Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Great times, great levels, great people. I remember being so excited to see if my levels made it or not each year.

Deleted my previous review, by god this is one amazing tileset. After 14 years it still upholds everything you love in a pretty tileset. It is actually better then NickStadlers tilesets.

Old ShadowGPW to young ShadowGPW, who cares that you have to use layer 5 to improve eyecandy and gameplay. The tileset is just amazing.

There are some minor bugs and annoyances, but a smart editor can make something beautiful out of it.

In other words, a fantastic tileset. Well done.

Hello memories.

Edit (May 24., 2015): Most of the flaws discussed in my original review included below have been taken care of. Some perhaps extensively – the spike ball challenge room became somewhat trivial, with safe spots, hardly any actual spike balls, and respawning seeker ammo that you can collect for many minutes and use against all enemies from that point on. The boss on the other hand might’ve become overpowered; the second phase of the fight seemed fairly random to me, with my victory depending mostly on the order of moves he decided to use. I also encountered some other minor bugs I didn’t see before but won’t bother to list. Overall, however, the changes are a major improvement, the level has consistently good quality and a variety of gameplay concepts, and it’s now fun to play.

Aforementioned original review (rated 7.5) available below for reference and historical purposes:

Decent, but with tons of flaws.

New weapons are nearly completely useless and, where they could be useful, it turns out the modified fireball can’t shoot upwards and bombs deal only 1 damage point to Bubba enemies, don’t explode on contact, and bug enemies up.
Many of the enemies are mostly really tiring to kill rather than difficult, especially the Bubba ones generally require a hit and run strategy that is very safe but can easily take half a minute to take down a single one of them.
Loads of bugs occur, besides the aforementioned bombs that have really bad effects on Bubba enemies, spike balls go through walls and all over the place, making otherwise easy areas completely random hell, enemies can spawn at the player’s position without any chance for escape, falling onto the floor without having activated a certain platform can get you stuck there, and Spaz can completely skip the most difficult challenge in the level, which then never ends, causing palette issues.
Said most difficult challenge inconsistently keeps progress over separate lives, unless you had finished it already, in case of which when you die it counter-intuitively restarts from the beginning, and is overall unfair, involving not as much skill as shooting while getting hit constantly in hope enough spike balls are destroyed before you run out of blinking time and health. I could believe it involves some skills or strategy but the spike balls can very well spawn directly above you and quickly fall down, or even spawn at your current position. There’s no way to predict that, if you’re unlucky, you’re simply going to die. On the other hand, the challenge room that precedes it is much easier but has issues too – most importantly, after you kill the initial wave, it runs out of enemies and you have to wait for several seconds before anything new appears. Generally exactly on your position, dealing damage even though you were well prepared to fight.
As far as I could tell, the coin warp requires all coins in the level, which is a bad design decision that means everything you collected will be useless if you didn’t find one single secret. The level also contains gems which it gives no special purpose to, so that’s a sort of a wasted opportunity.
Tweedle is perhaps the greatest disappointment. After the life-draining spike ball challenge I was convinced I’d face a hard to defeat final boss, but instead I saw a nerfed version of the first stage of Devan Shell, who later transformed into a complete joke of a boss that can be beaten simply by periodically pressing the down arrow, after getting him onto one of the platforms in the arena. Or well, that was the case before the recent update – after that, his first stage can actually be called significantly more difficult to kill with blaster than Devan is, but you can always just pull out RF missiles and still finish it within a couple of seconds; and the second stage didn’t change much, maybe just that I now have to occasionally press left or right too to aim the buttstomp better. Granted, he would fit in well with the entire rest of easy to kill official JJ2 bosses, but certainly doesn’t fit the spirit of the level, which aims to be more ambitious than the official levels.

As for the upsides, I really like how enemies drop ammo, and not just any, but the kind that’s actually associated with them, even if they drop so little and so rarely that it’s not extremely helpful. The visuals and mechanics of the moving platforms are really nicely done. The variety of enemies is cool, with the new ones offering original mechanics. Secrets are spread around well, generally offering hints and not being too hard to find. The scenery is somewhat bland but acceptable. I suppose with the exception of challenge rooms and the boss it’s fun to play overall.

WOW! This level is enormous! I don’t remember if I had ever seen such a huge level. It reminded me the Hermitage museum of St.Petersburg, where you’ll never explore the entire area whithin a single visit. This goes for this level as well. You have to play again and again to make sure there is no place you still hadn’t been to. There are splitting paths, so you have to choose where to go, there are plenty of secrets! Someone may say that such a gameplay is too boring and repetitive, but as for me that’s a good idea. I also liked the way you used the 5th layer, the use of Tuf Turtles, different starting positions for Jazz and Spaz and cunningly-hidden warps .

