Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Underworld is more or less the regular Xargon fare. It’s supposed to feel as if it’s underground (the vertical layout helps, granted), but it’s a bit vague and transparent. Okay so there’s a dark background, dim lighting (with the huge crystals being light sources), and the music, but this isn’t the strongest theme out there. Really it feels like a generic Xargon level with some details thrown in, rather than a completely new setting.

Gameplay wise it isn’t anything outstanding either, as it’s pretty small and a little bothersome to navigate. There’s all regular ammo types available here – an odd choice since not all weapons will be effective here (for instance, I can’t really see RFs or Pepper Spray being too useful). Toaster + Fastfire as the only powerup, well, I’m not a huge fan of toaster as a weapon but I figure it can work here. At the bottom there’s two warps that lead back to the top – fair enough. All in all a pretty decent levelThe size suggests that it might be good for duels but I wouldn’t really want to duel here.

Deinspirated Mayhem (a really cringeworthy name, IMO) uses Tubelectric – not a tileset you see often anymore. But even though it’s Tubelectric, which I usually like a bunch, this level lacks some sort of spark (hehe). It’s not as interesting or good looking as the tubelectric classic e-Line Circuits, and that came out seven and a half years ago. It doesn’t look like there’s much mayhem going on, or anything going on – it’s a pretty static landscape of bricks. Bricks, and little else than bricks actually. It makes the level look very purple, almost monochrome in fact. There should have been more wooden/green circuit/black parts to break the monotony.

The layout shows that this level was pretty much uninspired – not that I mind a lot to be honest. It’s bigger and more spacious than Underworld, and also more horizontal. RFs and Bouncers work in this layout fairly well, as will Pepper Spray. There’s three carrots, two of which are placed in semi-evil dead ends – not a problem. I did like how the blaster powerup was placed – it reminded me of some older levels. Not sure if being half-secret is the best spot for the weakest powerup out of the three available, but it’s not a huge deal.

This is probably worth a download. Deinspirated Mayhem is the better of the two levels (ironically), but Underworld is not bad either… and then again neither of them are all that spectacular. They’re decent levels, and much better than Eigus’ older works, but still not quite great.

What we have here is a big capture the flag level by Superjazz of XLM. It has a n industrial theme, which is expectable in a level with a WTF set, nevertheless well executed. The industrial atmosphere is completed with an acid techno-esque music track which fits the level well.

The level looks great. On the background layers we have an enormous factory wall with some windows and closer to the playable stage is a huge moving crane (or another pipeline/transport platform). Both of these background layers look very good. What I liked on the sprite level of the eyecandy were the ‘symbols’ on the top left and top right platforms, respectively a shuriken-esque star and a cluster of rhombi. What completes the eyecandy are some translucent waterfalls (wastefalls?) on the foreground layers.

Xyzzy is a big level, although it’s not too hard to learn the layout (unless you’re staring at the nice industrial EC). It’s semi-symmetrical, so the opposing Zones are almost the same. There’s a toast and bounce PU for the Blue Zone and a toast and RF PU for the Red Zone and both teams have a Full NRG carrot on their shuriken/rhombus platforms. Fair enough. There are copters to make travelling through the three floors easier. That’s cool, also I like copters :P The bases are separated by a column on the center of the level and placed in the central parts, on the second floor of their respective Zones. It’s fairly easy to get to them. There is also a white warp at the very top of the level. It can warp you to the first floor of the Blue or Red Zone. Pretty interesting.

I’m going to give this level a pretty high (well-deserved I guess?) 8.6. It’s a good, big CTF and probably a lot of effort was put into it, so you should download it right away and try it out.

I can’t really bring myself to give this a higher rating than I am. It’s a very small level, presumably intended for instagib, but it fails to pay attention to the necessary details in making such a level. It’s too open. Way too open. This means that the gameplay is thoroughly chaotic and luck-based, unless you have, say, a 10ms ping time.

Underworld is a small level with a quite original layout and theme (there are more levels with this theme but this one is a bit different)

Deinspirated Mayhem is a nice level with a layout that looks like it’s uninspired (because the layout can’t be compared to another level’s layout) This level has good eye candy too.

Well,from my point,the levels are nice,have nice gameplay and eyecandy. So here you go,I hope it’s enough,keep up the good programming and levelmaking work.

