Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Egypt Space is so called because it uses music that sounds Egyptian. Sort of. It uses the Mez01 tileset, which is probably where the Space came from. Not the best way to name your level, but it works, at least.

It’s hard to be original with the Mez tileset nowadays, but this at least tries. Layer 4 is mainly made up of the blocks and plastic tubing, while layers 3 and 5 are made up of the pipes. Yes, on top of each other. They’re transparent, though, which gives it a weird effect. It’s dotted with flick lights and fire ambients too. Layer 8 is standard parallaxing clouds, and there’s some stars and stuff. The tileset doesn’t provide explicit layer eyecandy, but you could at leasy use your imagination.

The layout is very empty, and placey. Most of the action takes place around the borders, linked together by layer 5 pipes. There’s big empty spaces in the middle where you can just fall. These sort of levels happen when an author has one idea after another, and puts them together. This looks very patchy. But what is there isn’t bad, you can get around most of it nice and easy.

There were four carrots in this level, two of which need warps to get to – I thought this was a bit much. Weapon placement also seemed a bit bunched-up in places, where there’s lots of it in one place. There’s three powerups – Toaster, Bounce and Blaster – which need 20 coins to access all three of them. This might give players too much of an advantage.

The music was FlyingIndian.xm. Use your head.

Download recommendation, I’m not sure if others will like it. It’s not a bad effort, though.

You should really reupload stuff.

I’ve never been so keen on the C5 cartoon toy moo tileset, but this level does quite a good job of using it how it was meant to be used. I’m not sure what or where the level is, it’s some sort of hill with toys on. There’s some messages you might find funny in an unfunny way.

The level uses the tileset how it should be used, and offers nothing new. But it does a good job of what it does. (This is very confusing, isn’t it?) There’s some hills in the background, with some… clouds, and occasionally a flying thing goes past. Woot. So not a bad job here.

I didn’t like the layout much. It’s quite a small battle, and it’s sometimes hard to get around it. You’re forced to jump in too many places for a level this size. I got stuck in the tube thing near the right, which I thought moved a bit slow by the way.

Ammo was pretty scarce in this level, but there were two powerups of Bouncers and RFs. Toaster powerup is quite hidden. This may be a bit much for such a small level. There was one carrot, easy to find, and another one hidden ish.

Music… fits. Just as weird as the rest.

Overall, it’s put good use of the tileset, but is let down by slightly laggy gameplay. No download recommendation.

I’ve never found Inferno the easiest tileset to use, and this doesn’t help. The ground has been recoloured a reddish shade, and the rocks yellow. It’s been pallete-shifted a bit darker, and snow works, which is always a good thing.

There’s 110 tiles of new stuff, but it’s all taken up in blocky credits and a textured background. And some blank space. There could’ve been some rain, some extra background or ‘cave’ eyecandy, to name a few things.

There’s a few mask bugs, some of it is the same as the normal tiles, others have lines on the top and left side, sometimes in layer 4 tiles. It doesn’t really affect it a lot, but it’s annyoing still.

The example level puts it to good use, I like the falling down hills idea. It’s from a forthcoming pack, which sounds like a plug to me :P

Download not recommended, there’s not enough changes to warrant one, perhaps if you were planning to use Inferno. But only that.

How informative, Snooz.

This level is actually not that bad, it’s just let down by a few minor stuff. Things. Yeah.

The whole level is symmetrical. This can or can not be a good thing, but here it works out alright. The design is good enough, you can get around the level easily enough, but the flow could be improved – there were a few platforms placed just to be annoying.
The eyecandy is good – it uses the default Damm backgrounds and music. I liked the way the black tiles were used as a ‘background’ to make it a bit less repetitive. Good on the whole, though.
The weapon placement, however, drops the level down a bit. There’s a lot of ammo pickups, placed in clever enough places. However, there’s a lot of fastfires, but everything has a respawn time of 7 seconds, so getting a full fastfire is easier done than said. Having a full fastfire is powerful, the player needs to earn it. There weren’t any powerups either.

On the whole, not a bad level. Download it if you want, although there’s better out there.[This review has been edited by Shen]

Yuh, me too. This is very nice for your first level. The eye-candy all works, you seem to have got the hang of the layers. Different tiles are used, ridding the grid effect. You could make layers 6 and 7 move a bit slower, though.
The weapons placement is a bit of a letdown, though – spread them out, don’t clutter them up in various places. Don’t use the Ice powerup, it’s seldom used anyway.
The gameplay is good, and the flow is nice. It’s easy enough to get around the level. I didn’t hear any music, though.

Download recommendation? Yes, this is worth a look. Host it once or twice maybe.

