RecommendedQuick Review by Stijn

Posted:
4 Feb 2024, 16:11 (edited 4 Feb 24, 16:12)
For: Cybercity
Level rating: 9.2
Rating
N/A

Nice tileset! It does a good job of capturing the modern cyberpunk aesthetic and has a lot of tiles for theming, including many animations and a couple of rabbit sprites (including Razz!). I do think the contrast between the layer 4 background and the platform tiles is a bit too low, it made it hard to see what was and wasn't solid sometimes.

RecommendedReview by Stijn

Posted:
16 Apr 2023, 22:11
For: Easter The 9th
Level rating: 8.3
Rating
8

A fun level! Nothing too revolutionary, but it does a good job of throwing new things at you often enough to stay interesting, and manages to be both not completely linear and not confusing, which is no small feat.

There are some neat ideas too, like the crate you destroy by hitting it from the bottom. One of the text signs even got a laugh out of me. Overall just a nice level that’s worth playing.

RecommendedQuick Review by Stijn

Posted:
11 Jan 2023, 01:16
For: Frogavia V2.5
Level rating: 9.1
Rating
8.5

I always enjoy playing this when it comes up during JDC events

RecommendedReview by Stijn

Posted:
3 Jan 2023, 20:03
For: Jingle Jumble
Level rating: 9.3
Rating
9.5

Super nice! This looks great and is fun to play. The non-linearity is done well, in that you don’t get lost too easily and come across the important parts of the level more or less naturally. There are some nice Christmas-themed custom events (I loved the falling Christmas balls) and there are small secrets everywhere which makes the level fun to explore. Overall it definitely has that holiday vibe and it’s nice to see that Jazz Jackrabbit games can still deliver that in 2023.

The (medium) difficulty felt just right too – you can’t just run around willy nilly, but it’s also not too challenging. There’s even a small story to the level which is nothing too special but nevertheless executed well.

This is a great level and you should play it!

RecommendedReview by Stijn

Posted:
23 Jan 2022, 20:57 (edited 23 Jan 22, 21:51)
For: Nostalgia Pack
Level rating: 8
Rating
7.5

As the description above discusses, this level pack is very much a continuation (or expansion?) of Epic’s original Jazz Jackrabbit 2 levels. Same tilesets, same music, same enemies, pickups and other gameplay elements. In a way, that is refreshing in 2022, where scripted gimmicks have become the norm. ‘Nostalgia Pack’ proves that that isn’t required for a fun single player episode; the levels in here are quite solid, and overall fun to play.

Similarly to abgrenv’s previous levels, these offer multiple paths to the finish, as levels usually aren’t completely linear but rather consist of a series of relatively open areas connected by a single tunnel or warp – the latter preventing the player from becoming lost. That is a welcome break from Epic’s style of level design, actually, and encourages exploring and discovering the many secrets hidden in the levels.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some issues with them. Notably, I got stuck twice; once in the part of the Colon level where you morph into a bird (the one way doesn’t work) and once in the first Beach level, where a tile blocked me from reaching a spring. The foreground and background layers also don’t seem to support 800×600, probably because they were simply copied from the official levels. More thorough testing might have been useful here, but apart from those issues, I fortunately didn’t encounter any major bugs.

The larger issue for me was that it all started to feel a bit stale after a couple of levels. Sure, the levels are competently made, and there are hidden gems, food and powerups to discover; but that can only obfuscate the fact that all levels follow the same formula for so long. There are no bosses to change the pace either, except for a Uterus at some point, which abgrenv didn’t even try to make interesting (and the level says as much). I would have appreciated a bit more variety in the level design; even the official levels contained many features not used here, such as smoke rings, speed blocks or potentially challenging enemies like floating suckers.

Overall, it feels like more could’ve been made of the premise. But this is still a fine level pack, and worth playing if you have some time to kill and feel like blasting through a couple of oldschool JJ2 levels again.

Edit, RE: Yes, in Beach it was the pole and spring section, as Spaz; and the issue with the bird section in Colon was that the one way simply didn’t seem to want to let me pass, so I never reached the revert morph and trigger zone.

Review by Stijn

Posted:
5 Oct 2021, 18:12
For: Sinister Winter
Level rating: 6.8
Rating
6.5

‘Sinister Winter’ is a stroll through a pretty frozen Easter landscape, full of (useless) gems and with a few puzzles to solve on your way to the boss at the end. I found it a decent experience, though it was marred a bit by a number of issues that at times prevented me from progressing.

Some of these were promptly fixed by Dragusela after I reported them, others remain. One lingering problem is that the level basically requires you to play as Spaz, but doesn’t tell you this. If you happened to select Jazz or Lori, a lot of platforming will be much more difficult and there are a couple of places where you can get stuck outright (e.g. 325×104). The level does have separate starting positions for Jazz and Spaz, so it seems like the intention was to support at least those two characters, but the rest of the level design doesn’t reflect that.

