Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Very nice level. Plenty of ammo, awesome layout and mechanics, bugs scrupulously taken care of. I had fun. Download today.

Heh. Got a good laugh outta this one.

Blackraptor’s Race For The Vodka race is a bit tricky to get the hang of, and it can be occasionally frustrating (i.e.-the Pinball bumpers), but it’s definitely a worthwhile endeavor.

RFtV uses the Dreempipes tileset, taking the player through what is apparently a giant vodka production plant (No worries, parents: Rabbits apparently can’t hold anything stronger than Epi-Cola, which Blacky has substituted for real vodka). There’s a few sequestered Ice powerups, a fancy shortcut or two and some straight-up gameplay traps no race would be complete without. Spring traps (especially used in conjuncture with Float events). A water/caterpillar pit. A vertical Spring trap. These and more are expertly executed, and greatly enhance the quality of Vodka.

On the converse, there were a few things I thought could’ve used improvement. The Freeze Enemy traps, while whimsical and fun, were downright annoying, and greatly disrupted the flow of the race. This consequently ruined the Seeker shortcut, although in my opinion it was already quicker just to take the normal route and bypass the Seeker shortcut altogether. The pinball section irritated me because it was just hard enough to stop me almost every time I came through it, but not quite hard enough for me to label it as unreasonable in its difficulty. The Freezer powerup at the beginning was way too well hidden, and I would probably never have found it if I hadn’t looked through the editor after playing the level, to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

On another note, the song was hilarious, and fit the level perfectly. Nice find there.

Is Race For The Vodka worth a download? Absolutely. This is a good, quality race by Blackraptor, and once you look past its small number of minorly bothersome flaws, it’s definitely worth playing. Download today.

Wow. Talk about a steal.

I was stunned when I stumbled onto Jgke’s Cave of Dreams CTF level. Here, I had found a functional, good-looking upload, and absolutely NO ONE ELSE has reviewed it yet!

Oh, yeah. This level’s good. Everything is painted in dark blue tones, except for the translucent aqua fog at the bottom that’s apparently supposed to be water. The map is symmetrical, but it’s open and well-designed enough that you hardly even notice.

How often does THAT happen with a symmetrical level?

I liked how the carrots were placed in RF-climb shafts that noobs can’t get at. Furthermore, in anticipation of said noobs’ unhappy reactions, Jgke placed a Full NRG in the middle for them to fight over. Classic.

Ammo was distributed well, although I did feel like there wasn’t very much for such a wide open level.

Bases were placed well, too.

I didn’t download the music, so I won’t include it in my rating. Judging by the file name in the Level Properties window, though, I’m sure it fit the level quite well.

On the other hand, I wasn’t very impressed with the aqua agua (That’s turquoise water, to all you uninitiated folks) at the bottom. While it DID contribute positively to the level in terms of functionality, I felt that the colors clashed in a bad way with the rest of the level. It’s too bad, because the rest of the level looked so pretty.

In the end, then, I was highly pleased with Cave of Dreams. It’s a quality, satisfaction guaranteed level, and it’s unbelievable just far beneath the radar this level has flown. Download this level. It’s awesome!

On the one hand, this was certainly an interesting level. Violet CLM’s Midigating Factor is one of the most gimmick-oriented CTFs I’ve seen in a while, utilizing fancy sucker tube and spring sequences to shluffle the player around the level and confuse them to no end. Eyecandy is interesting and cool, and makes the level fun to play.

On the other hand, MF also suffers from the Cramped Hallway Syndrome. It never feels very wide open, and it’s been a while since I’ve played a level that made me feel this enclosed and claustraphobic.

Music worked pretty well for the level. It was a sort of quiet and serene piece, accented every so often by a smooth-as-silk violin. Good choice.

In summary, I guess I’ll give this level a 7.0 on the Richter scale. Neutral DL rec, ‘cause I haven’t decided what I think of it all yet.

Sorry, no backgrounds. I’ll update it as soon as I can.

Quality is surprisingly easy to overlook, and no less so here. Sub-Terrestrial is a well-rounded level, with good eyecandy, smooth flow and a quaint, yet befitting music track. Worth a download.

Geez, people. You’ll probably kill me for saying this, but I honestly think this set is a wee bit overrated…

The Twilight Park is a city tileset, a genre of sets that often gets little to no attention. It’s too bad, since metropolis/town/city sets are among my very favorites.

Unfortunately, tilesets like Twilight Park, while very good and loads of fun to use, are the reason why city sets are so infrequently done (And done well, too).

