Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Although this review was written in January 2009 for a level released in August 2008, I still wanted to address what I liked and disliked about “Lost Luggage Landfill.” I will mainly focus on the gameplay aspect of the race level in this review, though I will make some remarks about the appearance of the level.

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Gameplay (9.5/10, 80% Weight):

On my first lap of this race level, I was a little confused. Upon further inspection, this can be attributed not to the gameplay, but the appearance of the level. After several playthroughs, I concluded that the flow, length, and potential for action in this level are likely the most balanced I have seen in a JJ2 race level.

Flow:

The height of horizontal areas and the width of vertical areas in the level switch from “wide” to “narrow” frequently over long stretches. The effect should be more noticeable with more than two competitors. The short symmetrical branching paths (side-by-side pipes) allow the action to split up so the racing can have some semblance of “defense” that is lacking in other levels.

The springs are properly placed throughout the level, and I was also pleased to see them used well with “dissonance” early in the level, in that holding right constantly on the upper path toward the beginning results in the player being pushed back a little by blue springs, which is adequate punishment for holding “right” brainlessly.

The overall route of the level is confusing at first, though there are arrows indicating where to go. In particular, when the route is reversed, it would be nice to have the arrow pointing at the pole route removed via the same trigger and have a different arrow pointing to the left to show the correct path to take for the confused user who is experiencing this flip in the route for the first time. This is again, an appearance issue, but it impacts the flow of the level the first time through. A difficult goal in making the “perfect race level” is making the primary route perfectly clear the first time around. This and another appearance issue I will note later are the only issues, and they are very minor.

On the ascents of this level, Spaz has a minor movement advantage in that he has a few more options to shave his overall time. In particular, his extra jump allows him to forgo the ice ammo over the spring just after the trigger-based crossover somewhat early in the race. On the other hand, neglecting to pick up any ice causes the player to miss out on some decent ice-based shortcuts that would otherwise make up for that time. Other than this and the boxed spring situation very early in the level where Spaz can access the bouncer ammo without the use of the higher green springs using his extra jump, there are no significant advantages for Spaz.

Jazz has a few combat advantages in this level. The slight horizontal descent after the “holes in the floor” area that follows the steep descent through three pipes can affords Jazz better control over freezing his opponents with ice while flying. Additionally, the fact that he requires a jumping punch to access one of the ice shortcuts punishes players taking the same shortcut or merely passing over. Again, these are about as minor as Spaz’s movement advantages.

Most of the shortcuts in the level involve a risk/reward situation. In some cases, (in particular the RF shortcut and the second iced spring shortcut) the risk scales exponentially with the number of players and players may need to think twice about using them.

There is one major “one-use only” shortcut that is probably best used the first time around because it bypasses destructible scenery the first time around. It is close to the point where the course flips around. Unless in the case of race over TCP destroyed scenery is not destroyed for everyone, players can essentially “do all the work” for someone else. It has to be destroyed when the course flips on the player, however, though by this time the player can just use TNT to destroy the blocks. This probably makes taking the shortcut on the first lap every time and then picking up TNT the optimal strategy in every situation, which is the only remotely significant flaw that I can see in this level’s design. To balance this out, you might be able to do something with triggers to slightly punish players who took the shortcut that are also trying to obtain the TNT on the same lap (or not at all, for that matter). This would actually make using the shortcut on a different lap strategic.

Weapon placement:

While combat is less important in a race level than the flow, it is still important to have good weapon placement in case combat takes place. I have nothing bad to say about the weapon placement. Where paths split, bouncer ammunition is placed at the top, RF ammunition (which goes both up and down) is placed in the middle, and pepper spray (which goes straight) is placed at the bottom. The toaster ammunition is placed in wide open areas where it is more effective than other weapons. I only comment on this to point out that this is a good example to look at if you want to know what good weapon placement looks like in a race level. Weapon placement can only be as good as the design of the level, and since there are several symmetrical splits in the level, there are plenty of opportunities to use these effective principles.
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Functional appearance (9.0/10, 10% Weight):

The tiles of the tileset are properly meshed together in all instances so no confusion will occur because of improper use of tiles. The first time around, the level was only a little confusing because I thought I was going back the way I came when I went right through one of three pipes, fell down a warp, and then went left through what looked at first like the same three pipes. This somehow made me think I was going backwards for a while and caused me to question my route throughout the rest of the level. This was not an issue on subsequent playthroughs, but it does reveal a slight lack of variety in that particular part of the level. Variety may trade off with consistency, however. Improving upon the overall design might require changing the first triple-pipe area that goes left. You maybe could just get away with changing the foreground in that area, though. The open view of space underneath it really should have caught my attention the first time through, but I did not notice it when I was trying to speed through the level. More holes in the background might look better, but the amount of holes should be kept reasonable.

