Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

(I ran this pack under TSF to overcome the animations error)

This is a pretty standard JJ2 romp, with several details making it stand out from the rest. The first level greets you with a variety of available paths which must be taken before advancing further. This, combined with the amount of goodies found everywhere, encourages exploration, which is an important aspect in most of these levels—the earlier ones at least.

The levels are also pretty standard on the visual side. There’s no overly revolutionary tile work, though using custom tileset edits made a few levels feel fresh (I liked the background in the first level a lot). The use of JJ3 music also helped, though some of the track choices were questionable (Basement Boss in a dimly lit swamp?).

One thing I noticed is that the overall level quality seemed to go down as I progressed through the pack. The first level felt cool and well polished, where as the final level was a big letdown. It uses a stock tileset, the music barely matches, is very linear, has a number of unfair challenges (namely the bird morph sequence), uses instakill without any forewarning, and has no endboss?? Combine this with several bugs in the previous levels, namely the Rocket Turtle who completely failed to work for me, and you have a buggy, unpolished SP pack.

Conclusions? An above average pack that starts out promising and goes steadily downhill, yet not to the rock bottom. Download if you’re bored, or if you want to look at the pretty first level =P

I love bloxonius!!!
Thank you very much!

I too got the Internal Animations error, except I was getting it in Levels 1 and 3.

EDIT: I have just tried these levels in TSF (1.24) and they work fine there. I can’t understand why they won’t work in 1.23 since they weren’t made in TSF JCS.
The too many enemies error confuses me since I’ve played levels with thousands of enemies and they WORK. How odd :O

Quality NOT quantity makes a good pack!

EYECANDY & ATMOSPHERE

The eyecandy in this pack (all 60 levels) is VERY repetitive. Everywhere I went I could see tilebugs, buttstomp and destruct blocks used for the ground. I like the way you tried to make a highway or train track out of the Carrotus and Diamondus sets but unfortunately all of those blocks made it look repetitive. The backgrounds are nothing original. Most of the levels have only the backgrounds ripped out of EPIC’s own JJ2 levels. Some levels even look EXACTLY the same but with those ugly blocks thrown in.
The music used in all the levels was very much questionable. Christmas music in a Carrotus level?! Castle music in a Diamondus/Carrotus level?!
After getting through the last 50 levels I find that the eyecandy is just recycled from all the previous levels in this pack.

1.6/10

GAMEPLAY

There was no actual gameplay to speak of in this pack. All I was doing was running left/right and holding Space Bar down ALL THE TIME. After getting the Blaster PU from one of the SEVEN boss levels it gets far too easy. 60 levels is far too many to make.
There were some Secret levels but they were mostly the same. One of them was the original JJ2 secret level with the Bird ripped straight from there. Only differences are the FAST MOVING impossible to dodge Spike Bolls and the ugly buttstomp blocks thrown in again.
Most of the levels were the same ones repeated at least 4-6 times. The Boss Arenas are far too big. Why does the arena have to be like 200 tiles wide for ONE BOSS?!
The “radio electric” level was boring. All I was doing was watching the player just fall down 468 tiles FOUR TIMES through MASSES OF BLUE GEMS and then I bounce staright back through about 20 Blue Springs to the exit.
Gameplay overall was extremely repetitive as I was running, shooting, jumping, stomping and breaking crates for most of these levels.

1.2/10

PICKUPS & ITEMS

GEM OVERUSE is the first thing that comes to mind here. I found approximately 18,000 Gems in one of the levels. Food was also too much since I got about 8 Sugar Rushes throughout the whole game.
Ammo was just EVERYWHERE! One level had ALL THE POWER-UPS next to each other so I had every single weapon after that.
In the final level there was 4 Power-Ups and 8 Fast Fires REGENERATING meaning that if you die there you can get your Rapid Fire back again.

1/10

ENEMY PLACEMENT

First, why is there enemies everywhere in every level? This doesn’t make the levels any better but more frustrating for the player. One of the levels had about 1,000 FLOATING LIZARDS! which is just far too many. I had to JJINV sometimes in some of these levels since the enemy amount was just too much.
The first level was very annoying to play since there were Dragons everywhere you went. Some were hidden in front of flowers and EVEN behind Layer 3 scenery meaning I got hurt without knowing why it happened in the first place. DO NOT place these Dragons on every single one of the platforms since I almost ended up dying for no reason.
Placement is also very bad because some of the enemies were on the EDGE of platforms meaning I got hurt no matter what.
The final boss of this pack was 8 Devans which was just pointless. This doesn’t present any kind of challenge but just makes the boss annoying to defeat.

1/10

TOTAL SCORE: 4.8/40

CALCULATING: (4.8 / 40) * 100 = 12%

FINAL MARK = 1.2/10

DOWNLOAD RECOMMENDATION & COMMENTS

With repetitive eyecandy, gameplay and very bad enemy placement I cannot recommend this for download. After playing this episode, I don’t know if I’ll want to play through Episode 2 since it’ll probably be all the same.
I suggest not trying to build a massive level pack but attempt one at a smaller scale of say 2-4? Or try building just one level at a time. Making 60 levels would take at least 2 years!

