Review: The Library / Banana Beach

Author: Kejero
Year: 2000
Genre: Single Player
Filename: LIBRARY..j2l / coast demo.j2l
Download: THE LIBRARY, Banana Beach Demo

Kejero is mostly known for two things: Tomb Rabbit, and Tomb Rabbit 2. The first of these is arguably the most popular JJ2 episode of all time. The second was an attempted sequel, that was released recently in an unfinished state but is still very good. In the future I intend to review both of these episodes.

What a lot of people don't know is that Kejero also worked on a third episode, one that has to this day never seen the light of day. The two levels I am covering in this post, The Library and Banana Beach, are the only levels from this unnamed project that were ever released. Both of them constitute the first two uploads that Kejero made to jazz2online.com, and were intended to serve as a demo to the episode he was working on. While they were uploaded separately, they were still part of one big project, and so I have decided to review both of them with one post.

If you have played Kejero's other levels, you will know that he has a fairly distinct style. His levels tend to have a large puzzle element, with a lot of secret areas and places where you will have to stop and think about how to get past an obstacle. Often these puzzles involve triggers, using them in a fairly novel way. Tomb Rabbit has a lot of this, and Tomb Rabbit 2 has this sort of thing being an integral part of every level. Another thing that Kejero is generally known for is his use of custom-made tilesets. As far as I know, all of his levels, including the two I am reviewing here, use tilesets that he made himself. Finally, his levels tend to be very hard. One reason is a lack of carrots and an abundance of enemies, but another reason is that the enemies usually regenerate.

The first of these levels, The Library, is definitely the lesser of the two. The biggest problem is that the tileset isn't very good. The colours in it are far too bright, and this causes the overall look of the level to be rather crude. The author admits this in the readme file, explaining that he made the tileset in MS paint. I would guess that this is one of his earliest levels ever, as well as one of his earliest tilesets, probably being made at least a year before it was actually uploaded. His later work tends to be much more polished than this.

Looking past the ugliness of the tileset, The Library is a fairly decent level. It certainly doesn't have the originality of some of Kejero's later levels, but it is still well-designed and has a few areas with unique gameplay. It never gets boring, and there are plenty of secret areas everywhere to keep you from wanting to just tear through the level as fast as you can. Really, the only serious problem with this level is that it has one area where the lighting becomes almost pitch black, forcing you to either blindly run through and get hurt a lot, or move excruciatingly slowly so you kill everything in front of you. Luckily, this section of the level is short, and it is very much possible to get through it without being hurt.

Banana Beach is a much better level. For one thing, the tileset is pretty good, containing a lot of fun details that aren't found in other tilesets, like pier things that stick up out of the water, and beached jellyfish that hurt you if you step on them. One thing I like about it in particular is the background. At first it seems to be a simple view of the ocean stretching to the horizon, but if you pay attention you'll notice that there are actually boats sailing across the screen.

The level also has a lot of stuff that is quite illustrative of Kejero's style, in a way much more obvious than in The Library, like an emphasis on puzzles and a higher than average difficulty. Triggers are extremely integral to this level, and one area has you navigating a sort of maze with at least ten crates in it that open up the path to the next area. It's good when levels do this (in moderation, of course): it makes it so you can't get through them by relying on reflex alone. Play some of the official JJ2 single player levels and you'll see what I mean. You can beat a lot of them with barely any thought put into it at all, especially if you are good at the game.

Still, it's not perfect. Banana Beach is very good up until a point near the end, where the path forks. You are given the choice to either take a route with a heavy puzzle emphasis, or take a route with a heavy combat emphasis. The problem is neither route is very good. The puzzle route is simply too hard (a lot of stupid memorization stuff), and you will most likely fail it, getting automatically dumped into the fighting route. And the fighting route is bad because instead of trying to give a challenge via clever enemy placement or level design, it just has a huge number of enemies. The best thing to do in this section is try to get a sugar rush, and when you do, run as fast as you can, making sure not to miss any trigger crates. I thought this section felt pretty lazy, and it really detracts from the rest of the level.

One problem that both of these levels have is that it is possible, in some areas, to get dumped into an earlier section of the level. This can happen through warps or it can happen through falling off a ledge. When this happens your only choice is to trek through the entire level all over again to get back to where you were. And since enemies regenerate, this basically amounts to playing the whole thing over again. It's really annoying when levels do this sort of thing. Backtracking is fine, but it must serve some sort of purpose. If the reason for it isn't much more than "Ha ha, now you have to play this all over again!" then it's simply bad level design. A lot of levels do this, including, I have to admit, some of my own.