I should mention again that the arrow pointing at the pole route around the point where the course flips around is misleading when the player is instructed to go back down. That arrow should be temporarily removed via trigger and a different arrow should appear that points left. It is okay to point arrows along the primary route of the level. You only need arrows pointing at alternate routes when you want those alternate routes to be obvious and they are not already obvious.
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Graphical appearance (8.0/10.0, 10% Weight):

No offense to the tileset creator, of course, but I feel the tileset limits the potential of this race level. The tileset is used very well to create the occasional view of space, and that is easily the best use of the tileset in this level. The “inside” areas contrast with this in that they are comparatively bland, though I could see that much effort was made to optimize the appearance of the level despite this. In short, the level looks good, but it is not eye-catching.
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Overall (9.3/10.0, rounded down to 9.2 to fit J2O’s rating system):

I really feel this raises the bar for race levels with regard to flow and weapon placement. The level is still very limited in its choice of landmarks throughout the course. It is still about as scenic as it can get with the chosen tileset, so I would at least like to acknowledge that some effort was made to make the level stand out aesthetically. You can only really make a race level better by keeping it this great over a slightly longer course and adding interesting landmarks that fit properly in the level, much like what was already added in the case of the space views throughout the level.

Any shortcomings in the “eye-catching” department of this race level are trounced by the excellent level design, which provides fun and balanced racing and combat at all skill levels. This is a short race level, but it has so many movement and combat options for racers throughout the level that races can be conceivably very different every time. I recommend this level as a worthy addition to any race pack on a server as well as a great example of how one should design a race level.

Good work on the level.

~ Derby

!IMPORTANT NOTE!

OSJ members PLEEEEEASE don’t review this, because we’re not low enough to do that. And because it’s cheap. And so on. :D

This level has really kept me busy over the past year. Must be one of the most often hosted battle levels I actually host. Music it entertaining, and the layout is fun to play around with. The palette is quite anyyoying but doesn’t bother me to much. I miss you Birdie, come BACK!

[Turn into quick review admins]

[Review changed to quick review. Okay. – Violet CLM]

[Did you somehow manage to miss a checkbox with “Quick Review?” next to it? ~cooba]

Wouter: i added some crucial tiles.. so it is also an improvement on the normal pallette. btw, the contrast from the diamondus 1 pallette is better too

Me encanto el pack, espero que se hagan mas, muy bueno fue

[Please write in English, or people have no way of checking whether the rating you gave makes sense (Original rating: 10.0) ~Stijn]

Well, how’s about the first official review of 2009?

To start off, the name of the one song kind of set me off [sex.xm—the song title is “underwater sexual intercourse”. !!!???!!!]. I didn’t like that, maybe rename it?
Now for the levels themselves.
Fight In Flight 1 is a very interesting level. You fly around on a CTF map with hoverboards. The layout was a bit annoying, as most/all the powerups and weapons were inside the walls, and there were WAAAY too many fastfires scattered around the level. The concept was very good though, I was originally making one of these myself but stopped in lieu of other projects. There is also an alternate version of this that has springs, which is nice for those who really don’t like hoverboard combat.
Fight in Flight 2 is also interesting. It utilizes one of the concepts I first introduced in my battles [the textured bg being used as fog], but one of them wasn’t made translucent. The mountain isn’t as far down as should be, and this level is just a symmetrical copy of….itself. Still the idea is great, the execution is mediocre, but the bird kind of confused me a little.
The next level is an exact copy of level 1, except that it is in the water. Very interesting, and points go for that concept.
So to sum up I’d like to say good job, and a neutral dl rec goeth to you, because I’m not quite sure which way to lean. Keep coming back with more, and importantly the most, get testers.

Wasn’t this a cheat program five minutes ago? Yeah, I think it was.

Please remove the links to the ilegal jj2.

Those kind of links are not allowed on this community.

Nice idea. I haven’t checked the tabs themselves yet, because I don’t feel like playing any JJ2 music right now :p….but in any way, do you think you could tab the next ones with Guitar Pro? That’d make it a lot easier to handle (and more fun to play along), especially with songs that have several distinct layers (as, iirc, I think it is with Tubelec, which was mentioned in your thread).
But anyway, nice idea! Way to go. Therefore, even though I haven’t looked at it myself, I’ll give this a d/l recommendation (y)

…which i can’t, because i didn’t rate :[

Very Good Level
Environment is excellent and ammo is well spreaded ammo and pickups.
Background is good too.
I d say theres no problem with the level.Its excellent for CTF and i recomend it for CTF players.

