Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

A large pack usually calls for a large review, but there isn’t anything especially interesting to say of this pack unfortunately. It’s not that it’s bad – it isn’t – but it’s jut a bit …generic. All levels are more or less the same: large, sparse eyecandy, LOTS of enemies, little challenge beyond avoiding the enemies.

Which isn’t especially hard either with Spaz’s karate kick, but many enemies respawn quickly and there are some parts where you have to avoid warps or time your jumps well. As such it happens that you’ve just cleared a platform and are then hurt or killed by an army of baddies spawning right on top of you. Not exactly ideal, but on the other hand they’re mostly placed on flat platforms with lots of space above them so in many cases the best solution is to simply jump over them.

As said, there’s nothing wrong with these levels – they’re just not very interesting to play. Some more variety would’ve done wonders – different tilesets, more puzzles, enemies placed in such a way that they’re harder to avoid. And maybe don’t set the “next level” setting of each level to “Data.j2d” ;)

Well, I’ve seen worse first levels, but this still isn’t all that interesting. The idea of making a boss arena isn’t a bad one, and as part of a larger level pack it would’ve been fine, but standalone this isn’t really worth downloading.

The problem with JJ2’s bosses is that they’re all fairly easy (except for Bilsy perhaps). Their AI isn’t good and easy to fool, especially in large areas where the player (who is way faster) can easily jump around and outrun the fumbling bosses. This level is fairly large, and gives the player several powerups. Coupled with Devan’s tedency to get stuck on slopes this makes it easy to pick his first form off from a distance, and simply jump around his immobile second form killing him with potshots here and there.

There is some added difficulty from a respawning bee in the lower right corner of the level, but it’s easy to avoid and therefore not much of a factor. More bees or a smaller areas would’ve made the boss fight a lot harder (though not necessarily more interesting).

The eyecandy is fairly basic, there are no tile bugs and the textured background works, but there’s not much more to see than this bare minimum. If the level is as small as this one, ceretainly it isn’t too difficult to add some more prettiness to it?

All in all not bad for a first level, but at the same time not worth downloading or playing. Keep it up, though! Such a start does hold some promise for what’s to come.

To be honest, this looks like a typical “my first level” that shouldn’t really have been uploaded here. Everyone starts out like this – trying out various way to build platforms and buildings with tilesets, maybe adding a few enemies to see how they work, no textured background because you don’t know how that works yet.

My first single player level probably looked similar. I’m glad I never uploaded it to this site, because it really wasn’t good, and maybe that should’ve happened to this one too: let it stay on your hard drive, learn from it, play some other highly-rated single player levels, take inspiration from those, and create your next level that is actually fun to play and looks good. Maybe ask a few friends to play the level and tell you what they think, so you can change it based on their feedback and make it better before putting it out there for others to download and review. I’m sure your next levels will be a lot better if you do it like that!

As it is, this one is really not playworthy, though.

I like this pack a lot. It’s just three levels with the default tilesets, but they’re big, fun to play and challenging.

The first level is fairly standard, much in the style of the official Castle levels. The tileset edit is nice enough, maybe the contrast is slightly too high but it looks good and adds a slight twist to the level. This goes for all three levels: large, with a nice palette edit and fun to play even though they don’t do anything spectacularly innovative.

All levels are full of secrets and diverging paths, which is great but sometimes a bit confusing: through the pack I got lost a few times looking for an exit in a dead-end area that didn’t actually have one. There’s almost always a way out that is fairly obvious once you finally find it, though.

I don’t really know what else to say; there’s nothing specific that stands out in these levels, but they do make for a good time playing them and finishing them feels rewarding due to the size and amount of secrets Bloody_Body put in them. I definitely recommend downloading this to all single player fans out there.

Well, that’s a flashback. The first level of this pack (that contains only text in Hungarian, so if there’s any story I’m afraid I didn’t quite get it) is an actual tutorial, much like the original game’s ‘Rabbit in Training’ level and, I’m afraid to say, equally dull. You can assume that anyone downloading levels from this site knows how the game plays, making tutorial levels fairly superficial.

Anyway, on to the actual levels. The first two are perfectly okay and do reach the goal of a making a “remake” of the original episode: they’re very reminiscent of Epic’s style, but a little bit bigger. The difficulty is also slightly higher and the levels are less linear than the original – that is, they are linear, but you’re getting warped all over the place so it’s hard to get an idea of where you are in the level.

The third level starts with a puzzle area that I didn’t care much for. There’s a lot of “okay, where am I supposed to go now?” which isn’t necessarily bad but since there are respawning enemies in the area you can’t easily jump around trying to find the hidden tunnel or trigger zone, but need to be on your toes not to bump in the same enemy all the time, which makes the whole process fairly tedious. There’s also an area later in the level where you get warped to random places by warps you can’t possible see before running into them, giving the whole puzzle a really random feel which gets annoying fast. The boss fight that follows isn’t much different from the original castle boss fight and as such not very interesting.

Overall a decent episode, but with parts that got annoying/tedious due to overzealous use of respawning enemies and warps. Always make the player feel like they’re the one in control!

Download recommended if you’d like a more challenging interpretation of the original Epic style levels.

The title of these levels suggests that the gameplay is inspired by the Flappy Bird games. And indeed the first 10 seconds or so involve the player manoeuvring between pipes like in that game, but fortunately the gameplay similarities end there and the rest of this pack is more of a standard Jazz Jackrabbit 2 single player experience, albeit in levels made with tilesets inspired by Flappy Bird’s graphics.