However, while proceeding this level, I had chosen to change the music to the original tune of Diamondus and I also changed the tileset to “Diamondus Storm” by Cansin13. This way it looks newer and matches to the falling leaves, to the stormy weather.

Seems, like you’re really advanced level-maker! I really appreciate levels like this one.

Very decent levers for the beginner. Of course they’re far inferior to the original ones, but still worth downloading. By the way “Knight Vision” inspired me to make my own single player pack “Stone Abyss” The first level of that pack is a heavily rebuilded version of “Knight Vision”

I remember downloading this level when it had just appeared in J2O… That time it wasn’t worth playing, but seems that you had improved it.
I really like the idea of custom boss fights, but it would be much more enjoyable to resurrect some of unused bosses… For example, some of tilesets like Colon, Psych, Diam,Tube,Jungle were deprived of bosses in the original JJ2. It would be much cooler if you tried to make some of unused bosses with Angel Script and placed them into the planets that didn’t have a boss in original levels! I don’t even speak about Bilsy (If I’m not mistaken it was supposed to be situated in Jungle) which works well without Angel Script. If you manage to make something like that, I’d go mad with joy and give you 10.0.

Now what about this level.

Tileset
I liked the tileset you’ve used- it looks great, but maybe you should have used a recolored version of it, since there are plenty of its recolors in J2O.

Layout
I agree with Stijn, the level is too big to make the boss fight difficult enough. Firstly, I was a bit confused by a big unused area in the upper part of the level, however it’s probably just nitpicking, as this empty area doesn’t have any impact on anything… There are also some flipped spikes in the left side of the level, you could make them hurt the player by placing some event like bees at them. The area available for the running form of Devan is to small, so you can easily defeat him with not powered-up bouncers while staying in a safe place in the lower right corner of the arena. Maybe you should reduce the slope, so Devan would be able to reach that area. The respawning bee can be easily avoided (if you aren’t gonna break that TV-sets) as it’s situated far from the boss. Too much powerups and carrots… I don’t see any sence in them. Boss isn’t hard even without them. And finally, hard difficulty adds nothing.

Eyecandy
Yeah, I’ve seen those falling leaves. That’s fine. But why didn’t you use the trees, mountains and a lake in the background? The way you’ve made it the level shares the same problem with Haunted House: an empty background! Just a bare sky! However, I liked the use of flowers, shrooms, small trees, ect on the 4th layer, so it doesn’t look too dull. Looks like you have some sence of beauty!

In the conclusion I’d like to say that you’re not a bad level-maker, everything is tidy, good-looking, the secret with a shield isn’t too obvious, I wish you to believe in yourself and make some bigger single player levels someday.

Pretty awesome stuff, though there were some areas where the pinball paddles were kinda hard to use optimally while going down slopes. Love the clock and bottom section.

Enjoyed playing this level much. Good job!

This pack should include inferno.xm instead of inferno.mod. They are two completely different modules.

When I saw the title of this I thought about real boss fights. The descriptions of bosses are also fascinating and intriguing. I even hoped to see some unused villians in this pack, though you didn’t use Angel Script…

Layout is rather simple, but I liked the use of trigger zones and moving platforms in the last level.

Tilesets… I don’t like these tilesets at all. Probably overusing the original ones from JJ2 isn’t the best idea and maybe fans of JJ1 may enjoy gaming within these tilesets, but as for me the tilesets you have used are dull and annoying.

Gameplay. In fact, every level represent some kind of obstacle course instead of boss fight. There are no bosses at all! So the title is a little bit confusing. I have to admit that trigger zones are widely used, which adds some new mechanic to the common JJ2 gameplay, that’s fine.

I see that the levels are neat and tidy, whithout bad tiles, seems like they were made wisely like you aren’t a newbee in levelmaking. So I’ll try to rate as high as I can.

Sorry for nitpicking and not recommending download, probably I simply misunderstood your idea…

It’s good! Maybe I’ll enjoy battle duels more like this!

Working properly for me!

EDIT: 02-05-2015: Alright, I’ve done another playthrough on Normal after changes appear to have been made. There are noticable less enemies now, yet personally the amount of enemies didn’t bother me. It was the amount of health they had, which is still the same. Also, the ‘spammy’ spikeball interlude section remains unchanged. The Tweedle fight felt improved a bit. It took me slightly more time to down him this time, although he appeared to camp on the corner platforms a little more. It’s still a great level, but my score of 8.7 remains the same for now. Keep up the good work!