Hey master cheif here. firstly this is my first review :) WOOHOO!!!!
ok now to the reviewing.
This is a new idea. a new concept. lemons!!!! lol! it is very small and brings for close combat. which is fun if you are good at dodging and going fast. I do like the water falls. I dont really like the eye candy because it isnt new stuff. but i spose it works with the foreground well and u dont pay much attention in onmline play coz its fast :) cool random bush on the end of the ledges :)

two decent levels. the quality of them is good enough for a 8. lot better then author’s previous work. :)

ya….this tileset is good.But hotel heroes can you mix all the tileset you have made to 1 tileset?It will be more perfect Thanks.

wat? i removed it oO

Cool concept, great execution. The layout was a bit confusing at first for me (maybe that was because i forgot about the copters?), but after learning it the level becomes very fun to play, I liked how the bases were placed. The tranquil, dreamy atmosphere is another thing which makes this level great. Overall, an awesome level. Download away!

I can see the levels look nice. And they’re quite good for a small game with a maximum of three or four players. However, when I saw them hosted on a server with about ten players in, playing there wasn’t exactly what I’d call fun. Still, it’s worth downloading the pack and giving it a try.

A set of minilevels. Cool. The levels are quite small and they are probably used far a very quick battle.
They are quite fun.
These levels look good but they are not something amazing. The levels look kinda like the same(layout) and some feel bland. The wierd thing was with the toaster pu. (what’s with that? you get stuck…)
But. I liked the tileset use. These levels are very nice.
Music is good for the pack. and i hope i will play more than just 6 of them.
Thses levels suit the type of jazz2 level, which is battle and i think they worth a 7.5 with DR

Good tileset, nice example levels, I loved the last level ;). The music is awful. I like just a little part of it, when it sings at flute. So I hate it. I like the first ex. lev.‘s trees, and I hate the 2nd ex. lvl.‘s trees because they’re concrete and they’re a little not good looking. I like that you put underground.
I’ll give:
Tileset mask – 7,5 [I hate that you didn’t make concrete cactuses so that Jazz can suffer a little more (How evil am I, Muhahahaha) and I hate the jungle trees’ mask]

Eyecandy – 9,7 [The best part of the tileset, you put day/night/cloudy sky and a sun, green/yellow/blue/grellow(green+yellow) hills and you even put underground, nice work. Well I just hate that clouds have such a squarely form]

Ex. levels – +0,5 (They’re all aproximatively identically, but they show you every thing, well I can’t give big ratings for ex. levels, but I can give – ratings>:) )

Music – 6,2 (Worst I ever heared,it’s even worse than Neonius)

So total (don’t forget that I’m a very-good-at-maths-nerd) – (9,7 + 7,5 + 6,2) / 3+ 0,5 = 23,4/3 + 0,5 = 7,8 + 0,5 = 8,3(rounded up to 8,5). Well I think it worths more so I will give a 9,5 :)!
Download recommendation.

This is practically a very versatile CTF-level in a while from FireSworD and OLC. This goes well for duels, but also a 3vs3 which I played here once, went smoothly. What can you expect? No disappointment at least.

The atmosphere is ambient, calm, and tranquil. What you see here is a fairly bleached mass of soil covered with moss just like a stone golem could be. The edges of the level that aren’t parts of the golem look a bit bland though. This Carrotus/Easter-edit fits really well for a concept like this. If it only had those top/bottom edges of background caves fixed, it would be perfect. This level is one of those few ones that generally look better in 8-bit rather than 16-bit colour, at least for me. 8-bit mode makes things look more transparent in a neat way and gives you a more lighter background.