Firstly, congratulations on not making this warez. It’s one of the least warezziest levels I’ve ever seen. Well done.

Race levels are seldom made, and for a reason. Most people find races unexciting compared to Battle and CTF. Also, there’s a lack of good race levels. This one adds to the junk pile.
Violet is right, all you need to do is put Caps Lock on and hold right. You’ll run fast enough to avoid most of the obstacles, jump over a pit, miss some spikes, and lose a heart on the warp.
The bees take up most of this level. The kind that kills you in races. Not great. There’s a lot of them, most people wouldn’t be bothered to shoot any. All you do is run right until you warp, such speedloops like this aren’t amazing for races.

I hope you’re not expecting good eyecandy now. This uses Diamondus, and all of the tiles are the same. They all fit together perfectly, but this offers nothing new, it’s just boring. There’s even two tiles missing from the big pit that could be a warp, but no, it’s just two tiles missing.

To improve: Add some eyecandy tiles, a few less bees, and make it less linear. Bend the track about a bit. Don’t use Hurt events, warp the player back to the start. No download recommendation.

Thanks for the review Mr Player :P

I tried using a warp to get back to the start, but it just warps to wherever the last Limit X Scroll was touched. If you go up the sucker tube, you meet some Spike Bolls which reduce your health until you restart back at the start (It was the only way I could get round the scrolling) By which time the gems should’ve regenerated for you again.
Also, I would’ve made it bigger, but thought it would’ve gotten slightly too repetitive so I left it the size it was.
Thanks for the review though, I’ll try to act on what you said :)

YaY, another CTF. This one’s by CelL and uses the Wasteland tileset by Blade.

Design: 7.5
This level is very well designed, and looks as if it has been planned out beforehand. It basically consists of a large metal ‘hull’, if I may call it that, around the outside, with an open bottom guarded by Area Float Ups. There are four metal platforms ‘floating’ in the level, with ammo and springs to reach the higher platforms. There are also two big pointy things poking out of the sides, where the bases are. Finally, there’s a long horizontal platform or two along the bottom with warps back up to the higher platforms.
This level looks complicated at first (the vast amounts of eye-candy don’t help much here) but once you’ve had a good bounce around in it you can navigate it fairly easily. However, with this you can run from base to base in about fifteen to twenty seconds sometimes, with not many obstructions along the way. It’s also seems very horizontal as well, as you don’t need much travelling up or down to get from base to base. But it plays how I think it’s meant to.

Placement of stuff: 8.5
There’s a lot of ammo almost everywhere – it’s hard to run out of it in this level. You can also see that each ‘platform’ has its own type of ammo – there’s seekers at the top, and bouncers along the bottom, for example. The one thing I found sort of annoying was that it’s mainly placed in 1×1 blocks of the stuff – ie one tile at a time – so you can’t really be running along and getting lots of it at a time, instead you have to walk along the platforms and do precise jumps whenever you see some.
There’s one power-up in the level: it’s for the Seekers and is located in the middle up at the top. You come across it many times in the level, mainly by warping to it after dropping down or by jumping past the platform it’s on. This is OK as Seekers can often be wasted easily ;) but some players could use the seekers too often. Another hidden powerup somewhere else would be a nice addition – the level’s big enough for one!

Eye-candy: 9.0
Whooooooa, there’s a lot of this. The author has used the background tiles from the tileset to great effect. It’s all Layer 4 eye-candy, but the tileset supports this and it doesn’t really matter. At first it can be hard to distinguish between the foreground tiles and the background tiles, but you can soon overcome this. The foreground tiles are also well presented, they don’t have some sort of grid on them or anything.
The background layers are pretty good – there’s two layers of horizontally scrolling metal and pipes and stuff going in different directions to each other. This isn’t exactly a new effect, but it comes out tops. If you look in JCS (hee hee, aren’t I evil) you can see there’s some parallaxing Layer 8 in there as well – you don’t really notice this ingame but it’s a nice touch :)

Music: 9.5
Good choice of music, in my opinion it suits the level well. It’s at the right pace, and is at the same ‘speed’ as the background layers. You also don’t keep humming it for hours on end afterwards.

Originality: 6.0
There’s nothing new about the concept – grab the flag and return it to your base before your flag is stolen – but the tileset has been used in various new ways, which especially shows in the background metal eye-candy. Overall, there’s nothing really new except various new uses of the tileset. It’s good to see tilesets being used in more, interesting ways, though :)

Lastability: 5.0
Lastability isn’t too great, sadly. You’ll spend some time happily bouncing around getting the feel of the level and finding some secrets and getting all the ammo, but afterwards you’ll find that it’s quite easy to travel from base to base and you could end up getting bored quite easily. You could host this a few times, but you’ll get tired of this easily.

