Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

There aren’t a lot of people who build race levels. Still less who actually care about them.

No, I’m completely serious. Next to Treasure Hunts, quite possibly the most irrelevant and unspectacular multiplayer mode of Jazz 2 in terms of quality custom-built levels is the Race category. For whatever bizarre, unappealing or totally unexplained reason, JCSers just don’t want to put in the time and effort required to create a decent course.

Because of this, J2O members generally pay little to no attention on the rare occasions when a race (or a Treasure Hunt, for that matter) is uploaded. After all, nobody ever makes worthwhile maps, so what’s the point?

As a result, the vicious cycle comes full circle, returning to the JCSers who are not properly encouraged to try and make these sparse and often unappreciated styles of multiplayer levels.

My point is compounded by the glaringly obvious fact that, despite being a Featured upload with 446 downloads, Ragnarok’s race level has but one quick review and but one full-length review.

True, that full-length review may happen to be a Featured Review, but that’s mostly because it’s the lone votable review for the level, and is thus the most likely review to be sampled on the front page of J2O, which in most cases greatly contributes to Featured Review status.

The whole thing’s a terrible shame, really, because Nature’s Plot of Land is one of the best races I’ve EVER seen. And believe you me, there’s nary a level to challenge it.

First off, the structure is fantastic. NPoL meshes perfectly with its Mystic Isle tileset, going from expansive, roomy caverns one minute to steep, foreboding cliffs the next, then magnificent waterfalls, then winding subterranean rivers…the list goes on and on and on.

Ragnarok then avoids the classic blunder, the biggest of which is getting involved in a land war in Asia, but only SLIGHTLY less significant is to never put warps where they don’t belong!

Princess Bride quotations aside, Rag chose not to take the cheap way out and use a space-age teleporter in a naturalistic, outdoorsey environment to warp the player back to the start, instead employing a really cool sucker-tube-aided passage that flings the player through still more earthy tunnels, magically depositing them back at the start.

Beat that!

NPoL uses Mystic Isle brilliantly, with just the right amount of eyecandy dotted in various places to make it seem natural. A-plus there.

Then there’s the obstacles. Oh, be still my heart! Ragnarok showed a masterful flair for levelmaking with the obstacles he placed in this race. Spring traps (Cleverly executed ones like the Blue Spring right at the beginning never grow old). TnT booby-trap crates. Freezers to immobilize fellow players, powered-up RFs to knock them backwards (plus an ingenius method for procuring them), Keep-1 springs (A lot of people miss this crucial level-building trick, which prevents springs from automatically killing a player’s left-to-right momentum) that send the racer flying off the edge of a cliff.

The TnT crates are especially devastating in the underwater segment.

I was also VERY happy to discover certain types of ammo that Ragnarok left OUT, namely the seekers and toasters. Seekers used to be my favorite weapon, but they’re so overrused now that I’m absolutely sick of ‘em. Toasters would serve little purpose on a race anyway, so it’s good that they’re not wasted here.

The weapon I was most pleased to find present was the Pepper Spray powerup. Pepper Spray is so underrated, due to its complete uselessness in singleplayer. Nevertheless, it is instrumental in multiplayer, thanks to its minuscule size and difficulty in subsequently avoiding. It works great here.

NPoL had a great song, too. Its fast pace kept me hopping through the stage (as any good race song will), yet it was organic enough to be completely appropriate for this level. Hats off to Rag for an excellent selection.

Not much needs to be said about buggage, since it’s basically nonexistent.

The absolute ONLY criticism I have is the “Bouncy Cliffs”, where one tile is slightly high enough that, without a full head of steam, it requires a few tries to successfully climb up.

Think about that for a minute. THE WORST THING I CAN FIND TO SAY ABOUT NPoL IS THAT ONE TILE IS PLACED ONE SPACE TOO HIGH.

Summary? Nature’s Plot of Land took my breath away, not because it was such a tremendously well-executed upload on all fronts (which it was), but because it went almost completely unnoticed by prospective reviewers. I probably wouldn’t have even played it at all if I hadn’t picked a random level of Ragnarok’s to evaluate, in exchange for his own review on one of mine.

And just think of what all I would’ve missed out on.

7.8?! Heck, no! This race deserves better. So much better.

It was an almost perfect upload, so I’m going to give it an almost perfect rating. Nature’s Plot of Land was a terrific level, and I think it’s just plain ridiculous that people don’t make races like this more often.

Wonderful job, Ragnarok. Wonderful, wonderful job. Two thumbs up, a standing ovation and an immediate and unconditional download recommendation go to you today.

Its great!Now I can play j2b files!Sorry for my bad english!

[Review changed to quick review, see the review rules ~cooba]

I’ve decided to write full review, mostly because I couldn’t match in 350 character lenght rule for quick review(really, if the max lenght was around 600 I could easily match and create much smaller review, but I couldn’t so I wrote a full one. Isn’t it quite stupid when I can’t decide if the review is quick?).