These levels are good, but they're not great. Banana Beach is the better of the two, but I recommend playing both it and The Library. They offer an interesting glimpse into the early work of someone who was soon to become one of the greatest JJ2 level makers, and they show how his style progressed from being somewhat mundane into being something totally unique.

Good:

• Beach tileset
  
• Interesting level design, for the most part
  
• Comes from the person who made two of the most popular level packs ever
  

Bad:

• Library tileset
  
• Beach level is pretty bad in the second half
  
• Library level has an annoying dark section
  

Score:

Review: Game Board (tileset)

Author: T-boned T-raex T. Teupac
Year: Likely 1999 or 2000
Genre: Tileset
Filename: Game board.j2t
Download: J2O

Update (July 2009): It turns out this tileset is actually on j2o, albeit with a different name and version. Seems it got uploaded without me noticing. I've updated the download link to point to it. The rest of the review has been unedited, and refers to the original version.

What? I'm reviewing a tileset? And who the hell is T-boned T-raex T. Teupac? What kind of name is that?

While I have no idea what could possess someone to pick a name like that, I do have a good reason why I have decided to do this review. Simply put, this is a very good tileset. It's a bit hard to use, and not perfect, but it also happens to have a great theme, and has a few features which are almost completely unique to it. And to top it all off, I can guarantee that almost none of you have ever seen this tileset, or even heard of it.

My memory is foggy as to how I even came into possession of this tileset. I've looked on the archives of Jazz2city, and it's not there. It's definitely not on Jazz2online, since the tileset predates that site. I also checked the archives of universejazz, a website that existed for a short time after J2C went down and before J2O went up. It's not there either. So where the hell did I get it? I'd actually like to know this, because it came with a very good example level which I have unfortunately lost. The example level was the whole reason I wanted to find it and do this review, but since I could only find the tileset, I now have to settle with reviewing the tileset alone. Note that a lot of the information I have about using this tileset comes from that example level; thankfully, my memory isn't that foggy.

Most of the tiles in Game Board take the form of a pseudo-3d chessboard, complete with a few pawns and even a queen that you can place on it. The background takes the form of a bunch of mountains made up of playing cards. There are also tiles that you can use to build fortresses out of dice, and houses of cards. All of it looks good too. What this means is Game Board is a good looking tileset that has things that no other tileset does, with a theme that is almost completely unique. If there was a textbook definition of "good tileset", it would probably include those points.

The tileset also has a few things which are not exactly related to the theme, but are cool anyway. For example, it has a few tiles of slimy goo you can place on the ground. By putting a vine event on top of that, you can make it so bits of the floor are sticky. You can step on them and jump on them fine, but you can't walk or run on them. If you have ever played Donkey Kong Country 2, remember the beehive levels with the sticky ground? It works exactly the same way here.

Another thing this tileset has is multicoloured pits of water. Some of the colours are pretty useless, but what makes it interesting is that it is possible to animate the water so that it goes from blue (normal) to red (hot). Using the right sort of animation, you can make water pits that the player can only enter for short windows of time, and that allows for some pretty interesting level design. There is also green water, which can serve as a sort of slime pit.

There is also a tile which you can place on a wall. It looks like a nozzle of some sort, or maybe a speaker. The intended use for it is to generate smoke rings that will confuse a player's movement. It's a pretty interesting touch, since this is probably the only tileset that has a tile dedicated explicitly for that purpose.

There are a few problems with this tileset though. For one thing, the textured background doesn't work, so you have to leave it flat. Also, there are a couple of masking bugs in the tileset which make it harder to use, and limit its potential somewhat. The pseudo-3d look also makes it hard to use, so this isn't a tileset I'd recommend to new JCS users. Overall Game Board is more suited to single player than multiplayer, though it could certainly be used for either.

Possibly the biggest advantage of this tileset is the fact that it has never, to my knowledge, been used for anything other than the example level it came with. What that means is if you use this tileset, your level will be the only one of its kind. Considering the moderately high quality here, I think that's a pretty good deal.

Two versions of the tileset are provided. Game Board 2.0 is simply the same tileset with a different sprite palette. Unfortunately there is no example level. If you somehow have the level this tileset originally came with, please send it to me.

Good:

• Best game board tileset there is
  
• A lot of cool features not normally found in other tilesets (e.g. sticky slime)
  
• Mint condition!!
  

Bad:

• Textured background doesn't work
  
• Difficult to use
  
• Some awkward masking problems
  
• Probably only good for single player levels
  

Score:

Note: I do not normally review tilesets, and I was a bit hesitant to give this a score at all. When I rate levels, I have other levels to base the score on. But in this case, I don't have that luxury because this is the only tileset I have reviewed. Keep that in mind.