TTP has the usual whimsical Blur eyecandy (Random items buried in the ground, a doghouse with accompanying dog bowl, silly posters slapped onto a junky old alley fence, etc.), plus some unexpected surprises (A swimming pool, gardening tools sticking out of the ground as “thorns”, a small background red brick wall). Well-trimmed trees provoke intriguing visual ideas, while a background dominated by grassy parkland and distant skyscrapers lend Twilight Park a very suburbian feel.

Unfortunately, things started to fizzle out at about this point.

While all of the pluses I mentioned are nice, they’re really all there is to work with in this tileset. I mean, there’s a few more tiles than what I mentioned, but the greater extent of the set is devoted to The Average Joe’s Backyard.

The dirt is the only real “ground” material available to work with (Although, in its defense, there are two or three different surfaces for the dirt that are perfectly usable). Despite being a suburb-esque pack, there’s not even any houses or apartment buildings. Only one fencing material is at the JCSer’s disposal (And wooden fences get very old after a while). There’s no black tiles. No “cave” wall tiles (unless you count the fence, which I don’t).

Parks and naturalistic scenery can only go so far, and I have some rather serious concerns about the limitations of this set.

Don’t get me wrong, Twilight Park’s a great set and all. It has bodaciously good eyecandy and truckloads of JCSing potential…but good is only so good these days. I felt a little let down by the limitations of the set.

Still, Twilight Park IS a sweet tileset, and it’s definitely worth a download.

Well, it’s a Letni conversion, and it’s a working Letni conversion. That much is good.

Beyond that, I was massively underwhelmed by CelL’s JJ1 conversion.

In his defense, Letni is a pain in the donkey to work with. The visuals are limited, the music bland and unappealing, the levels boring and unengaging, the tileset even more so. Letni is one-dimensional and uninspired, and it’s arguably the most unpopular JJ1 planet of ALL time (Matched only by Raneforus, Muckamok and Ceramicus).

However, if one is making a JJ1 conversion, one must gut through the pain and misery and do a good job.

While most if not all of the Jazz 1 tiles appear to be there, not all of them are the right color (Especially the yellow, blue and red pulze lights mounted on the dark blue background). There’s no clear background duplicates of the orange and light blue floor tiles, limiting the JCSer to one measly BG choice. Speaking of this, there’s no fancy backgrounds or anything. No fluff tiles (Which are extraneous tiles that weren’t present in the original set, but still add a positive element to the conversion. These are things like sucker tubes, blast’em blocks/buttstomp blocks, vines/hooks, et cetera) of any kind. Grouping was absentminded at best, sloppy at worst.

There’s extremely little present here in this tileset to work with.

In short, it looks like CelL just copied all of the tiles from Jazz Jackrabbit 1 over to the conversion and slapped everything together.

I wish he had done a better job with it, because J2O is STILL waiting for a decent true-blue Jazz 1 Letni conversion (Not remake, conversion) to be created.

Neutral DL rec, since it’s not a very good tileset, but it’s the closest thing to an adequate Letni conversion out there at present.

@Blackraptor:

Hold that thought. “World of Jazz” will be coming out later this year.

Well what we have here is a pretty nice looking and polished level that’s in singleplayer mode, something I don’t see much nowadays. Cold Flash (i keep spelling it as cold lake :/) uses an edit of the diamondus set I’ve never seen before, a relaxing tune, and a custom boss music. It’s fairly sized, though pretty straightforward, and is good for a quick fix of singleplayer JJ2.

One of the reasons being, is the consistency of the level design throughout. The detailing on the eyecandy is good but not spectacular, although I really liked the look of both the background and the boss arena, however its done well throughout and without bugs or any ugliness. The only complaint I really have is that the rain in the foreground looks too mechanical or patterned. It results in looking kind of unnatural, but this didn’t bother me much.

The gameplay of the level is pretty solid as well. There’s nothing I found new in it or jaw dropping, but if you’re in the mood to play some good ol’ sidescrolling action this satisfies the craving. The whole level mostly consisted of traversing areas in a usually linear fashion or finding some crates. There we’re plenty of checkpoints placed throughout and although some of the enemy placement could be tough the number of them you face at a time is mostly restrained. This is quite a contrast from the SP I usually play, which includes my own levels :P I mostly breezed through this level, with a few occassions during when I fell to 1 health and had to be more careful. The boss was a nice touch, especially as this was a small(er) standalone level and so really needed one. The custom boss music was also a perfect fit and I really think more people should use this as an example and take advantage of this option to use custom music for boss fights. I also liked finding the secrets placed in this level. The horizontal green spring in the one at 143,28 shoots me into a wall though.

Item placement was also good. I felt it may have been scarce sometimes, but the ammo I thought was done well and fit the situations presented in the level.