If you are playing with Spaz, the level is a decent trip, though there are a few places where it’s easy to get lost as you have to backtrack because a crate just appeared a couple of screens back because you just walked through a trigger zone. This is not signposted very well – and sometimes the trigger zone is easy to miss too because the level expects you to take a certain path, but another one is equally viable! The more straightforward parts of the level are okay, and the level overall looks quite nice, although there are also more than a few tile bugsand the music didn’t seem to fit very well (but nothing as subjective as music selection). I do wish enemy placement had been a bit more challenging – they’re not exactly difficult to avoid at the moment. It all ends with Uterus, who I found no fun to fight underwater, but I suppose that is a way to make it more challenging to beat.

Overall this is a promising new level but there are just a few too many bugs and issues to really recommend it. Another round of testing for the next effort might improve things.

RecommendedReview by Stijn

Posted:
23 Sep 2021, 20:54
For: Peoples Chimp pt 2
Level rating: 8
Rating
8

These two levels are decent fun. No fancy scripts or custom tilesets, but who needs that when you can rely on some oldschool running and gunning? The level design here is mostly ‘classic’ in style, with the twist of the levels being sort of open and non-linear, involving a good amount of back-tracking. That’s always tricky to do, and it’s easy to make a player feel lost when a level isn’t strictly a dash from the far left to the far right side of the map. Admirably, these levels mostly avoid that, somehow always nudging me in the right direction, though I will admit having to double-check every corner a few times. There are also a couple of bugs that can prevent progress, notably a rock falling in the wrong direction in the first level and a falling spring crate missing the ledge it supposedly was meant to land on in the second.

Apart from these issues, the levels are fun though not especially challenging; while the first level occasionally keeps you on your toes with its enemy placement, by the second level you’ll have stocked up on fast-fires and you can mostly just breeze through the enemies. At the end of the levels waits Bubba, who is never a particularly challenging boss. But despite not being a great challenge, the two levels on offer here are quite fun to play, and they’re worth checking out if only as rare succesful examples of levels that aren’t completely linear.

RecommendedQuick Review by Stijn

Posted:
6 Jun 2020, 00:43
For: Faded story -part 1
Level rating: 7.6
Rating
7.5

This is great and I love that it exists. There are flaws, to be sure, and Violet’s review does a good job of pointing them out. But there is a lot in here that is really creative, there is a solid story (by JJ2 standards), the levels are atmospheric, and overall it is challenging (for me) but fun to play. I’m really looking forward to episode 2.

Review by Stijn

Posted:
4 Jun 2020, 14:26
For: JJ2 Missing Tilesets Scanner
Level rating: 7
Rating
7

The tool, in a nutshell, does what it promises to do, and what it promises to do is useful. So it’s a good tool, and if you would like to ensure the integrity/completeness of your JJ2 folder, this can help you do so.

I think it could go a bit further in offering extra help and doing so would elevate this from ‘it does what it promises’ to ‘this is a really nice tool’. For example:

- Also scan the Cache folder by default, or include it as ‘Additional Folder’ automatically if available in the selected folder, since JJ2 uses that folder as well and in many cases the tileset may be in there even if it is not in the main folder.
- Allow sorting the results by tileset filename
- Perhaps add a link per missing tileset to (for example) Jazz2Online’s search so you can download the missing tileset easily
- Look in the registry to automatically fill in the Jazz Jackrabbit folder as the default setting
- When scanning multiple folders, cross-reference results, so I can see if (for example) a tileset is missing in my 1.23 folder but available in my TSF folder
- Add a button with which one can then move tilesets around so they are available in all folders that need them

Right now the tool offers the base functionality to do what I listed above manually. This is useful, but the tool could also do it for you, and that would make it even better.

Not recommendedReview by Stijn

Posted:
26 May 2020, 10:55
For: Brinko Test
Level rating: 6.1
Rating
4

Perhaps Dominator was referring to the tileset not being included in the download, because it isn’t. You should include tilesets that don’t come with the game in the zip file you submit to Jazz2Online.

This test is very generic, with the big hits – airboard maze, precise jumps, wallclimbing, RF climbing, you know the drill. It also doesn’t make much of an effort to look nice, and while it is commendable to not use a variation on Top Secret 3 yet again, this level uses Hotel Dream as if it were Top Secret 3, simply using tiles as blocks without any consideration to whether they were meant to be placed together or not. It does, curiously, seem to have a story (here it is in full: “Your Grandmother needs a medicine Go get it to her”) which is a cool twist. Unfortunately not much is done with that, though along the way you will visit a ‘hospital’ to pick up the medicine.