More reviews coming

I have done a lot of writing in the past few days, and have finished a number of reviews. I want to avoid posting them all at once because I want to try to keep this site going for as long as possible. For now I have things scheduled so that updates will come three times a month, on the 1st, 11th, and 21st. That way there can be a new review posted roughly once every ten days. That also allows you to know when to check for updates, if you don't feel like using the Atom feed.

So far I have four reviews waiting to be posted, and a few more that are still unfinished. So at the rate things are going, it looks like I'll be keeping this blog alive for at least a few months. Better than my previous record, at least!

Review: Dino Station

Author: Steven Wakeman
Year: 2000
Genre: Single Player
Filename: dinostat.j2l
Download: J2O

I started this blog with a review of Wakeman's first two single player levels, so I might as well revive it with a review of his third, and as far as I know, last level.

Out of all three levels that Wakeman made, Dino Station can safely be called the best one. It has a very unique feel to it, with a layout that is very puzzle-oriented. It's simply impossible to beat this level without thinking, and if you're not good at finding secrets you will have a lot of trouble here. Luckily, the layout is quite non-linear, and it basically impossible to get lost. This means you won't have to comb over a gigantic maze where all the rooms look the same, looking for the one tiny secret needed to progress to the next area.

At some points the level might be a bit too confusing. There is a lot of scenery in the foreground which tends to obscure the view, and there are a few places with invisible barriers that are somewhat unintuitive. Thankfully, the smaller than average size of this level means that you will never get too frustrated, since once you learn the overall layout (and it really doesn't take that long) you can focus on finding all of the necessary secrets. The confusing aspect of this level actually is a good thing, in some ways. It's very rare for a level to pull that off and still be fun.

The difficulty here is pretty high. I recommend saving frequently, and only playing on hard mode if you are up for a real challenge. The level is never unfair with the difficulty however, and in one particular area it is actually quite diabolically creative. This area has you climb up a shaft where the only platforms available are covered in spikes. There is health along the way, but that's only good the first time you run through the area. You will have to visit this place at least twice, and maybe a third time if you can't find everything. Eventually, the carrots will run out, and going through this area will mean serious damage. I thought that was a pretty clever way to put pressure on the player, and it is definitely something that I have never seen before or since.

The main portion of Dino Station has you searching for trigger crates to open up the path to the next area. After that comes a boss fight. The boss isn't terribly difficult if you have found the powerups, but it isn't a total pushover either. There also isn't a checkpoint before fighting it, which is a bit problematic. Also scattered throughout the level are ten coins, which are required to access one of the trigger crates. It is possible (albeit unlikely) to miss some of them and render the level unwinnable, so be wary of that, especially at the start.

There is one fairly annoying bug in this otherwise solid level: it is possible to get stuck in the wall lining the sides of the tunnel to the boss. It is pretty easy to get stuck here if you aren't careful, so it would be good to keep that in mind. Thankfully, it is a very minor part of the level and you only have a high chance of encountering this bug if you hit the crates in a certain order.

Even if the gameplay here doesn't suit your tastes, this level looks really, really good. The attention to detail here is extensive, with great use of the tileset and a heavy focus on lighting effects. Some of the foreground does get a bit obstructive, but in single player that's not such a huge problem. The music selection is also great. This, along with the level design, combines to give the level a totally unique feel, which is an important characteristic for standalone levels to have. Since story is not something that is normally present in standalone levels, something else is needed to make it memorable and interesting. Dino Station accomplishes that.

Good:

• Unique layout
• Requires more thinking than most levels
• Excellent eyecandy and music
• Never gets boring; stays good all the way through

Bad:

• A bit too short
• Eyecandy can be a bit obstructive
• Sometimes confusing (e.g. invisible walls)
• Easy to get stuck in a wall

Score:

Thinking of bringing this back

Not many people still visit this blog, but I might as well make this post.

It's been forever since I posted anything here, and to be honest I completely forgot this blog existed. Sometime in 2007 I found I didn't have the free time to post there, and then when I finally did I have the free time I neglected this thing anyway.

I'm taking a break from school at the moment, and that means during my free time I can focus on writing things that aren't assignments. Maybe I'll start posting here again. Plus I just released a big JJ2 episode and I'm tired of JCS right now, so this will give me something to do.

Too bad the J2C archive is down. There was a lot of good stuff in there, and I would have liked to continue to write about really old stuff. If I do wind up getting back into this, I'll have to focus on what is on J2O for now.

Never mind, it's back up! Thanks Brian!