Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Phew, this took a while to play through even on Normal difficulty, but it was definitely worth it! For this review, I won’t go into detail about every single level as that would be boring, instead I’ll try to remark some positive and negative situations that stood out to me.

This pack contains about 24(?) actual levels divided into 3 episodes and 2 bonus maps accessed solely through a pre-existing savefile, and some more levels acting as cutscenes telling bits of story dialog. Unlike the original JJ1, and just like SWAG, it’s possible to start from the first episode and play through the whole game (just like in JJ2 basically) which makes the pack feel more like a single story.

The first parts of this pack are about identical to earlier versions of Lost Ages (as expected) but then it gets way more wild with custom sprited events including big dragons, robots, and even teddy bears. To answer the question in the download description: yes, I can see Blacky did a lot of experimenting as these levels progressed. Most of it came out positive though, and everything stayed loyal to JJ1’s standards (as in, it never felt like I was playing a different game).

But let’s talk about what’s dreadful about JJ1 and how this pack handles it: the low resolution with poor visibility of your surroundings. Well, luckily most levels are very horizontally oriented which is good, but I’ve had some enounters with enemies walking off from ‘stairs’ or ledges which are only triggered into memory once it’s too late, as well as some enemies falling off ledges (while others don’t and turn around) which can be very tedious and makes you think you (as the player) are being punished for no good. Most notable levels with this flaw are “Hot Rabbit Stew”, “That Tree Level”, and “Mechanical Heart” where some vertical movement is unavoidable to progress.

Leaps of faith, which are another plague on JJ1, are present but little and not too harsh. The level “Dark Dragon Lair” had some, and I had a bad experience near the end of the first bonus map (the dreamlands) where I really didn’t knew what to do for quite a while. A commonly present strategy is placing pickups in a way to mark long jumps, but on that one jump, there was just a circular shape of bouncer ammo’s above a moving platform. It turned out I had to make a long jump to the upper-right where the exit had been hidden from me all along.. Overall, in this pack the platforming happened in tight spaces and relies on skill and memorization rather than luck, while on the memorization part there are some cases where you can fall from ledges into groups of enemies on your first try. Oh well, it’s JJ1 so that’s forgivable and not exclusive to this game.

Also, on multiple occasions larger enemies (as well as moving spikes and spikeball hazards) can appear late in visible memory. I don’t know how JJ1 works exactly and thus can’t explain it that clearly, but imagine running at a mediocre pace and suddenly you get hit by an enemy ‘popping’ in on your position. Again, this is probably just a JJ1 thing, but maybe it could’ve been avoided by more carefully placing the pathways towards large enemies. I don’t know, and at least it doesn’t happen that often.

What I liked most about this pack is how it took ideas from the original JJ1 levels and brought it to a higher level in both depth and difficulty. Moving platforms? They’re there in tons of variations and directions. Backtracking using jumping shoe items? It’s utilized in several levels and done cleverly. Airboard areas? They’re done well on several ocasions (most notably Chernobog). Big bosses? There’s 3 of them and designed more challenging than JJ1’s original flimsy pushovers. But some new ideas are done well too, especially the level “Firewall” where you’re trapped between two laser beams forcing you to progress at a slow but steady pace. It’s also quite generous as the lasers don’t kill you, but simply warp you back without resetting the enemies you defeated earlier. Well, sometimes the level may feel boring and lonely if you tripped and have to do half the level again without shooting, but that’s a luxury issue I guess :P

Aside from the common JJ1 thingies I mentioned earlier, what I disliked most in this pack is that many enemies (mostly the bigger ones) are too sturdy and take too many hits. The original JJ1 had levels with tons of sturdy enemies too, but was often generous with fastfire pickups. In this pack however, fastfire items are quite rare, which made my left thumb tired from all the mashing at times. Yes I could’ve used a repeat key program. But still, I would’ve made some enemies like the dinosaurs and robots less sturdy at least on Normal difficulty.

For bugs, well I’d say these levels are well designed and tested all on your own (good job there!) as it all seems to be in place except for a few things. In “That Tree Level” I could skip part of the level by letting a platform push me through a horizontal wall to the upper checkpoint (I believe it was the 2nd tree where you move back up) right after the part with the 4-hit shield. In the level “Cloud Forest” the music sometimes looped the first part endlessly. In the little ‘thank you’ level at the very end, listening to the catchy disco mix for too long resulted in a crash. And in the 2nd bonus map, picking up the bonus gem and finishing the level results in a crash with ‘File not found: BONUSMAP.053’.