The description says ‘I saw everyone made a test then I said to do one too’ which is not necessarily a bad idea but to a large extent what happened is that the same test that everyone else already made was made again. There’s nothing new here (except for that minimal attempt at a ‘story’) and unless you have made it your life goal to complete every test under the sun there is no reason to play this.

Not recommendedReview by Stijn

Posted:
26 May 2020, 10:42
For: Test
Level rating: 2
Rating
2

Another generic test. Nothing distinguishes it from the gazillion other top secret 3-ish tests and this one’s pretty short to boot with only five tests, all of them seen previously in various incarnations in many many many other test levels. It also makes references to a command (!showwarps) that is presumably implemented with a server mutator, since no level script is included. The utility of uploading this to Jazz2Online is then questionable since apparently it is made to be played with a specific mutator that is not included or even mentioned by name.

Please don’t upload low-effort levels like this to Jazz2Online.

RecommendedReview by Stijn

Posted:
17 May 2020, 10:29 (edited 17 May 20, 13:26)
For: Mighty Switch Test! 2!
Level rating: 8.5
Rating
8.5

Very well done, and a breath of fresh air among the myriads of top3-based tests out there (as was the original Mighty Switch Test). This looks cool, and is original, well-made and well-explained, though it is extremely difficult, and I will readily admit I didn’t manage to get that far in it. However, the level includes a way to go to a challenge (or ‘incident’) of your choice, so even if some are too difficult you can still look around to see if others are more to your liking, which is great.

There is one thing I wish would be changed – besides the difficulty, but I assume there is a group of players for whom this test’s difficulty is merely challenging rather than frustrating. This is the animation that plays when you fail a test and need to start over. Even if it’s only a second or two, it adds up and gets a little annoying when you’re trying to get past a hard test and failing often. This is the one thing I like better in traditional tests, where you simply warp back to your starting position. Since this level is already configurable to an extent, making this another toggle would be a great QoL improvement. Apart from that though, this is a polished, clever, impressive test that you should definitely check out.

RecommendedReview by Stijn

Posted:
5 May 2020, 23:59
For: Moonrise
Level rating: 9.1
Rating
8.5

It’s a very pretty level, and plays well. The one ‘gimmick’ (if you can call it that) is the big clock tower at the centre of the level: there’s some ammo behind it and you can ‘hide’ in it. This is a little unintuitive to me, somehow it seems to make more sense for it to be solid as it usually it is in other levels. But that’s a bit of a nitpick, and easy enough to get used to. I like how there’s a lot of ammo and a few powerups too, which should enable fast-paced games in a level this small, though there are also three carrots which could be quite powerful/annoying in the hands of a defensive player. Then again, there’s not really anywhere to hide in a level of this size.

It’s funny how much of a difference the music makes – I initially played this with music off and thought it had a very nice tranquil nighttime kind of athmosphere. Then I enabled music and that went completely out of the window as the funky guitar kicked in. It’s still a nice track though, and fits the graphics too, in a different way.

All in all, a good-looking and well-made level!

Not recommendedReview by Stijn

Posted:
2 May 2020, 23:40
For: Test by me! :)
Level rating: 4.6
Rating
3.5

This is a test alright. It ticks all the boxes: Top Secret 3, ill-fitting music, test where you have to rocket climb, test where you have to jump just the right height, invisible maze, et cetera. You know, the hits. It’s not particularly offensive, but it’s also nothing we’ve not seen a thousand times, which raises the question: why would we want to see it a thousand and one times?

If you really must make another test, at least try to be a bit original: don’t just re-make the same test that everyone else has already made, but come up with something new, a new kind of puzzle or challenge. This level has none of that.

RecommendedQuick Review by Stijn

Posted:
19 Apr 2020, 02:38
For: Standard Weapon Interface
Level rating: 10
Rating
10

This is an invaluable library for scripters and the demo weapons are well-made too; they are easy and fun to play with, and now also easy to add to your own levels.

RecommendedReview by Stijn

Posted:
13 Aug 2018, 21:15 (edited 13 Aug 18, 21:32)
For: What in the blazes?
Level rating: 8
Rating
8

The temperature gimmick in this level is great and works really well – you need to stay out of the sun which necessitates some strategic movement but at the same time it’s not so unforgiving that it becomes a nuisance.

The rest of the level is a little bland, though it looks atmospheric enough. The dragonflies got a little old after a while because there are so many of them – more variety in the enemies department would’ve been an improvement. They’re also a little too easy to shoot with mouse aiming… honestly I think difficulty-wise turning it off would be better. There’s also a Bubba miniboss which was fine, and a final boss consisting of four Bilsies. Bilsy is never a good time but this version of him is passable, once you figure out you need mouse aim to kill him.