A solid, but generic battle level with a cool background and a decent layout. The placement was generally good, but I felt that the hooks were unnecessary and just got in the way a bit instead of helping out the gameplay. I agree that getting 100 coins just for a 15 second Fire Shield is too much. The eyecandy felt quite basic, but not empty.

Level is well made
Background is pretty good,mountains and layer 8 too is good.
Ammo is well spreaded and battle arena is very creatively made.Music Is pretty good for the style of the level.Environment of the level is good.
But the warp for 100 coins,i think its a little to expensive for just a fire shield.I d reccomend 50 coins,because 100 is too expensive.It Took me minutes to gather that much coins.
On total,its a 9.0 and i d recomend this level for people that like battle levels.

Good Tileset
Pokemon in it are well made and you can make good background with layer 7 and 8,environment too is very good and pokemon jj2 levels can be well made with this tileset.No problem with this tileset,,it is well made.
8.0 from me

I’m finally getting around to reviewing this pack. Yay.

Past of Fortress Renovation
Mm…okay.

This level has some very nice eyecandy, but it’s really awkward to play in. Despite being fairly small, the layout manages to be quite confusing. There are two very, very bad locations. One is the bottom left – the entire level practically acts as a funnel to it, and there’s only one exit from it, which is into a warp with a single target that’s really easy to camp.
The other is the location of the start positions. Or rather, the start position. Yes, this level has ONE start position! (It has two events, but they’re very close to each other.) It’s not actually that big of an issue, but it still hurts the gameplay.

Fortress Renovation
Not at all bad.

Again, this level has great eyecandy. The “paint” doesn’t really look very good though. The layout isn’t difficult to learn, although you’re guaranteed to fall in the pits a couple of times as there are lots of blind jumps. Unfortunately, this is another level with a single start position, and this one is a bigger issue than the last because the level has fewer places to go than Past of Fortress Renovation. Sans badly placed single start position, I liked the dead end at the top left; it makes you think twice about getting the RF powerup.

The top right of the level is…strange. It has almost no ammo, one entrance (okay, there are two, but one is very hard to get to), several exits, one carrot (there’s another one but it doesn’t respawn!), and a toaster powerup. The top right of the area at the top right (if that makes since) is particularily weird. It’s a big, empty space with no events, sans one spring and one ammo box. It’s almost as if Snooze forgot to finish that part of the level.
But if you stop trying to figure out the top right, it’s a solid battle level.

The Shrine
Good but horribly secretly biased.

Again, this level has nice eyecandy and one start position. The start position isn’t really a problem in this one, however, because it’s in a nice, open area that you can quickly get out of.
The layout and flow are both very nice, although the level has almost no ammo at all – the bulk of your weaponry will be made up by the powerups.
I particularily enjoyed the placement of the pits in this level. Unlike those in Fortress Renovation, the pits in this level are obvious and you’re unlikely to walk into them too many times. But they’re well placed. Oh, they’re well placed.
You’re probably wondering what the “horribly secretly biased” part is, so I shall tell you. You’ll notice some one way floors above a small hole with float up events in it. If you’re Spaz, you can just jump right up to those floors and get to the seeker powerup and carrot above them. But if you’re Jazz (or Lori)? Then you have to run up on it just right so you collide with the Freeze Enemies and fall into that little hole. The result is the same, but the method is much harder, AND you’re a sitting duck while you do it. Bad, bad, bad. Bad.

Hall of Legends
Awesome but OLD.

This is a very solid level. It has a good and intuitive layout, good eyecandy, and good event placement. I particularily like the pits. The puddle at the left feels rather gimmicky though.
There’s really not much to be said about it. It’s just a great level, period. What I do know is that it’s OLD! Oh well. That doesn’t change that it’s a good level.

Secret Forest Shrine
Very good, but kind of dull.

This level has some amazing eyecandy, despite the tileset. It’s quite big – not sure why PT32 described it as small. The layout is pretty good, but it suffers from one major problem: the layout is extremely hard to learn and unintuitive. You could be near the top right and think you’re at the bottom left, and you could easily miss 40% of the level because there’s no sense of direction.
And aside from that, the level just isn’t that fun to play in. I’m not sure why this is, and it may only apply to me.

Underground Hunting
Good.

This level is decidedly generic. There’s really nothing at all interesting about it. I didn’t really like the eyecandy that much, but it doesn’t look bad. The layout is solid but uninteresting. It’s hard to say anything about this level because there is nothing to say about it. That’s how ordinary it is.

Headhitting
All right.

The level’s eyecandy isn’t great, but it looks all right. Again, the layout is very funnely. Some parts are just going to get way more attention than others. This can be good, but in this case it isn’t. Ammo placement is very bad; some parts have quite a bit and others are almost completely barren. And, aside from that, there’s nothing really notable about the level. It manages to be quite playable though.

