Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

I don’t really see the point in this. This is supposed to be a dance? All I see is jazz hopping and ducking. The motion isn’t that fluent and there’s no music. It’s not even funny. I don’t see the point in this at all. I don’t really know what else to say. I give this a 2 for the effort and no download recommended.

BORED – I dunno why but I just felt like reviewing this.

EYECANDY

The eyecandy in these levels is just great. No tilebugs and great backgrounds. The lighting used in the cave part of the first level looked cool. The leaves in Level 2 look OK but they do move a bit slow.

7/10

GAMEPLAY

While these levels have excellent eyecandy, the gameplay is poor. Levels are too short. Level 1 took me about 20 seconds to finish and Level 2 is just a Boss level which took me about 40-50 seconds to complete.

1/10

PICKUP PLACEMENT

There’s some food but not very much. There’s Gems and Carrots but these are pointless in a level which lasts about 20 seconds. Placement is good but Carrots aren’t really needed in such a short level.

2.5/10

ENEMY PLACEMENT

Placement of enemies is good but there are just too few to kill me and as the levels are short it’s hard to get killed.

2/10

OBSTACLE PLACEMENT

Not many obstacles. There’s 4 Destruct Scenery blocks but that’s just about it.

1.3/10

OVERALL SCORE = 13.8/50 (2.76)
ROUNDED TO 2.8

RANK: F – Bad

DOWNLOAD?

While this pack does have excellent eyecandy, it’s let down by the poor gameplay. So, it’s no DR, sorry.

Well, very quick review…

EYECANDY:
The eyecnady was OK. There weren’t many bugs in the backround. Infact, more layers were used and the backround didn’t look too bad. The sprite layer however, could use some improving. There were quite a few bugs, especially near the end. Also, use foreground layers and maybe a different tileset. Standard JJ2 ones get a bit old.
EYECANDY RATING: 4.6

GAMEPLAY:
The gameplay was fustraiting. The fake floors were a VERY annoying puzzle and so were the hidden warps. There was only one type of enemies, which was rediculous because more types of enemies provide more of a challenge. The level was very short, so there weren’t enough challenges and obstacles. The fake floors applied with secrets aswell, so that made it even less of a challenge. Good stuff should be hidden.
GAMEPLAY RATING: 2.5

AVERAGE RATING: 3.5
RANK: 3 Very Bad
DOWNLOAD: Unless you want a very short, unsecret and fustraiting level, then yes. Otherwise, no.

Before I begin the review, I would like to point out that this is TSF NOT 1.23. It wouldn’t work on mine. Please fix the version. There is now a V2 of this level included but it’s still not as good.

EYECANDY

There isn’t really anything that special. The backgrounds are good but the eyecandy in Layer 4 does look a bit too repetitive. All I could see most of the time was those Red Bricks.

5/10

GAMEPLAY

Gameplay was OK but the level was a bit too short. The false floors were interesting but these might get a bit frustrating after a while.
The level has been made slightly longer. There is now a new area with lots of Turtles & Sparks to get through but it still wasn’t challenging enough.
A race level is also included but it’s just the same level with no enemies and all the items are still there.

5.2/10

ENEMY PLACEMENT

Sparks were used in this level. There were far too many of them to be found here. I was at 1 Heart Health most of the time. Some were badly placed, in one area there were 4 placed above a Blue Spring which is not good as the player will end bouncing into them. There were less Sparks in V2 this time.

4/10

PICKUP PLACEMENT

At the start there was a Box of Seeker Ammo, DON’T place these too early in the level as it can make it far too easy. There were some Coins but these were a bit useless as I didn’t see any Bonus Warps. There were too many Blue Gems placed in one area, about 15. Placement is not bad but there are too many Gems to pick up. I also thought that there wasn’t enough Carrots here. The amount of Blue Gems has now been reduced to 4 but there’s still a bit too many weapons.

4.5/10

OBSTACLE PLACEMENT

Apart from the false floors I mentioned earlier there was a Warp to find to progress through the level and some test at the top of the level where you had to avoid touching the red bricks. However, these puzzles were still a bit easy. There wasn’t any Trigger or Destruct scenery here either. So, there wasn’t really many obstacles here.

3/10

OVERALL SCORE = 21.7/50 (4.34)
ROUNDED TO 4.3

RANK: F – Bad

DOWNLOAD?

No. There are too many enemies and items and not enough obstacles. You can use it as a Race map but only if you remove the Sparks, as having enemies in Multiplayer is bad.
It is better than Diamond Cave but still not much. I hope V2 of DCave will be better than the previous version.

It`s really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really cool.

Boo!! You could make better.

Sub-terrestrial

A battle level by Pj. This level impressed me very much when Ds first hosted it online. I was quite surpirsed when it had the look of an underground jungle. And I’m giving Pj some bonus points for being creative with the backround and the setting.