When I say “standard” I mean to say that the levels play out much like the official Jazz Jackrabbit 2 levels: lots of easily-killed enemies, coin warps, some jumping and trigger puzzles, useless pickups (what have diamonds ever done for me?) and lots of blocks to destroy. It’s good enough in what it does; things never get challenging and level design could’ve been a bit more creative but the levels are perfectly functional as a short casual diversion. The final boss even changes things up a bit by hiding a Schwarzenguard in a giant Flappy Bird which you then have to kill with electroblasters only. It’s things like that that make a level interesting and I’d have liked to have seen a bit more of that kind of creativity.

Sadly there’s not much else of that and coupled with the rather dull tilesets (Flappy Bird doesn’t have much in the way of graphics to steal of course, but that’s not much of an excuse) this pack is fairly forgettable. Not bad by any means, just not very interesting either. But I think with a bit of added creativity Ande300 could certainly make some interesting things in the future.

All in all this is not brilliant, but not bad either. Download if you want to have a bit of casual single player fun, but there are better levels out there.

Haha, I somehow passed by this program by clicking too many links.. It works fine for a 2006 utility and does it’s job, besides Modplug Tracker supporting J2B’s for years now and Bass.dll giving a more accurate touch to all mods while played through JJ2+.

There are a few tilebugs, for example sometimes you can stand in the wall or you can’t jump on a spring, because there’s something over it that you can stand on.
Anyway, for a second map, it’s very good job! ;-)

[Review changed to quick review, see the review rules.

There isn’t much to say about it. It’s simply nice, but the music sounds like satan remixed the original theme. The map is a little bit confusing, too many annoying lizards… There are no other enemies than the reptilian foes, which is sad. The tileset looks nice. Something scares me when I play the level, I don’t know why. Playing it with Lori is almost impossible. Anyway, I think 9.2/10 is a fair review.

It was a kinda short map, the boss wasn’t a big of a deal, but not the easiest. The bee nest was a random thing that wasn’t necesary at all. It is a nice map for a first one.

It is a nice begginer map, even if it isn’t the best or close.

EDIT:
I see you’ve made some positive changes to the level. Generators are present now and have their respawn time set quite low, which works fine in such a small fast-paced level. Just remind yourself to set it higher if you ever build a bigger MP level. Next we have the much desired vertical space in the form of the upper platform and a big ‘chimney’ wall in the middle.

I generally like these changes, but my biggest concern lies with the chimney in the middle as it blocks off the entire path. Maybe try making an opening in it and/or in the upper platform? Death ends and linear movement can easely kill a CTF level.

Another (tiny) problem I found has to do with the PU’s in their enclosed areas on the upper left and right. Now that there’s a platform inbetween them, skilled players can use Bouncers to shoot the PU’s through the wall, making the coin warp obsolete. You may choose and keep it that way, or thicken the walls a bit to make coins absolutely necessary.

Also try and look at the tilebugs in the walls. I know the Holiday tileset can be a pain to do fully right, but this level has some masking problems that adds unnecessary gaps that players can stand on. Just enable the masking view in JCS’ editor window and make sure all walls are straight lines.

My original rating was a 4.0, and I believe the current changes are worth half a point extra. Keep up the good work and I’m sure it can get better!

Original review:
First things first, merry christmas and a happy new year! Now that that’s out of the way, let’s review this teeny weeny level.

The layout is as basic and simplistic as it can get. Well, it’s no ‘Best CTF Party Good Luck’ yet but you readers get the point (haha). One base on the left, one base on the right, the middle contains vines above spikes, a little secret passage, and that’s about it. I missed any form of vertical movement in this level.

Some things felt unexpected concerning tileset usage, especially the houses’ layer-3 usage and the choice of using the ?-block as a coin warp. There are also tilebugs in the ground and an overall lack of variety in available tiles (all spikes have their star animation, not all xmas light colors were used, etc).

Weapon choice is okay for a symmetrical level. Both sides have a weaker and a stronger weapon, and teams are used to switch sides after a round nowadays anyway.

Also, don’t forget to put in Generators in multiplayer levels for all events you’d like to respawn. This level is currently drastically broken due to the lack of them.

I give a 4 and can’t really recommend it in it’s current state. It’ll need some big changes before it reaches the amount of simplistic fun Mulch/Malch style maps do. Please don’t see this review as being too harsh, but take it as a way to improve the level! ;)

It works so… yeah… kinda useful.

EDIT 30th April 2020 – I decided to lower my rating a bit as I don’t think it’s worth a 7 by my current standards, mostly for the reasons all the other reviews with similar ratings have stated, but I’m sure Primpy wouldn’t mind as he’s made way better levels in the meantime. A good level designer’s gotta have a humble beginning I suppose. :)

Maybe I am not the best at reviews, but your map is just a joy to play. However, is not perfect.

Stuff I like:
-Great tileset
-Music matching to the map
-Large map, making it “open-world”
-The level has water
-Variety of weapons
-The map is nicely made
-Lots of details
-I didn’t encounter any visual bugs
-Pinball

Stuff I don’t like:
-The water event doesn’t always work, also the water appears suddenly
-Uhh, sorry, I can’t find any other stuff I don’t like… x(

9.7/10 – I recommend it. It’s perfect for 4-8 players.

One awesome map.

[See above. ~cooba]

Well, if you call my map bad…
Your level has the same problems as mine. There’s a very big space to the left of the chamber, the wallpaper is repeating. All I can say.

[You should actually download and play the level before rating it, not just comment on its preview. Original rating: 6.0 ~Stijn]

Good Job.It’s one of the best fan-made maps that i saw. Continue with that!

[I’m keeping this review for laughs. Original rating 10. ~cooba]

Very useful.10 out of 10

Firstly thanks for reviewing.
I know that I build very simple and mostly bad levels :D
I’m really a beginner and I’m learning to build levels.
I just share them on J2O to get advices to make better levels. My plans are remaking those levels again later, using Your and other people’s advices.