Overall: 8.5
Overall, BlueCore CTF isn’t a bad level. It’s fairly large, but you can find your way about too easily after quite a bit of playing and then it can get boring fairly easily. It’s worth a download and is great for some online servers, but only for a bit. Well done, CelL :)

Oh, and I got a new review system =D[This review has been edited by Shen]

This looks and plays like a good CTF level. However, it’s just a bit…small. You find yourself in the same area over and over again, and it can get pretty crowded in some games.

Anyway. The eye-candy is on the whole good, I couldn’t find anything wrong with it in there. You don’t see much of the background layers, but it’s the standard fare and is done well. There are also some nice details with wooden poles and plants growing. Good job.

Apart from its size, this is a fairly good CTF level. However, it’s only fairly good. It could’ve been a lot bigger, maybe with a secret or coin warp. Currently the ammo placement is fine, but there’s two powerups (bouncy and seekers) out in the open there, which could be a bit much for such a small level.

Overall, this isn’t really anything special. There’s nothing wrong with it – the wall bug isn’t there, the eye-candy is fine, the ammo can be accessed easily enough – but the main gripe I have with it is that it isn’t big enough. Good job with your first CTF level though :)[This review has been edited by Shen]

Great idea and well pulled off :) I don’t play CTF much but it’s bound to help some people. Besides, I hate colours in names anyway :P

These levels are very what I like to call ‘patchy’. They’re on the whole good, but have distinct ‘areas’ to them – the enemies are al bunched up together, and a lot of stuff is in the same place. This happens when the author thinks up a lot of good ideas one after another, then encorperates them into the level.

Anyway, on to the ratings and stuff. The eyecandy isn’t bad, the backgrounds have (I think) been taken from the single player episodes and so work fine. I couldn’t spot any glitches in the foreground eyecandy, but there’s nothing overly special about it. It works though, so I can’t complain.I can’t really say much about the level design – it’s hard not to notice the patchyness of it. It’s also got some annoyingly hard bits, such as the big spike pit which is almost impossible not to hurt yourself on, and the dragon climbing platform bit.

There wasn’t any weapons as far as I can see, except for some bouncy bullets and a powerup. And they were well hidden. You need to use the Blaster to get through most of this. There’s also hardly any fruit, only apples, and these are all bunched together.

So, overall…not really worth a download. it’s too patchy and samey, and offers nothing new, really. Try to plan your levels out first, then add the extra stuff in afterwards, as then it looks more varied and not so patchy.[This review has been edited by Shen]

Song14 reminds me of Queen of Board :|

Anyway. This level is fairly good – it has a lot of stuff in it. There’s water with weird platforms in, some powerups, and a loada poles. Actually, there’s too many poles – it can be hard to move around in some places because of them.

The eye-candy – well, there’s nothing wrong with it in most places. However some tiles did look a bit wrong or placed where they shouldn’t be. There’s one layer of background scenery which is smaller versions of the tiles in the level, and the water has been placed wrong.

The ammo placement isn’t good – there’s one massive area with about 70 flamethrower pickups all bunched together. In fact, all the level does seem a little ‘bunched’ – there’s basically rooms for most things and it can be hard to get around sometimes. Also, you need to use Spaz to get around most of the level, as Jazz’s high jump can’t reach some of the platforms.

This isn’t really worth a download… there’s a lot of bugs and some scenery misplacement in some places. Also the ammo needs to be dispersed a bit more as it’s all grouped up in one place. Just above average, really.

This is… ok. It’s a pretty big battle level using Mez03, with lots of ammo and powerups.

The eye-candy is on the whole just average – some bits of the green platform thing were misplaced, and you could’ve added some more scenery to the walls instead of just bunging it all in one place.

This is a big level, but there’s some evidence of stuff being grouped together, as though the author thinks of good ideas one at a time, so lots of scenery looks the same in one area then different in the next. This level also has a lot of warps, sometimes just for warping about 2 tiles past a big column thing in the way. This makes it feel a little bit constricted.

Ammo placement is OK, there’s lots of it and some powerups as well. However, as it’s big, you can generally collect all you can then try to find some random enemy, then spend time finding all your ammo again.

Background scenery – well, there’s some background there, but it could be improved upon by adding another layer to it. This level looks a bit ‘flat’.

This isn’t particularly bad, but it has some flaws in it. Worth a download, but there’s better out there.

Heh… a Christmas tileset. And not a bad one at that :) like his Compotition entry with more.