Overall, I felt both surprised and excited about this pack’s release on the last days of 2015, and having played it just confirmed my expectations. It’s not perfect but it’s variety and surprises sure outweight it’s minor flaws. It’s not as balanced as Violet’s SWAG, yet designed somewhat more generous and thoughtful than Mission Spaz. If you never liked JJ1, chances are slim that you will enjoy this pack. And if you haven’t played JJ1 but might consider trying it, I wouldn’t suggest starting here by any chance as the difficulty is definitely more rough. But if you are fond of the original JJ1 and/or SWAG, you are missing out HUGE by not playing this pack. I believe a 9 is a fair number here. No perfection, yet huge fun and challenge with surprises and secrets waiting to be discovered!

The part with the moonwalking Helmuts was hilarious and probably the best reason to download this. It’s a fun oldschool level overall, even if the experience is rather short and easy. I feel it would’ve worked out much better as part of a full episode as originally intended. Nonetheless, cool to see an old level finally get a release!

While this test is competently designed for the most part, one aspect that I do find tiresome is that most of the later levels are much longer than necessary. Most of the jumps are fairly easy, with a few exceptions being more difficult. I’d much prefer it if these levels were shorter due to having fewer easy but repetitive jumps.

One of the most annoying tests I’ve ever played. There’s absolutely nothing fun about pixelhunts, and this test overuses them as a substitute for genuine challenge. On top of things, the flashing lightning in the background becomes irritating fast. Play this only if you’re masochistic and have no qualms about wasting your time.

it says FATAL ERROR
(Rating clearance—do not rate levels you cannot play. Instead, please download the tilesets that you are instructed to download in the level description. That will prevent the error message.)

good but if you find the exit it kill you

I know some effort went into this. It has a lot of levels and a lot of scripts too. Although the level designs are really repetitive and boring. The jj2 gameplay core is lacking here.

I enjoyed playing this test. It has some tricky levels, but not tricky enough to be annoying.

These are good quality and introduce some interesting twists to the traditional single player level design style. Unfortunately they won’t be challenging for a relatively skilled player, with their abundance of carrots and lack of strategically placed enemies. The visuals show professionalism and care to detail.

As a fan of Fast Fires, I really like this one. With only FF and Toaster available I can see that the point of the whole level is to get a hold of the fireshield and destroy the other ones so that your enemies don’t get ‘em. And of course the FF combined with the fire powerup makes a great impact on gameplay as all players will try to avoid the player who has the powerup while trying to shoot each other as well.
The fireshield is also cleverly placed in an area where it has no use – under water. Big + on this.
(I could tell there wouldd be a lot of rabbits in the water :D)

On the side of the actual space and ambient, the map has a perfect size for the battle and it is quite spacious. Only thing here that bugs me is that I get a feeling that there be a bit too many wines. But that’s just my opinion and it doesn’t actually cause any problems to the gameplay..

PS: really like that the water bubbels are coming out of those cracks in the ground :D

Really enjoyed playing it. At first I thought there were too many carrots, but after bumping into those little b4st4rds all the time I understood why there are so many.

For a single map I really hoped for an end boss, but this was ok.

PS: couldn’t load file in JCS, so I didn’t saw where (if there is any) zone where the frog wears off.

I’m sorry but this level is just horrible. The main problem I have with it is the fact that it’s the easiest maze I have ever tried out, due to how easy it is to get to the end of the level, I can hardly call this a maze.

And the eye candy, ugh. It’s awful. There are extremely few tiles used, which makes the level unappealing to beat.

Overall this is an awful level, though to be fair you have improved since you made it. A level you made in 2011 got high ratings and I can applaud you for that.

While not particularly challenging or innovative, I had fun playing this level. The theme of the level is interesting, vaguely reminding me of Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas with its mix of HH98 and Haunted House. I liked the non-linear nature of the layout and the subtle focus on finding weapons to unlock new areas. Give it a try!

This is a pack of mediocre, tiring, repetitive levels. No thought went into designing gameplay; there’s nothing to keep a player interested. Half of the time with the pack is staring at nearly static screens of cutscenes without dialogue, and the story hardly makes sense, certainly far from enough sense to justify the lack of good gameplay.

This is a levelpack that focuses more on story than gameplay. Which is fine, I enjoy a good story. I will talk about the story later, and boy I have a lot to say.

First I’m going to talk about the gameplay. It is simple and straight forward. I love how many tuf turtles are in the levels, they are my favorite enemy. At the top of that there are also fencers and ravens. (I hate these annoying things.) The fencers are very easy to kill, as long as I use the bouncers they cause me no harm. And there are a lot of dead ends, which is good because it adds to the fun of the levels.

