Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

While I agree this is flawed I believe it’s a bit more than the sum of its parts.

Really cool level. Duels work (though not recommended), 2v2’s work and even larger games work. The Laserblaster might be a bit random at times but it’s a nice concept. Download recommended!

Evidently I promised this a review, deservedly so as I seem to duel in here every time JDC comes around. This is a simple, small map that is ideal for 1on1 matches. While there is a trick with a crate involved, you can virtually learn the entirety of this map in a manner of seconds. There is suitable ammo for the type of layout provided, although imo bouncers are clearly the best weapon due to the vertical gameplay and slopes. I feel that the bottom part contrasts this due to it’s flatness, but perhaps for the better as it encourages the use of the variety of other weapons here. The placement of pickups is very balanced, so that there is always a lot of mobility; matches feel fresh and quick instead of stale and campy. The eyecandy is nice but not obstructive or overdone, its done well in a way that it doesn’t stand out at all but feels natural, because of the limited amount of tiles actually being used from the Dreempipes tileset in keeping with its visual theme. Only when you stop and pay attention does it become evident that there is more going on than initially meets the eye, especially in the background layers (the foreground could’ve used a bit more love though).

Overall, I almost feel as this level is a mandatory addition to the folder of any battle player since it fills a niche, it’s balanced, it’s very easy to learn and provides a quick burst of fun battling without overreaching beyond what it intends. The rating here doesn’t quite tell the whole story, and its probable that only after having a match here can the appeal of this level be fully understood.

~Blacky

9

[No]

Seems good for 3vs3s, perhaps even 2vs2s but duels could get really boring here, though CTF is basicly a team game so that’s cool. Some tight passages make very good use of that ricochet weapon, the fly carrot is useful and not too abusive, and is placed right where it needs to be. TBH i dont like the pit version, but as for the regular one, it’s fun. The eyecandy really does feel cold so it matches the name perfectly, and the sounds are a nice touch for the ambient as well.

Probably one of DS’ best levels yet in terms of gameplay. I thoroughly enjoyed playing this level during ab18 and the last JDC.

good battle map overall, nice use of the eyecandy and background

A level fun enough for my liking. Works with 3vs3s, eyecandy and pickup placement is decent, however the tubes at the top are useless.

Welp, I’m always glad to see new Single Player levels uploaded on Jazz2Online so I just gave this level a shot. Unfortunately, at least for me, playing this JJ2 level was not very enjoyable.

Pros:
- The level design is not that bad. I haven’t glitched through the level so that’s also a thing. It’s not fantastic, can be a bit too linear and claustrophobic but it’s anything but bad.
- The eyecandy is also alright. It’s just the good ol’ “Inferno 1” tileset it uses, nothing changed to it. Same thing for the music, it just uses “Hell Freezes Over”. A little bit of diversity would’ve been nice but at least there are little to no wrongly placed tiles. In general it’s pleasing to the eye.

Cons:
- Not Jazz and Lori friendly. There is one point in the level where you have to stay on a rope and do a big jump. I tried this with Jazz lots of times but just couldn’t pull it off (This makes the third image you uploaded on this level’s download page very questionable). Therefore I had to JJMORPH into Spaz in order to continue the level.
- No checkpoints. Yes, of course, there is “Save” but that’s not an excuse for not having checkpoints. If there is one that I did not notice, please let me know, I might’ve just not noticed it.
- The level has a part that happens at the bottom of the map. It feels very very claustrophobic with very limited jumping. Also it’s just annoying not to see your character somewhere in the middle or the horiziontal edges of the screen.
- “Fire”. I don’t know why did you have to use this in favor of all the other possible hazards. If you want me to dodge the fire then don’t put it behind things!
- You can get soft blocked if you accidentally fall into one of the pits at the bottom of the map.
- The enemies respawn exaggeratedly fast. I just wanted a MEDIUM gameplay experience, not a hard one.
- You have to collect all the coins in order to progress in the level. Look, if the level was less hard and at least MENTIONED that you have to collect all the coins (It instead mentions that you need lots of flamethrowers, which is partly true), then let’s say, maybe, just maybe. At that point of the level where you have to use those coins, backtracking to get the others is really hard if not impossible. Don’t do that, if you could’ve just mentioned that I need to collect all of the coins, that would’ve been great. Not to mention that there are some coins that only Spaz can collect. God bless the JJCOINS cheat.
- Little to no weapons. You can find very few toasters, some freezers, a little TNT and RF Missiles. There are two upgrades, however they are not very helpful.
- Considering how difficult the level is, the boss fight difficulty should’ve been reasonable. Not only that Bolly should be in a tall room with multiple platforms you can jump on (and not a wide one with literally ONE PLATFORM) but there is also wind so you can’t do your nasty butt stomp strategy and Sparks spawning from below.