PHEW! Done after 3,900+ characters!

poor him? i think he’s right. i sense a lot of plain layouts and tilebugs. all these maps look they’re done in like 1 hour. and not in weeks (like normally). of course i can’t say it’s a fact, but maybe your maps aren’t that good as you thought.

i also got the bug for the first and the 4th level that it ran out of animations.. i couldn’t play the level. not from JCS nor home cooked levels.

Gameplay: 4/10
The levels are very open, and there are tons of paths. This is a very nice feature to have, but unfortunantely, it’s overdone in this pack. Almost every level can be beaten mainly by holding down run, jump, and shoot. It’s fun to explore the levels and find the massive amounts of secrets, but there is very little point if you just want to finish. There are more carrots than could possibly be needed. (I think there were 8 1+ carrots right next to each other at one point) Power-ups are also too easy to get. There was a rocket turtle, but he can be ignored, because there is no need to fight him. He merely leads you to the end of the level. Also, the last level just ends. No boss. Which is kind of a let down. The one cool gameplay moment was a fight against a Bilsy and two stand monkies, which was surprisingly challenging compared to the rest of the levels. The secret level is also very good, because you have to find coins, which gave you reason to look around and appreciate all the little nuances of the level. If the other levels were more like this, and there were less goodies, gameplay could rock.

Eyecandy: 8/10
Not too much to mention here. The tileset choices were good, and eyecandy was nice with being particularly outstanding. There were a few small places where things seemed too square, or ended to abruptly, giving the level and artifical feeling. I also noticed that at position (78,51) on Lv5, there’s a six-legged jaguar. I nearly blew by it when playing, but something looked out of place, so I stopped and examined it closer. The extra legs fit surprisingly well, and, although I’m not sure if jjlover intended for it, it’s pretty cool.

Buglessness: 4/5
When I first tried to open the level through home-cooked levels, I got an error about running out of animations, and the game crashed. Not sure if this is just me, but opening through JCS fixed it anyway. Also, in the last level, there’s a bird morph. If you die while you are a bird (kinda hard with the full health carrot) You can respawn as a bird, and have to redo the start of the level as a bird. This will also prevent you from collecting two power-ups, which can be frustrating.

Total: 16/25
16/25=64.0%=6.4/10

If you take the time to appreciate these levels, they are a great download. However, they offer little in the way of unique features or interesting gameplay.

This is pathetic. Endless repetitive levels, some with the same name 5-6 times, the same tilesets again and again, a bad concept of eventage, the only good thing I found was that it was playable and it was better than none. Please try a bit harder [its going to be fine with a lot of work. I’ve been working on mine for 2 years. It’ll get there]

do you really need to have 4 uploads for 8 music files?

[Ever heard of filesize limits? ~cooba]

sonicnathan 1, Omg 4.5? poor you

Well a good tileset I must say. I used this once and It was easy to use.

What this is
This is basically a conversion of Bloxonius. this is great as there’s lots of eyecandey and everything is here. Lets go through the list.

Tiles
Wow great! there’s hills, polls, hooks, blocks, toys, signs and even a little lego man! I looked thought his tileset and I have to say, I couldn’t find anything missing. everything from jazz 1 is here, including arrows, signs, animations and a jazz 1 style background and textured background. everything you could ever need to make a good level is here. The only thing that could be added is some flipped tiles. Great job! this is the definition of total conversion!
10/10
Colors
Look great! Love it! Colors are the same from jazz 1 and everything that was added is properly colored. Good job!
10/10
Animations
All the animations are here and they look great! Good job!
10/10
Pallet Events
Only textured background and water works. It’s a shame that the rest don’t work. Oh well.
4/10
Reusability
Well it’s only a conversion and you still are limited to what you can do. Still, this is great and you still have quite a couple of options.
7/10
Masking
Masking is perfect. Everything is simple lines and objects. Great job!
10/10

Final score:51/60
Score: 9.2
Rank: A
DR? Yes. This is a great conversion and I look forward to more of your work!

I’ve always loved this song. I love this one better then the original. The epicness is through the roof.

Same deal as episode 1 for me.

After the first 5 levels, I started too get bored and the levels got crappier. Too many pickups. Average pack. Can’t say a DR.

Edit: I sorry! I just got bored! the story made no sense and the level design got crappy when you started to only use the buttstomp and shot blocks! Sorry but I just like seeing more quality them quantity.

a little below average. the eyecandy just seemed all messed up to me, and irritating. a bit to random placed. the level itself is a bit open and could be more gameplay wise.

Good lvl: 8/10

[Review changed to quick review. – cooba]

good… 6/10

[Review changed to quick review. – cooba]

No screenshots? 1/0

[Rating (1.0) clearance. wth? – cooba]

bad level… 2/10

[Review changed to quick review. – cooba]

good