Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Late review time. “Mystic Isle” by Moonblaze is an average tileset which attempts to look classic game style, but doesn’t really make it happen. Let’s take a look.

GRAPHIC QUALITY: Moonblaze uses an 8-bit drawing style, which I approve of, but which only works so well in cases like this. Some things look good – the vines and gems especially – but the main part of the tileset, the ground itself, suffers a little. Simply put, the ground is ugly. The grass isn’t too bad, though kind of dull, but the soil is a single shade of unknown-color, and that doesn’t work. It kind of looks like a resized version of Swamps, but not as good. I really wanted to see some sort of soil texture here, as a single color rarely works. Ironically, the next level setting lead to Colonius, which uses the technique much better.
Meanwhile, as I said, a lot of things look good. All the brown vine stuff is very nice to look at, and if the rest of the tileset looked like that, it would be great. The green wood, though, poles and sucker tubes, ends up looking like a simple gradient with no variety, and it’s all flat surfaces. Not too appealing to look at. Rocks are a mixed bag, and the wooden platforms look pretty good, though again a little too small.
Pros: Very nice vine stuff, wooden platforms not too bad, gems are cool.
Cons: Soil is pretty ugly, too many straight lined gradients.
Rating: 6.6

MASKING: High marks here. Everything is masked perfectly, and the author even was nice enough to create some cool rock-leaning-against-wall structures which the player can walk up and down upon. There are really only two masking parts I’m not thrilled with. The giant glowing white gem tiles are automasked, which could cause stucking troubles in some levels, and the big mask message messes up a lot of the background eyecandy tiles which could otherwise be used for fun stuff. I’m also concerned that the wooden platform tiles may be masked a little thin, but that’s not a big issue.
Pros: Mostly good, the leaning rock stuff is fun.
Cons: A few automask issues, and the wooden platforms may be too thin.
Rating: 7.8

ORIGINALITY/VARIETY: There is very little to set this tileset apart from any other nature tileset, and especially from others that Moonblaze has made. The gem stuff is kind of cool, but there’s little reason other than that to use this, as almost everything in Mystic Isle is available in Swamps, only bigger and better. Isle is designed for a certain level (or set of levels… whatever) in TDI2, but other than that, it’s not too interesting.
As for variety… well, the tileset does offer a number of things. Basic ground, tiny wooden platforms, cave eyecandy (with no tile support at ALL – you have to use layer 5), event tiles, and fun gem stuff. I am, however, missing slopes. The basic ground has no slopes, unless you count the tilted rocks, which would become really old after seeing even two of them in a row. Levels made with this tileset will feel squared off, which is really pretty annoying.
Pros: Decent environment, lots of cool eyecandy things, well-made background eyecandy, etc.
Cons: Bad slope situation, and little that is new or different.
Rating: 7.5

TILE PLACEMENT: Pretty much everything in the tileset is placed logically, though there are a few random eyecandy tiles which should probably be placed closer to their base. Having the hook inserted horizontally is also kind of weird.
Rating: 8.0

OVERALL: This is not a bad tileset, but it’s hideously overrated, and kind of boring. If you want to have fun with single player and weird triggers and in-depth storylines, this tileset might be good, but for most levels there are better options out there. Still, it’s well put together and has a lot of features. A mixed bag.
Pros: Cool stuff, not badly drawn for the most part, especially as it was done in Paint.
Cons: No normal slopes, some tiles look kind of ugly, particularly the soil itself.
Rating: 7.2

(Edit: Hi, Moonblaze. If you check my review you’ll see that I noticed your tilted rocks, and said that they would look really boring if you had several in a row. I’ll admit that I didn’t mention the bridge things, but you’ll also notice that I said “the BASIC GROUND”, not “NO SLOPES AT ALL”.)

Quote from Neon PSY’s review:
‘PS: THis lvl reminds me of mirrows Easter Island tileset :P’
Yeah, I completely agree with you but Moonblaze’s tileset is better. mirrow has simply not put enough effort into his Easter Island tileset and it is therefore too small and too simple. Moonblaze’s tileset, though only slightly bigger, has a lot more detail, more eyecandy and lots of interesting animations.

A lot of basic stuff is in the tileset such as destruct blocks, vines, poles, etc. although I really do not like those suckertube wooden bars… they are in the way and you have to align Jazz very carefully and slowly to jump into it, something which is pure suicide when fighting in a multiplayer game. They could be used for bridges over cliffs, though, which is quite a nice touch since it is more solid than JJ2’s own bridges and it looks different. What I like most about this tileset is its feeling of isolation. It has far-away clouds and forests and strange carvings on the walls as well as an old hermit (Moonblaze :-P). The tileset could be used very well in small to medium-sized levels althouh it’s too small to provide variation for big levels.