Overall, as I’ve said already I think this is a polished and well done level. In my eyes I couldn’t find any single major weakness or significant problems that would impede my enjoyment playing it. It’s only ‘flaws’ is that it isn’t really outstanding in any way, that it could use more improvisation and bring something new to the table. Also, for a standalone it is quite short. I would’ve loved to see it in a pack of levels. My rating averages out to a 7.7. I think you should try making a single player campaign, and I hope your experience in level design encourages you to experiment more.

-br

Well after so many retries and so many falls i have finally completed the lvl. Phew.

Eyecandy:

Eyecandy here is really good. I generally hate psych tileset, and i hate the looks of shrooms in general but br used this tileset rather well, the lvl actually looks nice. There were a few tilebugs i encountered but very few, since some flowers were “dancing” and they were near layer 3 tiles it looked is if they are punching their “heads” trough walls.Anyways not much to say here the tileset was more or less used up to its maximum

9.5/10

Enemy placement:

Theyr pretty well placed. They get alont with the tileset well except for the christmas enemies i dont think they quite match the tileset. Enemies are placed in a way that u cant quite just charge upward and shoot and do whatever u like, most are even hidden behind layer 3 but they can still be seen if you focus. The witch i beat quite too easy with the seekers (3 boxes) you’ve put, i just dodged the umm “yellow thingy” and just kept spamming all seekers i had. I’d say that most annoying enemies were definetly the bee’s as they always are for me. They were well placed in this lvl

9/10

Gameplay

Well its quite hard expecially those pit parts. After i fell the first 10 times i just did /r and tried again, since i knew where i was at i finally passed that part. Its not that hard, u just mustnt shoot those platforms otherwise they will swing like hell and it will really become troublesome. 2nd hard part was the other pit, the one with boulders, god i lost all my nerves with that one. Either jump wouldnt work, or i’d get hurt or i’d miss the boulder eh… after many retries i finally passed it. I think there should be atleast 2 checkpoints thou, its quite easy to die and it can get VERY frustrating to have to do everything all over again. All in all the gameplay was really nice it was rather fun to play this lvl. Just have to focus a lot and be carefull is all it takes.

8.5/10

Pickup placement

I will include secrets areas in this one aswell. The ammo,gems,coins and food placements are really good placed i like it a lot. I had 2 sugar rushes but surprisingly that wasnt much at all. I think i found most of the secret placements but one of the secret area i accidently discovered because a boulder rolled there and when i went there it was definetly the MOST HARDEST PART in this lvl. It contained spike balls which left u out of footing and some well placed bee’s which was just far too frustrating. i really stopped bothering trying to pass that one it was simply too hard for me. also there is that area placement im not sure how to get there, i just used RF climb, maybe i was suppost to push that crate with a blue spring there? but i cant push crates and i dont know what was that spring doing there in the first place. well the pickup placements are really good placed there were a lot of carrots which was just about enough for this lvl, no Full C’s thou (atleast i havent found any).

9/10

Music:

Umm… when i played this lvl i couldnt even hear my own blaster or any kind of sound except some messed up high piched noises or sth. Too bad thou :s

0/0

Overall Rating: 9/10

DL recommendation?

Definetly. The lvl is a bit hard and requres quite a lot of skills but its definetly fun to play.

Hey, better late than never.

- The flag direction shouldn’t actually matter.
- Added that MCE event (never bothered to actually fall in the pit during my own testing!)
- Can’t reproduce the JB4 bug.
- This scoring issue in BR2 only happened because someone managed to get a flag without returning it to a base. It was actually possible for this to happen due to me using an unmasked tile where I wanted a masked one (and not noticing); fixed now!

Nice tileset with awesome palette swaps and some…well, interesting, I suppose…black-tile eyecandy. Definitely worth a DL. Great for building a Credits level for your singleplayer pack (which I’ll be doing with World of Jazz). Download rec.

Wow. I can’t believe the things that slip through the cracks of J2O.

Great level, solid eyecandy (although the back layers were a little too standard for me), excellent music and layout. Events were nice, too.

Definitely worth a DL.

I feel like I failed you as a tester, but I’ll tell you here in hopes that you can update it!

In JB2, flag direction to top right jail doesn’t work.
In JB3, no MCE event in bottom right corner.
In JB4, there’s a bug whereby you keep dying if you fall in the pit in the pregame.
In BR2 there’s a bug where every 4th point for blue scores for red instead…

The rest seem perfectly functional though!

Sorry for not spotting this sooner.

—Foreword—
I have to say that it gave experience playing this creatively channeling level, the name is strongly fitting the look, music and gameplay, in one word, the theme. I guess there are pelolpe don’t understand it, it means a trip after using drugs, appropriate isn’t it? The level doesn’t got story, but in my opinion, a SP pack needs it, not a one level trial, also, here we are going trough a psychedelic experience, so we aren’t aware of the world. lol.