Honestly the main issue is that it’s so short – I’d have enjoyed more of this! The level feels like an intro level (minus the bosses) and I think you could build something bigger out of this that’d be even more fun.

RecommendedQuick Review by Stijn

Posted:
13 Aug 2018, 20:59
For: EmeraldusV
Level rating: 8.9
Rating
9

Excellent level and tileset. The whole thing looks beautiful and is challenging without being too difficult. The lavish eyecandy is a little confusing in the beginning but gets better after that. Most importantly, it’s a lot of fun to play and has some really good and surprising scripted features that add to the level without being a distraction.

RecommendedQuick Review by Stijn

Posted:
13 Aug 2018, 20:32
For: Psychomondus
Level rating: 8.5
Rating
7.5

Large level with lots of things to do and some interesting scripted features. What took away a lot of the fun was that enemies (some of which are quite difficult) respawn. This would be okay if it only happened after moving away but they can respawn right where you’re standing now which feels unfair. Otherwise, a fun and innovative level.

Review by Stijn

Posted:
13 Aug 2018, 20:14
For: Summer Madness
Level rating: 5.8
Rating
5.5

This is not a great level, but it has something of an early 2000s aesthetic, which I found enjoyable nonetheless. With that I mean that it feels like a level where the author was learning as they went, throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks, with things like a “candy pool” that are mostly useless but add a little flavour, or unashamedly giving you all powerups just before the final boss fight.

Those are not necessarily good choices – the boss fight is really easy with full ammo, for example, but it hits that sweet spot for me. I realize that my preferences are particular in that regard though, and from a more objective point of view the level just isn’t that good. Most enemies can be avoided by jumping over them, some obstacles (e.g. the red clouds) can similarly be avoided by simply letting yourself fall down, and there’s a scarcity of ammo in the first part of the level that is only made up just before the boss. The level looks okay but could have used a few more background layers and more varied platform shapes.

So in that sense it’s a rather mediocre level, and if you don’t have a fondness for lo-fi, retro-style levels I wouldn’t necessarily recommend playing this. But it’s clear that the author had some ideas and wasn’t afraid to experiment with them, which is great and bodes well for future levels.

RecommendedReview by Stijn

Posted:
31 Dec 2017, 13:38
For: Holiday Hare '17
Level rating: 8.8
Rating
8.7

The fact that this project was finished at all, in 2017, only a little over its deadline, is a cause for celebration – earlier collaborative projects have usually ended in difficulties or run into multi-year delays, and this was basically thought up and finished in less than two months. So, well done to the authors on that basis alone.

But is it any good? Yes, it is – the levels are fun to play, have exciting custom enemies and pickups in them and especially the later levels display some beautiful script-based visual effects as well.

That said, the quality is a little uneven, which was always going to be the case with 7 different authors and little time to forge the separate levels into one unified episode. Blackraptor’s and PurpleJazz’s levels are sprawling, scripted affairs while Jelly Jam’s, Primpy’s, Slaz’s and Shadow’s levels are more in the spirit of the Epic MegaGames school of design and consequently a little less exciting, though still mostly pretty good. Cooba’s sits in the middle of these with some light scripting to spice things up.

I think this is actually one of the strengths of the episode, as it keeps things varied, and the difficulty curve is mostly a steady climb from the early, relatively middle-of-the-road levels to the later ones that have new challenges and gameplay concepts (though Shadow’s is a return to the norm). One constant factor are the winter-themed enemies, which are mostly souped-up versions of vanilla enemies such as fencers and doggy dogs. These were great, presenting somewhat more of a challenge than their vanilla counterparts without becoming too difficult (I played on easy). Then there were the Christmas presents, a new type of crates that only break when falling on the ground. These afforded some mini-puzzles where you have to figure out how to get them to fall down, which was also a fun diversion. And there’s also the boss fight at the end – I personally never really care for boss fights, but this one seems well done and wasn’t as unfairly hard as custom bosses often are.

One recurring problem is a lack of signposting. The most egregious example is probably the already infamous tunnel in Blackraptor’s level, which was unclear enough that it necessitated a step-by-step guide (see PJ’s comment). But Slaz’s level also had some annoyingly hidden warps. This kind of problem is often solved by playtesters identifying the issue, something there was probably no time for in this case. So it’s an understandable issue, but annoying nonetheless, and I had to skip part of Blackraptor’s level because I just couldn’t figure out how to continue.

So all in all, this is a varied, enjoyable episode that’s slightly hampered by its lack of testing, but a lot of fun to play anyway. Without discussing every level in detail, I can say that there’s something in here for everyone – even if you don’t enjoy single player usually, you’ll enjoy checking out the new concepts and enemies this episode brings to the table. So click that download button, you won’t regret it.

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