I don’t want to go into too much detail. I like the tileset’s idea as well as its high quality and Moonblaze’s effort but the tileset is too small to get a super-duper rating a la Discofever or . An 8.2 would be best, in my opinion. Download recommendation.

Btw, sry for pushing your average tileset rating down, MB. :-(

This is one of my favourite tileset. It’s really detailled, especially the (dark-brown) walls at the background. I don’t like the part where you can shoot ammo ‘under the bridges’. An other negative thing is the lack of ‘different’ eyecandy. You can’t really give much nice eyecandy, except for the rocks etc. at layer 4. It’s really easy to use – which is a positive thing obviously.

Definitely a download recommendation.

You have some artistic skills, but probably you’re a little bit lazy.

A nice and tidy tileset. I liked the way you’ve rendered grass and stones. But the tileset sufferes from a serious lack of eyecandy – if you’ve added stones, small roots or something else the soil would look significantly more realistic. The same goes for the sand. The same goes for the forest as well – only the edge of it is filled with trees, while the middle is filled with empty green tiles. This is pretty boring. The colour of the distant walls should be just a little bit darker than one of the soil, otherwise it doesn’t look harmoniously. In other aspects the tileset is well-done!

P.S. OMG, this thing was uploaded almost 14 years ago… And I’m arrogant enough to judge about author’s artistic skills and to give him advices on painting :D

(I got forced to write a review.)

Well. First of all, I’d like to compliment you on the background. It owns.
The arrangement of the tiles is also nice, finding the right tiles is very easy.
I personally don’t like the sucker tubes. I don’t even see a reason to use a suckertube in this tileset.

And as Neon said, this also reminds me of this mirrow tileset.

(I know I don’t review, but MB made me do it. ;P)
Anyway, when I viewed this tileset in JCS, I really liked how it was done.I also think the concept of it is original-same goes to the floating diamonds in there.And I think this tileset works well for a SP level.Can’t say more because I’m no tilset/JCS expert.:P

Kinda tied here on the rating, but I’ll give it a 9 because I think the concept of it is original-in my opinion-and it’s well done.

At first look this tileset is super.

But the example showed what it can do.

Tiles: Very nicely made, realy fits it’s name.

Eyecandy: This is probably where there isn’t that much, but enough to make a decent lvl.

Extras: THe Bg was my fav, vert nice gives the lvl a good feel

PS: THis lvl reminds me of mirrows Easter Island tileset :P

Anyway, 8.7 out of 10 Keep up the good work.

It’s very good. Full of diamonds and I could find use for eyecandy. The only thing wrong is the backround. It’s too light. You’ve got DOWNLOAD RECOMMENDATION and a 9.2

This is one of the best tilestes I’ve seen so far… But the only thing stpping me from giving you 9.5 is the small amount of tiles in you tileset. It’s very detailed and some animations. You sure spent a lot of effort here

WOW This Is Really GREAT.

How Come You On That Perfect Idea To Make This Great Tileset ?

The Mystic Island Are Cool Jungly Tileset.

EyeCandy Are Also Great 9.2

Glowing Diamonds 6.5

Backround 7.0

Total Score 9.7

See Ya!

~Jarno

Uhhh…

Sorry but 13th Vortex was much better. I dont like this tileset at all…

First of all I want to say that when I saw the review of my tileset by Moonblaze I thought that his tilesets would be really great and that Moonblaze is really good tileset-maker because he pointed out all the things that were wrong, he was describing how the good tileset should look like and how it suppose to be done, but when I looked at this tileset I said eghhh…. What a hell is this??? (FTR) Even the textured background is ugly! All background tiles are simply made in paint I can see it. The only thing that looks kind of nice is the grass from the brown , dark ugly ground… This tileset is so small and has nothing interesting in it, no interesting eycandy, only thing are some spikes, poles, vines and some strange slopes which looks like they were made by just simply pasteing some triangles, it look bad! There are also a few rocks which are ugly too….

I must say that I tried to do an interesting level with it, but like I am saying – I TRIED! Because you cant make a good level with it, every level made with this tileset will be boring and bad… Good thing of this tileset are masks. They are almost perfect. But what can I do with good masks when graphics are so badly made like here?

Oh and I agree with Violet CLM: your tilted rocks, look really boring if you had several in a row! (really boring!!) You didnt even put any effort to seperate the small rocks from big one so it woild look better…

Final rating is 6.2 -> Bad tileset small and simply made in paint ( this tileset is like 10 hours of work for me… ) I would rate it lower but masks are done perfectly. I dont understand why this tileset had so big rating…

No download recommendation because you cant really make good levels , this tileset is useles in my opinion.

[Flame tag removal – FQuist]