Gameplay The gameplay is quite average and it isn’t at it’s best. It could be improved quite alot and some of the springs are hard to get to. I also hate the spring placement for the seek pu. I’d like to make a note, that when you warp at the shield, your not pulled down. So you can just camp there all day and get an extra deley of time for the shield so the sucker tubes don’t help at all.He’s fixed the shield bug, thank god. So +0.5 for that.
7.5/10

Eyecandy The eyecandy in this level is a bit creative so it’s not average. It’s quite good actully. I like the idea of adding extra ec to the trees and putting ec on top of ec on the brancy green stuff. Nice job being creative at the bottom of the level by adding some extra ec stuff. Nice job keeping to that idea >P.
8.5/10

Weapon/carrot placement The weapon placement isn’t much to say about other than it’s pretty even. It can be a bit challenging getting the toaster pu for unexperienced players who haven’t learned the bouncy trick. The carrot placement is fine, and im releaved that you took one of the carrots away. When Ds hosted the level it had 4 carrots.(to much)So im glad you did that.
8.5/10

Score: 7.5+8.5+8.5= 8.2

Download recommendation:

Maybe host it a few times for fun. I can tell though that this will be a common battle level. Not sure why.
Yes.

~HïTçH

I feel no need to write a formal review so I’ll just state my thoughts.

This is the first of one of the great impacts this year has to offer. This is definitely a revolutionary piece of work for this community. I don’t think any other platformer has a story quite like this besides the other two episodes. This episode seems to have more characterization than the last two, which ofcourse adds to the aspect of caring about them. Not to say the storyline is driven by dialouge, and some of it seems unrealisitic in a few situations.

I don’t really care if the ‘eyecandy’ or whatever you may call it is bland. I think it fits well within the storyline and atmosphere and thus a more ‘spectacle’ look would not fit quite as well.

Oh yeah, I personally think the briefing scenes would’ve probably benefitted without music playing as I feel there’s more atmosphere without.

I have uploaded a fix to the problem with levels cycling. If you don’t want to redownload, just jjnxt if it happens.

I’ll post a full review here later but I wanted to let give people a warning.

Do NOT play this with a hacked jazz2.exe. When I first played this I ran into numerous errors (no errors occur in multiplayer). You should play with the original 1.23 without any modifications to be safe.

Otherwise Mike maintains his high standards with this pack and this will not disappoint. Download immediately.

I would like to report, that for some weird reason ‘Mission Briefing 4’ loops to itself after shooting “exit”, for me at least. I tried using ‘jjnext’ there and it helped.

???

Maybe with some music, it would be quite good, but so far, this isn’t.

The third installment in EvilMike’s series of level packs comes with a well-understood precedent of quality and innovation. If you haven’t played Invasion of Deserto or Rebirth of Evil yet, you really should before playing this, however it’s not very necessary. The plot continues but you can pick up this installment fresh and have little trouble understanding anything. This is especially good because this pack is very heavily story based. The main bulk of the levels are, in fact. However, the narration has several different methods through which it is conveyed, so it doesn’t get monotonous.

The main theme of the pack is a sort of militarized space. The levels are designed logically and yet remain very versatile and organic. There’s only one level that uses a more organic feel, but even that has a twist.

As I stated, the bulk of the individual levels are for story purposes. The ones with more regular gameplay are quite excellent, however. They are chock full with all the necessary elements for a good level to remain fun and entertaining. Enemies, puzzles, and platform obstacles are well placed and paced. Ammo and goodies are usually well placed as well. Although there are several levels that are substantially large, the annoying memory bug that doesn’t let you save your game is usually moot.

This pack is a bit of a challenge. I played it once on Normal and once on Easy, and both of them were tricky in some places. That’s how a good level should be though. I never tried Hard mode but I can imagine it must be quite a challenge.

Although some may argue that the previous packs were better for this or that reason, this is still a welcome addition to the ongoing saga. Lots of innovation and creative story telling. I can remember playing and wondering why Epic couldn’t harness the full potential jj2 has to offer.

The eyecandy can be a little drab sometimes, but as I said, it has a space sort of theme. There’s not a huge amount of room for extra details in that sort of environment.

The music choice is rather flawless although some songs can get old quickly in large levels. I usually prefer to keep sound off during jj2, but the music added well so I kept it on.

In summary, this is an excellent download that I recommend. Play the the first two releases in the series first if you can. It has some minor flaws, but over all the quality is very good and the work shows. And it’s all backed up by a good storyline.

What the heck…

7.5?

Look at the masking. This was probley copied from the video game. This does NOT deserver a 7.5.

More like a 5.2 or something in my opinion.

Hmm… I’ll just add some funky tec music and we can go to MTV ;)

Nice job! I have to say that the tileset looks really hard to use, but yeah, you can get a great end result with it.

The graphics are ripped from the game, (as far as I can tell) but it manages to look like it has some sort of order, which is good (especially when dealing with these angles). I think that must have been pretty hard.

Overall, a good tileset, but you should only get it if you’re willing to take the time to get things right.

Good job!

(NOTE: You should rename the level so JJ2 can understand it.)

You must be really bored? right?

hmm…Not so good :/

Easy to make, but the idea is good!

You don’t need to include all 3 tilesets, just use the necessary one

what i dont understand is why there are 3 tilesets and only 1 lvl?