Epical Elements
Great.

This is a really nice level. It has great eyecandy and a good layout. It’s much more intuitive than most of the other levels as far as getting around, which is nice. I like the placement of the seeker powerup, and the tube-blocking ceiling springs have an interesting (though not particularily dramatic) effect.

Untitled Prupel Level (:P)
Excellent.

The eyecandy in this level is just wonderful, with some inventive tileset usage. The only exception was the top left – it looks rather unnatural. (He also failed to use the layer 3 corner tiles.) The layout is a really strong point. It’s very intuitive and well-balanced. Overall, this is one of the best levels in the pack.

Condemned
Awesome.

This is probably my favorite level in the pack. It’s hard to fault this level in any way. The eyecandy is downright amazing, the layout is intuitive, easily learned, and original, and the level altogether holds up very well. The water is also used very nicely. I must admit, however, that I spent several minutes trying to get at all those ammo barrels. (And when I finally did, I discovered they were actually gem barrels.)

A Time Forest
Bleh.

As the last level in the battle pack, and with the three preceding levels, you would expect something epic and awesome. Instead you get…this. Snooze tried hard to make some original eyecandy, but it just plain looks bad. The layout is okay, but it’s ruined by the event placement. Ammo is very sparse, and, again, there’s one start position – and in a very bad place. It’s like there was no real thought put into this level. Snooze just slapped stuff down.

City of the SnOOzE
Wonderful.

This is just a great CTF level. It has a great, balanced layout, with some great ideas. And it looks fabulous. Seriously. I suppose I can’t say a whole lot about it, because there’s nothing to fault. It just holds together so well. Great job, PJ.

Restplace F0R SN00ZE
Good.

Again, the layout is nice and balanced with some original ideas. I mistook this level for a battle level at first, which might be a good thing or a bad thing.
My main problem with this level is its eyecandy. Not only does it not look very good, the level is absolutely RIDDLED with tilebugs. They’re everywhere! DS even forgot to use the layer 3 stair tiles. Ugh. And the music? Blechhhh.

Forest Green
Good.

Again, the level has a good layout, though, again, it’s rather battle-ish. And while it’s obvious that DS put a lot of effort into the eyecandy, it really doesn’t look all that good. The gameplay makes up for it though. And again, the music is awful.

Ancient Abyss
Good.

This level has some very original ideas. You have to love those huge falls. The eyecandy looks all right, though it doesn’t excel by any means. The stalactites/stalagmites are rather confusing at times. I don’t think I’d play any truly serious games in this level, but it’s fun.

Systematic Crash
Very nice.

A great Domination level. Eyecandy isn’t too original, but it certainly looks nice. The level plays really smoothly. It’s intuitive and balanced.

Hoven
Okay.

Eh. This level’s layout feels a bit too restrictive for Domination. It almost feels like Battle 1. Playing in it isn’t that enjoyable because of that. The eyecandy is nice, but rather weird. One of the weaker levels in the pack, IMO.

Overall I think an 8 is a fair rating for this pack. Considering its vauntedness and its reception by others, I was very disappointed by most of the levels, but a few of them were really great, and I definitely recommend downloading it.

Looks interesting, but after all, I don’t play the guitar. I may show these to someone I know who’s playing guitar for a living, I just got to hear how these sound.

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Thank you plunk, I’ll look into that when I get around to volume 2… And yeah, that’s why I didn’t tab out the intro to Damned. =P Plus, I think only synth lead plays that intro, not lead guitar, but I’m not positive. In any case I’ll look at it.

Very good work. I was thinking of doing these up myself soon so its great that they are done. I’ve played through them and they seem well done, and they are indeed completely playable and are great to use for learning guitar.

My only comment is on “infero(Dark Groove)”. In the Bridge, there are the 4 mini arpeggio’s. The 4th one goes is shown as 5-7-5-4, but when i play it, it does not sound right. I believe it should be 7-9-7-6.

Besides that it is a great download very much worth getting if your into guitar. i can’t wait for volume 2!

and for Crimiclown: i used the MOD sourse files to try to tab out the intro to Jazz be damned. It turns out its actually 34 notes in under 2 seconds, and the notes go about 10 half steps above the average guitars range.

edit: Yeah the intro to that is a synth lead.

This is an edit of the last version [I don’t know if it is still up], so I will address the revisions:

Masking bugs: most of these have been fixed. There’s one tiny spot in Castle Escape, but it’s not very big and can slide.
Crate puzzles: These have [for the most part] been made a lot easier. The Carrotus Gate one is still tricky, but no longer hopelessly so. The Castle Escape one is equally tricky, but now at least you can SEE the crate…
GJ, Dl rec, and an improved rating of 7.2!