Jazz Jackrabbit 2

The Good
I really enjoyed playing this game. It contains many different locations and enemies, like first "Jazz Jackrabbit". There are also the same weapons, but Epic added some new ones, such as freezer, heat-seeker and pepper spray. But it's good to conserve ammo for bosses, and killing regular enemies with blaster. Blaster has once again unlimited ammo.

Game is much easier than it's prequel. There aren't insanely hard levels like Orbitus from "Jazz 1". But fights with bosses can be a real pain in a butt (especially queen, bolly boss and Devan himself, while other are fairly easy, like tuf turtle boss and robot).

You can select two completely different characters to play: Jazz or Spaz. Jazz, for example, use his "ear-copter", while Spaz can smash enemies by his feet.

Graphically it looks good, even today. Everything looks like taken from cartoon movie. "Jazz 2" also introduces more complicated backgrounds than "Jazz 1". I really enjoyed "psycho" and "jungle" levels design. Sound effects are brilliant. Music is like from first "Jazz" but in much better quality.

"Jazz 2" also contains multiplayer! You can play on split-screen, through LAN or Internet. Multi has five types of gameplay: cooperative (you're playing the same levels like in single player, but with friends), deathmatch, race (you've got to run through level several times), treasure hunt (collect 100 diamonds and run to the exit) and capture the flag (yes, CTF in platform game!). When you buy this game, you also get "Jazz Creation Station" (abbreviated to "JCS"), which let you create your own levels!

The Bad
When you want to play "Jazz 2" by LAN or Intenet, you can't play race and cooperative. I completely don't know why they aren't included.

Maximal screen size is 640x480. That's odd - other games released in 1998 had much bigger screen size. One episode contain levels based on three first planets from "Jazz 1": Diamondus, Tubelectric and Medivo. Designers were run out of ideas?

And the worst thing are walls - you can sometimes jump into walls and get stuck. You can see it in the end of "castle" levels, when you defeat queen. While in original episodes it only appears in this level, in some user-made levels it appears very often, especially in levels converted from "Jazz 1", which had many narrow tunnels, like in Diamondus.

The Bottom Line
Well, "the good" section is much longer than this "bad" section. Despite these bad things, you will probably enjoy this game. I always keep this game for parties - simple rules and split screen for max. 4 players make this game perfect for such things.

The Good
In Jazz Jackrabbit, Devan made plans to destroy Carrotus, but not before Jazz thwarted his plans, causing him to escape. Now in this sequel, Devan is up to his tricks again and steals Eva away from Jazz. He then plans to wed him, so Jazz must stop him once again.

The introduction shows Jazz and his wacky brother Spaz (the guy who made a cameo appearance in Jazz Jackrabbit: Holiday Hare 1995) fighting a turtle together. In Jazz2, you can also play Spaz as well as Jazz. They both have different abilities. For example, Jazz can jump into the air and use his ears as helicopters, whereas Spaz can double-jump to reach some platforms that are sometimes impossible to reach.

There are four episodes in Jazz2, plus the 3-level shareware demo. Each registered episode has six levels instead of just three, with a total of 24 episodes in all. One level involves you going underwater to get to the next area. The episodes have to be played in sequence (ie: You can’t play episode two without complete episode one). This is to prevent gamers from playing them out of order.

Enemies in the game include turtles, rats, monkeys, mosquitos, and wasps. Some enemies who have a method of attacking you are quite bizarre. For example, each turtle in the game tries to take a chunk out of you whenever you get too close to them, while the monkeys throw bananas to hurt you. Out of all these enemies, the wasps are the worse: you can attack them with any gun and still miss them. Some of those heat-seeking missiles work well in this situation.