Before I rated this map for 8, but I haven’t tested it really, just run around for few seconds to see how the level is. Still, its not that bad but its a bit annoying. Hard to move around. Actually, it feels like the creator of this didn’t liked players so he made a lot of spots where he can easily fall to sucker tube that brings them back or forcing them to make some jumps in rather strange way, like demanding players to make everything perfect(jumping to RF area is quite annoying). I don’t like lower path, because it sucks, takes much time and can be annoying because of pits and sucker tubes over players.

This level for me feels like its much smaller than it is. Why? Overloaded with some events. You tried to put everything in it, not really good way of creating gameplay. Too many warps, too many sucker tubes of which two are pointless and the only reason they are there is to annoy player. I want more space, I would understand if it was 20×15 level, they are supposed to be crowded. This one though should use more space. Just few minor changes, sometimes even One Way Floor event makes level feel a bit more spacious. This level lacks One Way Floor event. It also lacks space. Seriously. It’s hard to move and sometimes its made on purpose, trying to master this level might be very annoying, tiring and pointless because probably noone would like to play there anyway. Also, springs leading to warps the most to the left/right could use oneways under them.

Ammo placement is fine, I can’t say it’s not, although it would be a little more comfortable to put oneway floor under RF power up. Everything is almost fine, but there is just… too much of everything. Too many seeks mostly, no way you can run out of ammo. There should be more bouncers instead of seeks in my opinion. Also, probably for a level like that you won’t get sugar rush during the game anyway, but it’s good to see all of those cakes around.

Eyecandy is nice, hard to say anything else. Warps next to bases(to which you can get via sucker tube) have got layer 3 bug(hard to notice that while playing, but actually whole eyecandy is only visual problem, and I have noticed this), thats the only bug I have found. Everything else is fine and the level looks nice even on low detail(I mean, nothing what looks like serious tilebugs), though it doesn’t matter that much. I have found annoying only one place where tiles used for regular levels are on layer 3(right and left from RF powerup), at the beggining it was confusing, later I got used to that.

Overall: without much space, annoying, hard to move, overloaded, but its looking good. I just found it hard to move here, and that is the most annoying thing about this level. It’s not a bad level anyway, not that bad to rate it less than 7. The thing I liked the most here was eyecandy, and its worth downloading just to see how it looks(because why not).

That’s all I guess.

Edit: Oh, thats nice. I feel this one will be more playable now so I raised the rating. Thanks and good job anyway!

An interesting level with an interesting concept, I like the warp. The eyecandy is alright, I really like the middle area of the map. As for the gameplay, I rarely play Domination so I do not really know what a good DOM level needs, but this one is fine enough for me so I’ll give it a fine rating and a DL rec.

Good luck on the contest!

[Review changed to quick review. ~cooba]

Great pack, fun levels.
Good eyecandy, the levels look good without being too busy for the eyes.

Fixed.

Huh. Well, maybe.

I guess I’ll change the label, just to be on the safe side.

No,i dont know wath is that!

I believe by ‘dark maps’ you mean levels that have low lightning. Have you tried using the ‘ambient lightning’ toggle in the options?
2/10 for trying.

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

Dude if you’re using a TSF only tileset in a couple levels then it would make some sense to mark the upload as TSF only, I think.

You may want to obtain a copy of 1.23 and test the levels in that before releasing levels under a 1.23 label. Most of your releases cause Jazz to ‘run out of animations’, and as such we can’t all play them. It might also be why you constantly get very few reviews.

Missing tiles, miscolored tiles, no black tiles at all, pinball events broken, lazily converted animations, lots of filler, ugly textured background. This set didn’t age very well I’m afraid! :(

Clear good levels. Some leves have bugs, but it’s okay, and i liked it.
But, don’t forget it, trigger zone doesn’t work in 0. :p

I think you want the Articles section?

It is great!

Either I don’t understand why a jcs.ini is included in this upload, or you don’t. A jcs.ini file affects only JCS: which events you can place, what they’re called, what you think their parameters are. It has no effect on JJ2, and you do not need any specific jcs.ini — in fact, you do not need a jcs.ini at all — in order to be able to see blue ghost enemies in TSF.

I suddenly realized this is the Land of Maps and Treasure.

Both the tileset conversion, and the map are awesome. I don’t know how to describe this but awesome. Good job.

The map is very nice (aldo those flying things gave me a headache :D ). The eye-candy is very nicely done, and I liked the weapon placement. I also like the way you’ve combined the carrots with the death pits. Overall the map is very interesting (at specially the background). It will be interesting if this map makes it on some of the servers.

PS: Somehow i don’t think this is a perfect 10 (sorry, but keep up the good work)

What is this version,Evilmike!?I’m sorry for this bad english!

[Please provide more support for your rating. For more information on writing a proper review, see the review rules.