Original Review: Ever since AngelScript came to JJ2 I’ve been particularly interested to see a Tweedle boss fight being made. At one point in AS’s early life I saw a server pop up called something like ‘FIGHT TWEEDLE’ and I rushed to turn on my computer to play it, only to see it was actually a Bubba fight with swapped sprites in an editied Psych level.

So you can imagine the name of this download combined with the third screenshot made me play this as soon as I saw it! The level starts off with a funny palette shift as if the dawn breaks, following is what feels like common Psych gameplay with some interesting tweaks to enemies and mechanics.

Changes include health bars for enemies, a health increase system similar to Ozymandius (big carrot pickups), Fast Feet items that temporarily increase jump height, several customized guns, and some customized enemies. Mad Hatters felt like they were the same, and can still easely be defeated by ducking and shooting. The Dragonflies are made to be more annoyingly evasive than they already were (in a good sense) causing the player to carefully plan their shots. The Cheshire Cats and Bubba’s are fully custom enemies and I like both of them. The cats fly around shooting Toaster-like waves of fire and sometimes teleport to you, while Bubba’s aim spit to you and leave a ghost version of themselves behind that can only be physically attacked (opposite of Pokémon? :P). The scripted custom platforms felt very responsive and made pit sections somewhat fun. Custom weapons include Potions (much like Mad Hatter’s bullets), Bombs that work like the ones Float Lizards use, and a funky Toaster PU with more horizontal reach useful for those Dragonflies.

Then there are these interludes (indicated by a change of music and hellish palette shift) that have you fight a certain amount of enemies before you’re allowed to continue. I liked the one with the cats, but the spikeballs were very tedious and unnecessarily random. Yes there are seekers to use and after-death hints depicting their effectiveness against them, but still it felt like random spam that can only be fought with your own spam.

Lastly, the boss fight! It played a lot like what I had in mind for the actual Tweedle fight the way the JJ2 team intended it, and Bloody_Body clearly tried to stay true to their intentions. In the first half of the fight Tweedle will dance around while shooting and occasionally healing himself, then eventually he’ll pick up a magnet that disarms you (your sprite still has a gun though), leaving you using solely buttstomps and special moves. Of course this makes him easier with Spaz and Lori than with Jazz, but it’s more than doable either way. I also liked his use of smoke rings.

Overal it’s a fun level that mixes traditional gameplay with original scripted gimmicks. Sometimes the flow of the level felt too slow paced due to enemies increased health and the gimmicky ways to kill them. Still the overall level including the boss fight are worth a playthrough for every SP lover out there, and not only for the boss fight!

So I was looking for something new to play on JJ2+ and then I saw this. “Tweedle Wheedle” sounded like a promising name and seeing Tweedle boss in an actual level (one of the bosses I always wanted to battle) made me decide downloading it. First up, I’ve got to say that it’s an amazingly scripted level, which I really liked. Also it’s nice that you added bombs, potions (or whatever that ammo is called) and ghosts. The ambient was nice, very few bad tiles, nothing to really ruin the gameplay. It was a great idea adding Bubbas as enemies, but if they looked at least a little different from the actual Bubba (ex. new color, size, etc.) that would’ve been fantastic. I really enjoyed the game until it got really hard, even on easy! First more Cheshire Cats, then the spiky balls… I eventually gave up and used JJRUSH and JJFLY when they were needed. First level I saw a spring on a Caterpillar. Pretty original! Maybe if it was a little easier on Easy it could be an extremely enjoyable level, since Jazz Jackrabbit is still a run’n‘shoot. Collected 200 coins, finally! goes to warp; accidentally goes to right and gets teleported back Dammit! The exit should be somewhere else, not a place where you could instantly get teleported out. Anyway, finally got to the boss. I expected something really powerful, since the level was so damn hard. It was surprisingly easy, unfortunately! Still the idea is pretty damn interesting, I enjoyed seeing Tweedle in-game for the first time.

Before rating, a funny story: I was standing on one of those moving platforms. I accidentally fell; Cheshire Cat teleports beneath me, deals me 1 damage but I jump back on the platform. That enemy literally saved my life!

I’ll rate 9.7 for all the effort you put into this level. Thank you for making this fine piece of work!

Worth downloading it and having fun around…

Finally someone does the tweedle boss properly. This one was very fun to play actually.

By the way, are the cheshire cats supposed to deal any damage? Because apparently they do not.

The level is a bit hard, but the level’s script is awesome!
@Superjazz The chesire cats are dealing damage to me.

Level gets a bit repetitive after some time playing it, but difficulty ramps up pretty smoothly and I’m adding extra points for a working Tweedle boss. Definitely an enjoyable experience. Worth a look!

It’s me, Mario!