—Look—

Background
Mushrooms going towards the upper right corner, some of them are “dancing”, spiced with changing colors. CraZy. It is cool, and exciting anyway, i never got bored of it. This makes the view even more colorful.
Eyecandy
Well i could leave the praising but i don’t. It is amazing. Hanging leaves, branches of trees, lava lamps, waterfalls, and mushrooms all around, even parts of originally background items. Great use of Layer 4-5(maybe 6 too, i couldn’t check it in JCS) walls, times going black. Decent tileset usage. The pickups and other events improve it too, i like the foods used and the the gems, big rock was also in it, and the mass of trigger rocks, nah that rocks at all. Rare timebugs can be found hardly, easyly ignoreable, overally, the look is a comple masterpiece. Dammit, it’s magic.

Rating: 29/30

—Layout—
As the game gets started, it leaves you to choose left or right way to go what makes me feel confused. By the way its not bad, and the whole level is baised on this thing, there is a main path, with lots of byways allaround consisting pickups and enemyes. I think it is good, because once you saw a place not needed in going forward, next time, after you got roasted you won’t be forced to go to all the places. Next thing to mention is that in some cases, you had to find a secret alike way to get trough what is a bit werid, altrugh, yes, i know there are arrow posts but they are hard to notice because of the exuberant eyecandy. Otherway it was natural, cool and long so what to say? it must get high rating.

Rating: 14/15

—Gameplay—

I was wondering. Wherever i’ve gone, i met unordinary things. Yet it was kinda difficult, thanks to the lots of hurting and pits. After a bunch of deaths i startd to care a lot and go slowly. The first pitty part’s first part with the swinging vine and plaform got me 20 times that i said okay. this is cool but i just don’t get how to, so i skipped it. I think this level is hard for any skilled player, this makes it just more exciting. Something new that waits for beating.
The great deal of separate events were loveably infrequent. The best was the Trigerr rocks as collapsing scan alike platforms, if you touch it by sides it falls.
One thing to mention, at least one more checkpoint could’ve been added, somewhere after the first pits, because the second pitty part is very deadly, and getting back to start from there kills the spirit of playing without cheats -> :(.
By the way i found that in easy mode, it gets skipped if you fall into the pit at the left, lower corner. Also easy mode let’s a second chance after falling into a pit, brilliant idea. As i saw hard gives a lot more enemyes, and so, it make them in crucial places too.
Overally it’s very creative, nicely done, not as a bad point, it is hard.

Pickups

Due to the several byways this is a truly rich level in gatherables. Countless gems and foods, good amount of armours, imaginitive coins.
Both gems and coins were greatly placed in boxes, and in many different way, it was cool. The toaster ammo was the most precious thing, right after carrots. In some places the thing was proposally in the walls, i see how this is new, but it is hard to collect, anyway it fits to a SP level.
The secrets were hidden unobviusly, for the fourth – fifth time (i mean restarts, not only meant by dying) i started to find them, they were very imaginitive. I even found new secrets for the tenth time, this made an adevturious feeling keeped long. and still there are some that i dont understand, like the Toaster PU at 270,46. I really ‘d liked to see it in JCS.

Enemyes

There were a lot of enemyes fitting the theme, decently placed. The witch was nice that it was there, well i could consist an end boss, but the level was complete like this too, i felt exhasuted enough reaching the exit.
One thing was annying, those hidden enemys. they really husted a lot, it is ignorable to have a few, but this was a bit much. In hard mode i would add more Fencers, to increase difficulity, becasuse more helmuts just need some more shoots, anyway the beeboy useage was great in it.

Rating: 44/50

—Music—

The genre is Psytrance, even by that is fits, moreover it superly suits the level. Its also great because it is new. The only backward of it is the hefty 17.7MB size.

Rating:5/5

—Last words—
I would really respect the man that beats this level without deaths (and cheats) for the first time. It is truely hard, it makes a challange for anyone. Altrough it is fun and recomended to play it.
DR : is it a question?

Total Rating: 92/100 -> 9.2

RabidRabb

Good enough, don’t get it why noone reviewed this one.

Interesting pack, to say the least.

I can’t believe a decent review hasn’t been written about this yet, since it’s arguably a great pack. Good eyecandy, good mechanics and smooth flow.

In short, it’s a good pack, and DEFINITELY worth a download.

Nice level. Good, solid eyecandy, decent layout. Music wasn’t the greatest, but it’s still worth a DL.

Wortless not being able to help TSF :(