What I find the most exotic about this level is the base placement. Your base is located on one of the golem’s hands, and you should attack the opposite hand. Golem’s solid body however, is there between the hands, as obvious. So, you should find a way to either go round the body, or cut through it. The warp on your hand is one of the possibilities. It takes you below the golem’s body, so that you are able to cut through it’s feet to the opponent’s side. Another option is to cut through the golem’s shoulders. You will need a copter or ice-ammo for this though to get through the ceiling springs. Generally the layout is limiting, and I like it that way. It is not a level with a dozen of small passages and mazes. Instead, you have lots of space to move around, the layout is simple enough to be learned fast, and yet you can still survive in bigger games if you know how.
The bases are kinda easy to defend, as well, you can hold flag ready for a score for a really long time against weak attackers, since you have a minor healing carrot right above your base, thus you can keep healing yourself all the time, as long as you keep getting only minimal damage. The flipper pads work great on the hands, so that you can quickly jump away if needed. If you suddenly get a critical hit, you can also go for the full energy carrot at the bottom-middle of the level, which can be very unsafe though. This was very well thought out.
There is also a half-secret shield, though getting it is really…hard. The idea is practically that you can be lucky and abuse a warp exit while an opponent player is camping the exit with seeker-ammo. If you are lucky, and your opponent is dumb, you may try to abuse the seekers so that they push you up to the shield-room. Reaching the warps themselves is already really hard though, since you require a copter for that, again. What is even harder,(barely possible) is trying to reach the shield-room straight with the copter. I managed with this once so far, but it really requires perfect timing and handling of the copter, as well a double-jump of Spaz. Now the problem with this is, that if you get in there with the flag, is that you can just never come down again and thus freeze the game. While it would make sense only if it was a time-based game where you are having the lead, it is still sort of lame, as really nothing can make you fall down, and no opponent is likely able to enter there. Good idea otherwise, though.

If this was all I had to say about the level, I would rate it really high. However, there are still some bad things as well that are mattering me. Unfortunately I’m not sure is it wise to try to fix them without a major change in gameplay.

One is that there is basically very few ammo. You must gain your ammunition mainly from PowerUps. If you try to charge into opponent base to kill the enemy flagholder without any ammo, you’ll be most likely dead very quick.
Another thing are the dead ends. Luckily they are small and contain PowerUps, so they aren’t just useless areas.
The level is also fairly Spaz-biased. Although who am I to care about that, since I am a Spaz-player?
The cut through the ceiling-springs isn’t after all as useful as it could be, because the warp-shortcuts are a bit too fast.
I’m not very sure if I find Powered up seekers fitting well for a level of this kind. They can cause much airhits in such and open level.

In overall this is a really decent, interesting and enjoyable level for everyone. It just could have been very awesome if it didn’t have those minor flaws in it. The layout is strategic, and you need it to master the level, but also you require much endurance to be faster to reach things before your enemy. I recommend this download for everyone, and hope to see it played in both Bash12 and JDC18 duels/2on2’s/events. Thank you FireSworD.

Edit: Thanks for the fixes. With them this level deserves a bit more.

SJ

take care that the plural of “fish” is “fish”. Nice tileset, good work, I like FISH too, ex. level is nice. It worths an 9.7
Dnld Recommendation: Yes!

Good work Dany.Hope it will have a newer version soon:D

this work on vista?i cant use it bcs it says (this application has failed to start because MSVBVM50.DLL was not found.Re-installing the application may fix the problem)

Well,a simple test,but new ideas.i hope who found bugs, pls comment.Thanks

I’m not sure exactly how to rate packs as a whole compared to single levels, so I’ll rate this based on which levels would actually be played. In other words, I would rate highly if one level would be played often, and if I find it fun to play in.

Fawful made some awfully big levels in this pack with awfully complex concepts. There’s definitely a lot of vigor put into some of these levels. If there ever was a need for the exclamation mark “!” this pack certainly deserves it. However, how was that vigor harnessed?

There’s certainly a difference between throwing darts at a dart board and throwing spears at it: Spears will likely destroy the dart board. Overkill is overkill, and I never enjoy playing in epically big or complex levels, simply because it’s harder to roast other players, and it’s often how easy it is to roast that makes jj2 fun. Of course there are exceptions, and many ways to design layouts that allow for them to be slow or fast paced despite size.