This is a great tileset. The tiles are simple, but look great. It’s got everything a Christmas tileset should have: christmas trees, dressed-up snowmen… ‘Jesus was here’ text… plus all the types of destructable scenery, sucker tubes and vines… Yeah. It’s basically snowy mountains with some christmas stuff in.

The eye-candy is good. For example, in the mountains at the background you can see trees growing alone and in forests. Also, there are three types of layer 8 parallax backgrounds – a red one, and a blue and white ones that don’t work too well. There’s layer 7 and 6 stuff as well, and even rain for layer 1 if you need it. Some other stuff includes letters and numbers, a raising green thing, bulbs and lights and stuff, and coloured zones.

The example level is weird. It’s a battle, with two basic ‘zones’, left and right. Still, it shows what you can do with the tileset, and other than its ‘weirdness’ (I can’t think of any other way to describe it) it’s fine.

Overall it gets a 9/10. Download recommendation? Yep :)

Edit: Forgot to rate it. Aren’t I silly.[This review has been edited by Shen]

Trafton has covered most of the points here (as usual :P)…

The background is pretty good. It would be nice if you could mix and match the background tiles to make some sort of spaceship or something.
The foreground part of the tileset is mainly ice, with it being Frozen Planet and stuff. The ice actually looks quite nice – there are floor and wall tiles, and corner tiles. I was slightly annoyed by the lack of the inside corner tiles to make rooms with.

I know you said not to say that it needs this or that… but maybe that’s why all the reviews have been so short. There is a complete lack of anything except the foreground ice tiles. Add some more stuff. You’re getting there, what’s in the tileset already is good and it has great potential – but it just needs some more stuff.

Also the example level is weird – you can drop to the bottom easily, and there’s a load of little bits of level floating around the place. This needs work.

Overall it gets a 2 and no download recommendation…yet. Keep at it.

It is clear that Agama puts a lot of work into his tilesets, and Sirius is no exception. Sirius is composed of three tilesets, Dimensions1-3, each with a different colour scheme. They come in blue-gold, pink-light blue, and green-blue flavour my personal favourite is the blue-gold one, the others seem to hurt my eyes). There is also an example level, which illustrates the tileset’s many uses to the full.

Graphics: 9.5/10
In Sirius, you walk along a series of pipes (gold, pink or green) with stars as more solid scenery. The pipes can slope up and down, with tiles for each. These pipes have variations, with kinks and scratches in them. There are also T and + junctions for the pipes, but with the stars as denser scenery there are a lot of junctions and it can be difficult to find what you want. There is an 8×8 parallax background, and some layer 6 and 7 tiles if you put your mind to what you want. There are also pipes to walk through, diamond ‘backgrounds’ (light and dark versions), and more. The one problem is that the stars have gaps in and you can see through them, making it hard to conceal secrets in the walls. However, there are a lot of tiles (about 700!) and they all look beautiful, so graphics get a high mark.

Ease of use: 6/10
I actually found this tileset quite hard to use. Maybe it was because of the number of tiles (there are a lot) but most of the time I couldn’t find the tile I wanted. In most cases it was hidden among a group of similar-looking tiles, in other cases it wasn’t in the tileset at all. For example, there’s a pipe sloping at about 30 degrees to the left, and a similar one with stars underneath it. There isn’t any sloping to the right, and if you flip it the stars are also flipped which looks weird if you’re using non-flipped stars around it. Also, the user is forced to use some layer 5 to achieve some tiles, such as pipes ending in stars. Finally, there are tiles for layers 6 and 7, but they’re hard to find and could just as easily be part of the sprite layer. I use the diamond backgrounds for layer 6 and the blue linking boxes for layer 7. Make the backgrounds semitransparent for some cooler eye-candy (and so they aren’t confused with backgrounds from the sprite layers) On a lighter note, the animations were easy to find and follow and looked great.

Example level: 9/10
Sirius comes with an example level and music, as an example to what it can achieve. The music suits the level, with a space-y theme. The level itself is a single player level, with enemies and some secrets. It is well designed – it uses all the tiles in the tileset to the max. There are some instances where the stars have been flipped, but as there’s no other way around this I’ll let it off. The only other niggle I had with the tileset was near the end there was a big flashing blue thing. This really slowed down Jazz 2, and stars could’ve been better for the job. Also it was quite short, but it’s an example level, who cares?