For most of the levelpack Spaz is a wanted fugitive which I find interesting since I love good R-rated thrillers, and this feels like it. Of course, more like PG-13 since the F word is censored. But I still like how many times damn and hell are used in the levelpack, I have never played a levelpack before in this game that has swearing especially to the point this one does. But anyway, the main reason I find it interesting is because Spaz is usually the hero. Turning around to make him a criminal is great.

There is more to the story, but I am gonna allow the people reading this review to enjoy it fully.

As for the eye candy, as a huge fan of the drink coca-cola I love how often it’s shown in the levelpack. And I also love how beautiful the city looks.

My only problem with the level is the fact that floppy disks are used. Floppy disks have been obsolete for a very long time. So what’s the point in having them here? Maybe this levelpack takes place in the 1980’s, but if it’s supposed to take place in the present I find it stupid. But I can easily overlook that since the rest of the levelpack is awesome.

So yeah, I’m rating it 9.8, I know it’s a very high rating but this level earned it.

This is nowhere near one of the worst levels I have ever played, but sadly it’s still very bad.

First off, the eye candy is terrible. It’s like you weren’t even trying to make the level look good. Far too many tiles don’t fit very much.

The other problem with the level is that it’s far too easy. Now I don’t mind easy levels, in fact I will give you credit for one thing. At least this level that’s far too easy has a reasonable length, and you caught me by surprise when the level wasn’t finished when I thought it was gonna be.

Also, I don’t think you fully understand what the purpose of a secret area is supposed to be. The secret area is supposed to be hard to reach. But the problem is that the coins are all in plain sight, and directly in the path you’re supposed to go to. You never need to go off the path to get the coins, which beats the purpose of getting the coins in the first place.

The main reason it’s too easy is because there is too much food in the level. Which makes rugar rush too easy to get. I agree that a level should have a lot of food, but this is going too far. I also don’t like how easy it is to get the gems.

Overall, I applaud you for putting some effort into this level, but in the long run it’s sadly not good, I’m sorry.

Honestly I don’t hate this level as much as Lark did. It’s not great, but it is tolerable.

Now I’m gonna talk about the eye candy. Yes, it is incredibly lazy, and sadly I have to take away scores for that.

But regarding the challenge. It’s pretty difficult. It’s not too difficult, but it’s still pretty difficult.

I do love how there are tuf bosses to make the easy fight with the robot boss more difficult. I applaud you for that, I find it pretty creative.

Overall I rate this level 5.1, I wish I could rate it higher, but the eye candy needs fixing big time.

Well then, I first like to thank you, IJsKonijn, for deciding to upload this pack even though you won’t finish it. Getting to play the finished levels is better than having nothing at all right? So let’s get into some details.

From the first level on, you imediately notice the “1998 style” all over it. The way secrets are placed in walls, pathways are made, enemies are placed.. It’s all easely comparable to the original SP levels and early custom levels (such as those by Wakeman).

I didn’t ever think parts felt copy-pasted like Stijn did, everything seemed pretty unique to me while in TSF’s easter levels I definitely felt doing every section about 5 times. I do however agree that the crate puzzles get exhausting and that usage of layer4 tiles as back and foreground is very, very confusing sometimes. Those are my biggest downsides for this pack too. Especially in the Jungle level (though Diamondus had it’s share), it’s very hard to navigate and I got confused all the time. Though on the other hand, it indeed looks beautiful!

Ammo is okay for a traditional SP where you don’t need all too much, the RF’s aren’t available too early so you can’t abuse RF jumps too much. Toaster may be too much which I don’t like, as it’s by far the easiest weapon besides Blaster. Food is plenty and good for several sugar rushes, and the traditional coin warps are there but with a nice twist in one level. I loved having 3 different reward choices inside the coin warp with 3 possible accesses if you got all 30 coins.

Best to me personally may’ve been the Beach level, as it didn’t suffer from the 2 main problems (crate puzzles and layer4 usage) that much, and good levels using the Beach tileset aren’t common due to it’s usage being challenging. I also enjoyed the last level a lot, with it’s non-linear layout being a surprising difference from earlier levels in the pack.

I definitely recommend this pack to anyone who digs traditional SP levels. Even though the pack isn’t actually finished and the story ends abruptly, it’s not that important as the levels are enjoyable enough even if they were released as stand-alone. I believe a 7.7 is a fair score, but don’t let that make you think this pack isn’t special at all, as it definitely is!

This pack came to me as a surprise, new christmas levels are always welcome to get in the feasty mood and it has been a while since last serious attempt at a christmas pack.

