test it with others too and when you’re sure there are no flaws then upload it.

not very good, and not worth of 7 imo

uploads like this make me cringe
1.1 since I guess it does have a purpose but really is there any skill in filling a premade level with no fire zones?

King, in your profile you can select your rating system. It is possible to select a box where you can type in the grade yourself.

Now my own review:

Eyecandy

I’m positively suprised by the eyecandy here. The level is dark overall, but still contains a lot of diverse eyecandy. The layer 5 background has been used very nice, many holes and bushes were added to give it a mithical atmosphere. I also like the lower part where the layer 5 ends and you can see the layer 6/7 again. Those mountains in the background aren’t really spectacular, but they suffice.

Gameplay

This level can be confusing for the first minutes you play it. Everything looks alike so you sometimes don’t know where you are. The warps are also hard to learn how to use and they don’t really seem to be an asset to this map. I also wasn’t really happy about the flow in this map, in many area’s I couldn’t run at high speed, but bumped against tiles instead.

Originality

I like the placement of the powerups and the carrots. One would say that putting the seeker powerup symitrically with the bouncer powerup would make the map biased, but I think bouncers are more useful in most parts of the map, so they even eachother out.
The layout of this level is also original, it combines battles in small and larger area’s, still it isn’t really a revolutionary shape.

Eyecandy: 8,2
Gameplay: 7,5
Originality: 8,3

Final Grade: 8

GJ and HF in XLM.

Yay, j2o deleted this upload when laro tried to edit something, and now i have to write the whole review all over again. Please fix this issue so this kind of problem doesen’t happen again. Kinda annoying…. Anyway, the review

Eyecandy
Amazing, simply amazing. The way laro used this tileset is very impressive, alltough tileset is rather original, it still looks awesome. Basic theme of the map is a cavern full of plants, pumpkins and carrots, and lets not forget few waterfalls with trees in walls which looks fantastic. Background looks very amazing. Also adding that rain in the foreground was an excellent idea. The only bad part of the eyecandy are those pumpkins at the bases which are hidden behind layer 3 plants. It wouldn’t actually look bad, but every single pumpkin is hidden by mostly the same plant tile, and it kinda looks a bit lame. You should have freed some of the pumpkins. Still, it looks very good, and the eyecandy is definetly the strongest point of the level. Good job.

Overall: 9.5/10

Pickups
Very nicely placed. I don’t have any much complains about pickups. The only complain is the fact that i think its a bit unfair to have given the left side Seeker power up and the right side has bouncy. In most cases Seekers are overpowering bouncy, but in this map that’s rather several anyways. However the most dominant ammo in this map is definetly the toaster, so that somewhat fixes the Seeker-Bouncy issue. Carrot placements are okay. It was a good idea to put a pit because of players shooting the Full NRG carrot down and burying it with toaster, making it fall down trough that grassy tile and unpickable by any player. This way it will now respawn if someone tries to do that. But i think it would have been a better idea to use full masked tiles and then cover them with those grass tiles in layer 3, because, what about players doesen’t have plus? The pit idea might not work for them (or is it just server that needs plus? I dont know, but to be sure, i think my idea would be better). Anyway, there are some fastfires and they are very well placed, not too much of them but not too several either, so thats a good thing.

Overall: 8.5/10

Gameplay
Now this was a bit of a downgrade to the level. It’s not really bad, but you might have a problem playing it if its one of your first times. There are a lot of areas that are rather simillar looking, and at some point you will get the feeling that you are lost. At some points i thought i was in the middle of the map when i was actually in 1/4 of the map. There were even few times when i didn’t know if i’m in upper path of cave or the downer one. But the toaster and blaster powerups might serve as a sign to where you are, alltough its still a problem if they haven’t spawned. The warps you made are very usefull but only once you have learnt the level. The use of the warp ill once again throw you in the land of confusion. It just gives you the feeling “okay where did i end up now?”. If you remember those pumpkins i mentioned above, the ones at bases hidden by layer 3, i find it a bit annoying not to be able to see my footing clearly. It is such a shame laro did this cuz those pumpkins are very very usefull for S/R/D-ing the base, expecially if you have bouncy, come to think of it, i think this is one of the places where bouncy completely overpowers Seeks. As i allready said, the main and most dominant ammo here is toaster, i would strongly reccommend to use it in most of the cases. When going trough cave best ammo to use are RF or toaster but using RF will make you bounce of the ground due to unlinear footing. Oh i cant belive im saying this, but blaster works here pretty well too, hehe. Anyway like i said at start, gameplay isn’t really bad, its just hard to play in the level if your playing for the first times, but after that you will find those warps rather usefull. Be patient, and it will work out.

Overall: 7/10

Music
Music file is still broken for me, and idk how to fix it. If i ever fix it il rate the frickin music too :l.

Overall: N/A

Total rating
Summary: (9.5+8.5+7+N/A) /3 = 25/3 = 8.333333

Rating 8.2 (It still doesen’t let me put 8.3 :l )
Fixed, 8.3 now.

Download Recommendation?
Yeah. It’s an amazing level with fantastic eyecandy, even tough gameplay might be confusing at start. But, after playing it a few more times, you will see that gameplay is also really good.

EDIT
Thanks MS, didnt know it works that way, it would be better if this was selected as default… Rating fixed now.

I was pretty suprised when I played this level, I really enjoyed it. The eyecandy in this level was in one word briljant! The lianas and such are pretty nice. The plants and the water effects are well done. The use of this tileset is good. The gameplay was in the start a bit hard and the boss is pretty hard too, compared to other levels. But you made a good job. The ‘Spaz only’ part was something I liked, no other characters, just Spaz. This level would be very easy if you used Jazz/Lori. Enemy placements is something what was bothering me, you don’t see them coming and such, that maked the level really hard. Music fits the level entirely and I have nothing to say about it.

If you like platform levels with a huge ammount of invisible enemy’s, then this is your map to download. Oh, and if you aren’t a pro, you need some patience.

Eyecandy

Well, I like the waterfalls in the top left corner of this level.
Too bad it has tilebugs at the top of the pillars on which the rocky thing is standing. Below it is also a tilebug in the grass. There are more tilebugs, especially at borders of the platforms. Try to spend more attention to that before uploading your level. The layer 8 background and the falling leaves look nice, but you’ll need more of that. Make some more background eyecandy in the other background layers and maybe some forground tiles which overlap a small part of the layer 4.

Gameplay

First of all, try to fix the spawning problem, players can spawn near their opposing team’s base. In JCS at the multiplayer spawn point event you can enter a team number, 0 or 1. Both are different teams. Also try to never have dead ends, always make a path lead somewhere. Try to find the right balance of tiles and empty space in your levels. In the middle of this level there is just too much empty space, which gives not very attractive gameplay. Try to make the bases a bit harder to reach if they are close to eachther. By the way, if you don’t want your level to have the CTF bug, which is taken care of by JJ2+, make a 3 tile thick layer at all borders of your level. Now this level is only CTF bug free in JJ2+. By the way, try to spread ammo more evenly over your level, also non PU ammo.

Originality

Well this level certainly has a nice shape, I bet if you continue to make progress with making levels, you’ll be able to make some very nice original work. And you’ll have many years to improve because you’re still young.
So my advice: Never give up, practise makes perfect!

Eyecandy: 5
Gameplay: 5
Originality: 5,5
Final Grade: 5.2