Looks like there are more Cons than Pros but there is just nothing else I can say good about the level. Sorry.

I can’t say whether I can recommend downloading this or not. I know some of you are crazy good at JJ2 and are always looking for a new challenge. If you’re that kind of person, feel free to try out this level. If you’re like me, an average player looking for a medium difficulty level, do not download this, you’re just going to have an unpleasant experience.

I rate this level 6.7 out of 10. It has potential and it was obviously worked on a lot but if you make such a challenging level, at least warn the players about this. I still think it could be improved. If so, I’ll gladly give this level a higher rating :)

Well, this is something I waited for.
A simple little Tool with everything you need to make your own
.j2e files.
Could be better, but could be worse.
Download recommended.
If you like Singleplayer, get this.

I like these chronicles! The levels seem very interesting! I recommend to download this. By the way, I’m already translating this episode to english version. I also used custom music and an AngelScript code on final level.

Placing schwartzenguards outside the boss arena in order to make a boss more difficult in the era of AngelScript is just unacceptable. Almost no actual thought went into these boss fights, with the author just throwing in as many hazards as possible into each arena. Download this only if you prefer “cheap” difficulty over genuine challenge.

Good level but not without issues. There are a lot of obscured hazards and often it’s very unclear where to go. One area requires you to collect an item but gives it only barely distinct looks and doesn’t provide any feedback when you get it. The introduction of pits is accompanied by fake foreground pillars and the last checkpoint is far behind.

one of if not the best chrysilis remixes i’ve ever heard, probably second to only crystalline action.

Looking for answers has an unfortunately accurate title, for that’s exactly what i found myself doing the whole time I tried to play it. In all honesty, I could not finish a single level, because I would inevitably find myself in one or more places where I simply could not figure out what (if anything) I was supposed to do next. In many cases, when I did make some kind of progress I wasn’t even sure whether it was intentional or whether I had happened upon some sort of bug in the level design. Walls appear and disappear without warning, trigger crates do not have clear effects, immense spike pits or ctf death pits abound, and layers move at bizarre speeds to complement sometimes empty-looking layer 4s. Huge airspaces are filled with countless ghosts, ravens, bees, dragonflies, and pacman ghosts. More of those enemies lurk under the ground behind layer 3, meaning you can’t even plan for challenges in advance. In one place massive quantities of completely invisible wind, combined with non-regenerating cheshire2s, make an ascent all but impossible. Another area fills the screen with so many smoke rings that the fruit platforms you’re supposed to ride have trouble even spawning. Water levels change according to inscrutable rules in front of the ugliest tileset you’ll see. Nothing seems passable unless you made the level/s and therefore already know where all the traps are and which random/secret routes you’re supposed to take.

There are glimmers of good levels shining through, like a section in the first level where you jump from one alternatingly masked and unmasked series of blocks to another to avoid landing on spikes below. Everything is clearly technically proficient and done with a purpose. It’s just that that purpose feels completely unfathomable.

I think the new Labrat levels may actually be my least favorite of the pack… probably in part because I’m less attached to the tileset, but also because they seem to deviate less from the standard JJ2 formula and show less of the author’s experimental side. Experimental level design has a long history in JCS, not all of it positive, but the author’s earlier work always fell on the side of enjoyable and memorable. These Labrat levels are not without their good points, but they also feel more ordinary, though by no means bad. An uninspired FarkasUrdung level is still better than a lot of other stuff out there, but the Labrat levels feel less purposeful and more thrown together. I definitely appreciate some of the efforts being made here, though, like the serious take on a bird gameplay section, and a lot of the work with springs and weapon blocks and such, as always. I had fun and I’ll probably play them again. There are lots of pickups and enemies and that’s great. But I’m not sure they’re the best of the bunch.

Snow Castle 2016 starts out strong; you stand next to a closed wooden door that clearly can be destroyed by some kind of ammo, but nothing you have right now. Instead you go inside the house to your left, go down some stairs, and take either of two exits (both concealed to various degrees by layer 3) on a looping path that takes you back to whichever exit you didn’t take before. By the time you get there, you’ve got toaster ammo, and it turns out that’s what you’re supposed to use on the door.