There are 3 levels total, typical to the original Holiday Hare. I’d say all 3 are of medium length, so the pack is good for about a quick 30 minute run during christmas. The story is simple yet slightly more detailed than other christmas packs. I also love the fact that different holidays are mentioned (Kwanzaa and Hanukkah) and finally the Krampus as your enemy, it’s great to see some love for the old germanic devilish creature.

The levels themselves are very easy even on Hard, but have that certain flow just like the original SP levels. Worst about this pack is secret placement which is often unclear, crate “puzzles” that just require you to move from crate to crate, and tileset usage that sometimes messes up masking. Eyecandy is mediocre, ammo placement is okay but nothing special, just like the standard share of christmas enemies.

Do I recommend this pack? Yes, but just to have a relaxing time during your well deserved holidays, and/or to have a nostalgic trip while playing something different.

It’s been a while since anyone released any single-player with an actual storyline, and especially a long time anyone released any episode as big as this, which inspired me to write a full review for this.

Well, actually the storyline is kind of confusing at times, partly due to the broken English used in cutscenes and dialogues that are a big part of this episode. The cutscenes and dialogues are mainly done with Angelscript here, and although they are mainly just still images and text, there are nevertheless some cool effects. However I think they could have been done better with a bit more effort put into scripting, such as defining which character to display in the cutscenes. Right now it seems a bit goofy that they are all displayed, and our main character is called just ‘Player’. Also some of the text is hard to read in the limited time since there is simply too much stuff in the background.

But basically, the story begins with our player waking up at home just like any normal day (I don’t know if there was a preceding episode to the storyline?), and goes to the nearest police station to look for a ‘Secret Room’, and after that things start to get twisted (not spoiling you more).

The levels do look mostly okay. Sometimes I’d expect there to be more detailing though, and sometimes there is too much since often the tiles that are meant for the fore- and background are used for the sprite-ground, and vice versa. Also sometimes the gameplay gives me the feeling that this could very well be something of various hotel-levels turned into single-player, since the gameplay is often about going up and down building blocks in an urban environment, indoors and outdoors, or just running straight by a linear corridor.

The number of levels is more than a hundred, but a big part of them are cutscenes and savepoints, and then the rest of the levels are cut into parts whenever you reach a certain goal. Not sure if the cutting was really necessary although the idea works nicely as checkpoints.

But the gameplay has also got it’s action-part, and that is definitely the best part about the episode in my opinion. It can be riding various vehicles or running away from evil police soldiers, or crawling in tight air valves. Actually this episode has a very violent theme, and the levels are filled with blood, fire and dead rabbits. At those points I notice potential influence from various FPS-games such as doom, especially at the levels with more creepy atmosphere and creepy music.

Talking about music (which I know isn’t very essential about the levels and was an optional download), I think this episode uses some of the most terrible tunes I’ve heard since a while, since some of them are of type chiptune, and very poorly composed ones. (I can imagine Angry Video Game Nerd raging while playing this :D)

Another annoying thing about the gameplay is the blaster that was made reloadable, because you can hold at most 15 bullets, which is used very fast with maximum fast fire. Then, you will need to press R everytime to get more ammo for it which seemed just kind of pointless to me, and it felt that it was rather done because it’s “just cool” like this. It happened a few times that I’d shoot myself into a death pit by seeker-recoil after my weapon automatically switched when my blaster got empty.

Some of the more passive levels, like elevator rides and the like could have been compressed a bit, since there wasn’t even anything to look at since the visuals were just generic. However, the levels and the storyline got more and more interesting as I progressed, and there was nice unexpected turns in the storyline. At the later levels you could also find yourself dying by rather unexpected events as well, such as sudden police-ambushes. Also at times it really took me some time to find the right way to go in the levels (I think I was just being lucky to find some of them by accident). The biggest pain was one of the last levels where you need to look for a very well hidden switch that I couldn’t simply find without looking at JCS, since there weren’t even any hints.

In the end, I found this to be a fairly entertaining episode. Definitely more entertaining than any usual single-player episode with the idea of ‘just playing’, but the gameplay-flaws and other small details I mentioned prevent me from rating this too high. It still has potential to be the best single-player release of last year.

So, well done and thanks for releasing this!

EDIT: Quite soon after I was finished with my review, I realized that I overrated this episode, so I tried to modify the rating to be more of a match with my criteria. Actually in general I feel that I have been too generous towards the releases I have reviewed recently, so I will pay closer attention to the quality of the uploads I review in the future.

Nevertheless, I still find this single-player release to be one of my favorites from last year, but I should advice other players that it isn’t anything especially original, although a lot of effort and experimenting probably went into the designing of the episode. You may still like it, if you are thirsting for new single-player adventures like me.