I like to compare levels, and I don’t care what anyone thinks of it: Myopia and Starlit Summit are somewhat similar, but there are also differences. Starlit Summit has a well thought out design imo. After playing Starlit Summit a few times in jdc events, it was quite enjoyable, but most players would agree it’s not suitable for smaller games. Some players thought it was still too big. In some games I recall it was extremely hard to score points, and they would end at 3. While being slightly horizontally smaller, Myopia is vertically bigger, has 3 full nrgs (Summit has 4 separate +1s and 1 full nrg), fly carrots and the layout is more open and spread out than Summit. If Summit is barely playable in jdc events, why the heck would I want to play Myopia in one? – Myopia might be OK in jdc events, but I don’t see it becoming an ideal level for them. In fact, some games in Divide and Conquer have been pretty slow paced as well. That aside, the music is nice, and in my opinion faw’s best track so far. By the way, Myopia is blurred vision; the effect presented in the bg is not totally consistent with the concept, but whatever.

Moving on to Downtown Maze: This probably has the weirdest CTF layout I have ever seen. I am pretty sure this level isn’t very balanced. I am definitely not fond of the layout organization. I’m not really sure what else to say about this, but I definitely don’t want to play here.

Neglected future is a level I did get a chance to play, and it was decent, but the layout could be better if it was simpler. For example, there were times I wanted to go straight up to blue base from the blue spring under it, but I was delayed by a green spring. Also, if you use the same blue spring to go towards the upper platform at the right, you’re required to use another green spring on the platform below it, but it doesn’t bring you high enough as jazz (but spaz can double jump). Jazz and Spaz can, however, make it to that platform fast with the aid of the suckertubes, this is a very weird concept though o.O. Another questionable spring placement is at the far right side, where there’s a ‘hole’ by a red spring, and you can camp there or something, but I only want to go straight up. There’s a green spring that can only let you reach the red base area, but reaching the other area not far above requires a bit more effort. I’m not sure if this level is that balanced, but I didn’t notice any balance issues while playing here.

Technoligized Sonicwaves is probably the most well rounded and playable level in the pack. My favorite ec aspect is how the solid tubes and suckertubes are used, just that little detail impressed me. I recall playing at least one game here, and it played solidly.

Klassieker for the Sn00zE has another non-symmetrical layout that is also very weird. I’m not sure how balanced the level is, but the layout is just so wacked out I can’t imagine it is.

Electric Factory has a somewhat symmetrical layout with bases at opposite diagonal corners of the level. No…just no. Of course, faw does not want me to rate this level in the pack? – Beats me.

Hard cheese is quite a solid/standard ctf level with at least one nice tactic I’ve noticed, and this is probably one of the best levels in the pack. However, playing this level really does feel cheesy thanks to the tileset.

Now onto the battle levels.

Pleased with Presents features a concept where players can only fall into pits if they are frozen, this is a very nice idea on how to deal with pits. Playing here a bit I can say it plays decently, even if the layout organization could yet again be better.

Knight FurnFace is the most annoying level I have ever seen. I have always liked wacky, silly or abstract levels as they fit pretty well with jj2, when I made that statement I wasn’t thinking of refined versions of zappo levels. The overall look is amazing, but technically it might as well be crap. Just like those abstract paintings that look like something a child made. The layout organization is nice, and I can see the big idea here. The problem with this level is the execution. Perhaps a different tileset or a different use, and this level could be one of, if not the best looking level I’ve seen so far. So I suggest redoing this level, it potentially has the ‘wow’ factor.

Favorite Park is not my favorite park unfortunately. It’s nice that I can use toaster underwater, and it’s also nice that I can walk and run underwater. So is that even water, and if it is water, why is it there in the first place? – Anyway, this seems like a solid battle level, and it can make for a few fun games every now and then.

8th heaven is a tower level. I mean, it’s a tower level in the sense that there are simply 3 towers, really, just 3 basic towers. The level is quite big, so I don’t see myself wanting to play here often.

Radioactive seems like it could be a decent battle level, but it’s quite…empty. Really, this level is kind of boring.

Moving on there’s a dom and an fr level.

I have already complained about the eyecandy in Hideout Center. Also, this level is a lot more complex than a normal fr level. So I’m really unsure about this.

I had got a chance to play Alien Heart in a jdc event once. While it played decent, there were some annoying things like camping at the seeker pu and +1. I’m serious a +1 and a seeker pu are TOGETHER.

So..some decent levels, and some questionable ones. In my opinion, Technoligized Sonicwaves is the best level in this pack, and the main reason to download Planetary.

first i was considering higher rating but thanks to some things what author has said about me in past and recently i settled with a 8.

EDIT: raising the rating. dont ask