Overall: 8.5/10
This is a beautiful level – the pipes and stuff are very well done, and the stars are a nice idea. This had great potential, but I found it quite hard to use with some tiles hidden or not there. Download recommendation? Yes. It’s a good tileset, but use it if you fancy a challenge![This review has been edited by Shen]

Higher Fragging Rate uses DethMan’s 7th Lava Fall tileset, and in my opinion it makes good use of it. It’s meant to be industrial, in a factory of some sort – it has a vertical scrolling background looking like some sort of elevator with the city buildings behind it. The eyecandy was great, and I didn’t see any out-of-place tiles or anything – it was all there. However, some more variation would’ve been nice.

The level is based on battle1 and reminds you a lot of it. You have to get to a warp or fall to get most of the ammo, and what ammo there is in the main building you have to jump to get. The main area is fairly linear – you fall down a tube thing at first, then take one of two routes to get down to the bottom right hand corner to get to a warp that places you back at the start again. There is another area off the main area connected by a sucker tube which isn’t hard to find, which houses some more ammo and powerups. However I found it sometimes hard to move around or see where I was going.

The music is good and suits the level well, with a metallically factory apocalypsey type theme. This level has tried to be strategic but hasn’t quite reached it yet – the level was linear with you always having to go back to the same areas, and the ammo was good but scarce. I don’t think this will cause a higher fragging rate; it does have some enclosed areas (i.e. when you’re falling). But this is still a good level, with lots of good points, and could make a fun battle :)

I actually thought this was a battle level as well, if a slightly original one. I didn’t really understand the layout of the level, so I’ll do my bestest to review it.

It makes good use of Disguise’s Spacey Universe tileset, and I haven’t seen any glitches or bad corners. However, I didn’t see much attention to detail – there was just a few craters on the blue zone, and some overuse of the credits. Also, some of the tiles could have been used, but weren’t. Other than this, I found it a little boring – for example the Level 8 has no auto movement, and there’s no other background layers that I’ve found. I know there’s not many background tiles in the tileset, but if that happens take some tessalating ones and make them transparent. Also, in the ‘enclosed’ areas on futuristic levels, make the background semitransparent to make a part-see through wall so the parralaxing background shows through. Looks pretty :)

The idea was good and original, but also could’ve been better. I didn’t start off with a powerup very often either, and there wasn’t much ammo in the green room, so if you don’t like the Blaster you won’t do so well when you run out of ammo. I also found the room changint thing quite weird – you could find your way into all the rooms again apart from the rocky planet one. In the blue zone, there were a few springs that got in the way and a blaster powerup that I couldn’t work out how to reach because of an oddly-placed warp. Also, I’m not so keen on enclosed areas with lots of blocks in them, like the big green room in this level. It’s hard to attack someone, with all those blocks and stuff in the way. Finally, I couldn’t find any layer 3 usage or secrets to find. It got a bit boring, eventually.

This level has lots of potential. It was fun at first, but I eventually got bored of it and started writing this. You could’ve added some more stuff in it, like tubes or belts or secret areas, and spiffed up the other layers a bit. As it is now you’ll just wander around aimlessly looking for anyone to shoot at, in a big green room. It’s not the best, but if you spruce it up a bit you may have a good, fun level to play :)

Sadly, I didn’t enjoy this level much. I agree with Violet CLM, it’s meant to be realistic, but it’s also meant to be a race – you don’t really have much time to view the lovely animals.

The layout of this level is also annoying. It’s a straightforward race, from one end of the level to the other, with various obstacles and going underwater along the way. What I found most annoying was the bit at the start, where you go along some lilies to get some bouncy-bullet ammo, then realise you have to go all the way back again because you missed an entrance.

Also, I found some of the scenery quite annoying. I found it hard to distinguish between the layers, the trees all look sort of the same. I often ran into a tree not knowing it was there, wondering what the hell is going on.

The choice of ammo is weird – mainly bouncy-bullet ammo (I use TNT and ice for my races) – and is placed in places that you have to divert off the main course to get, and you won’t use them much.

I also had a bit of difficulty at the end – I wondered what those birds were for, and couldn’t find the exit warp, then tried jumping on some Layer 5 tiles in vain. I wouldn’t use this level much, it’s far too annoying.

I would have advised you about the hurts, but I was beaten to it.

I know this is your first level, but: always do a check on it and make sure everything seems smooth. The corner tiles aren’t used in some places, and the same tiles are used next to each other too often, it looks too computergamey.

You fight in a series of ‘rooms’ as well – not good. It’s better to have wider, open areas, so everyone can know where they are and get to somewhere else knowingly without using tubes or loops. I couldn’t see where the tubes ended, and had to take random tubes and warps to get somewhere I’d already been before.

There’s a bonus area, but there’s loads of coins, making it easy to get to – make the coins hidden for a bigger challenge.

Practice using the Labrat tileset, and you’ll learn how to use it better. I wouldn’t use this, sorry.