That’s the theory, anyway—it should be mentioned that the toaster ammo is really close to the beginning of that looping path, so you could just grab it and head back. There’s also, if I’m understanding the level layout correctly, an entirely separate second looping path coming out of the starting house on the left side, only this one doesn’t contain any toaster or seemingly anything else of any use. It’s just there to get you lost. It’s respectable enough to play, I suppose, but it still leaves me with the feeling that maybe I’m missing something about why it’s there.

Still, if you don’t pay too much attention to your surroundings, you’ll end up on the right path—toastering through the wooden door—eventually. And then the level gets less interesting. The path might branch a little at some point, since there was a time or two I remember seeing enemies I clearly hadn’t gotten to, but I’m not sure about that… otherwise, though, it’s very much your basic JJ2 gameplay with limited graphics and not much to keep you from speeding through everything. There are plentiful carrots and big ceilings, a great recipe for letting a (non-Spaz) player helicopter across all the careful level design and skip all the careful pickups and enemies.

And the level certainly does some things right along the way. Ammo isn’t abundant, but there’s a good amount of it, some of it clearly tailored to its surroundings, and the seekers in particular can be helpful against dragons below you or ravens above you. Enemies seem mostly practical and appropriate, though I don’t think the suckers quite fit in. Everything tiles properly, and the lack of background layers is more the fault of the tileset than the level.

Nonetheless, I left Snow Castle 2016 feeling cold. The layout meanders through layer 4 in random directions until it reaches an abrupt exit that I think was prompted more by running out of room than by anything particular to the design. Despite the fairly open nature of the path, the walls are all so thin that you’re constantly looking at other, relatively distant parts of the level at the same time, which is distracting. And very few parts of the layout feel especially memorable—a vine covered in gems, maybe, or the two or three times you drop down from a vine onto a dragon-infested house, but that’s about it. The totally straightforward tileset use and level design beg comparison to HH98 and TSF, and I honestly think the official levels did a better job providing distinct, memorable gameplay. Nothing about Snow Castle 2016 is bad, but nothing about it demands to be recommended either.

Ooh boy. I wish this level were longer.

It’s not revolutionary in its structure—go left a bit, find a trigger crate, go left a bit more, find three trigger crates, enter a door, fight a boss. It’s not difficult at all—there’s one area with some pillars sticking out of a pit of spikes, but the JJ2 engine makes it trivial to navigate them. The tileset use isn’t unusual or innovative. The boss arena has nothing interesting about it.

And yet, everything is done well.

Sure, the level leans a little more heavily on big thick walls than it needs to, but it’s still pretty to look at with varied tiles and chains and lights and things. There’s a lot more put in here than just the minimum amount of effort needed to use Castle. Part of the reason the level is so easy to beat is that the enemies can be taken out by bouncers—and the level gives you bouncers. That’s a satisfying feeling. Ambient lighting is played with enough to be visible yet not frustrating. The paths to reach the four trigger crates are not innovative but they are all distinct from one another and give off a quiet confidence. Pretty much any given aspect of the level is respectable, but the level is short enough that it still feels a bit empty.

(There could also be more pickups, I think. That would help make everything livelier.)

OK. Let’s start.
First:
I FREAKING LOVE THIS EPISODE!
But, all uncontrolled praise away, let’s look at WHY I love this.
LOOK
Beautiful. That is the most fitting adjective here.
It feels like you ARE a part of the world here.
Sometimes I forget everything else while playing. Top notch! 3/3

CONTENT
Obviously good stuff. A little hard at times (Though I can’t even beat Devil Devan on Easy without saving Mid-Battle.),but fun. Very creative too.
In a race it would come in 0.5th place because it’s better than just 4/4.
BONUS POINT GIVEN. 4+1/4

MISC.
Well, everything has a weakness, and maybe more Themes would have been
interesting, but how would that work? Then the aforementioned difficulty problem.(I mean, even as a noob I should be able to win on EASY!)
But that’s everything neative I have to say. 1.7/3

OVERALL
If you like a good adventure, download it. (Heck. download it anyways unless
you are REALLY bad at JJ2)So Download ADVISED and 9.7/10.

First Review! YAY.
Well, here we have a Classic.Let’s go!
So,First:
LOOK
It’s great! It has a cartoony feel and really fits into the JJ2 world.
It looks how it should. 3/3

CONTENT
Just everything you need, including some tiles integrated from official tilesets.
Good! 3/3

USAGE
Now this is most important for amateur builders (like me).
It can be a little tricky, but I can live with it. 3.2/4

OVERALL
Get it. Now. It’s not like you have anything to lose, and even then, this is gold.
9.2/10 And Download not recommended, but ADVISED.
This is how you do it.