You also have the option of playing single player mode or party mode. Party mode is where you compete against two or more friends locally, through a local area network, or over the Internet. When you play locally, you and your buddy play through a split-screen view. The games that can be played locally include Co-operative, Battle, Race, Treasure Hunt, and Capture the Flag. When you play through single player mode, the object of the game is to run through each level, shooting enemies with your pistol, and collecting gems (finding 100 of these results in an extra life), coins, weapon power-ups, and food. Some of these items may be hidden in crates, in which Jazz or Spaz can break by slamming into them. Collecting several amounts of food will result in a “sugar rush”, where you are invincible for a short period of time.

Halfway through each level, there is a vendor that can gain your access to bonus areas if you have the required amount of silver coins found in hidden areas or hovering in the air exposed. These bonus areas usually contain rows of food. Gold coins can also be found which gives you ten silver coins.

A health indicator is displayed on the top-right corner of the screen consisting of five hearts, and as usual, when they have expired, you lose a life. However, if you collect one or more carrots like in Jazz Jackrabbit, one heart is added to the health indicator.

You’ll likely to see blocks that can be broken either by shooting pellets at them or by slamming into them. But sometimes you’ll see blocks with a certain weapon power-up on them. This means that you have to use a specific weapon to shoot them.

Jazz Jackrabbit 2 can also be played in a higher resolution other than 320x200. That means that you can also play the game at resolutions like 400x300 and 512x384. The maximum you can set the resolution to is 640x480, but the sprites look a bit small. There’s also a listing in the Episode Solution called “Home-Cooked Levels”, which is not an episode at all. If you select this, you can play additional levels created with JCS, the Jazz Creation Station. With JCS, you can create your own stuff, including tilesets, single player levels, and levels that are designed for multiplayer. You can even create full episodes and add your own music.

The music in Jazz2 in this game is far from average, especially the music from “Funky Monkeys”, and also the music when you revisit the levels from episode one in Jazz Jackrabbit in “Flashback”. The sound effects are excellent too. I like when Spaz makes weird noises when a spring bounces him up in the air. In the underwater level, the sound effects are sensational.

The Bad
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 may be the game that outdates Sonic the Hedgehog, but at least Sonic doesn’t have bugs. While playing one level, I occasionally got an “Access Violation”, forcing me to restart my system. I also had a message telling me that my sound device was busy, but in fact, there was no other application I was running that also used my sound card.

The Bottom Line
A lot better than Jazz Jackrabbit. Too bad about the bugs. ****½

The Good
The graphics are great and detailed. There are few side scrollers in those hi-res graphics. At that time 3D was used for most platform games, but this game proves that 2D games are just as fun. Everything looks detailed and colorful and it's all drawn in a great cartoon style. The gameplay is OK too and gives you a lot too shoot at just like in the first game. There's a vast array of weapons such as dynamite, ice beam and flamethrower. (my favorite) You can play as either Jazz or his crazy brother Spaz. Spaz starts and different points and has different abilities making the game replayable at least once. The multiplayer is excellent here. You can just play with two players as both brothers in a mode wherein you work together or against each other. There are also modes such as capture the flag which are usually only found in 3D games which is great. The best part of the multiplayer, however, is that you can play online, which greatly increases the replayability of the game. There's some great music too with, you guessed right, some jazzy tunes in it. There are also three difficulty levels. The story does the job too: Devan Shell, a turtle and the nemesis of Jazz, has stolen the wedding jewel Jazz wanted to give to his girlfriend princess Eva Earlong. Devan uses it to power up his time machine to change history to has advantage. Jazz and Spaz have been thrown into the dungeon by Eva's mother, a mean queen. Now the brothers must escape the castle and retrieve the jewel. Finally there is a versatile tool to create your own levels, but this is difficult in use.

The Bad
The first game was very fast and difficult, much like Sonic. This game is not as quick and quite easy. Thankfully there are three difficulties, as I said, with more baddies on higher modes. Too easy at times. The creators took the complaint about the first game a bit too serious. In high resolutions it can be difficult to see what you are doing at times. The level editor is too difficult in use for most people, too.

The Bottom Line
Despite a few small flaws this game is great fun for the whole family. And is fun to play with friends, even if they live abroad.

The Good
Jazz Jackrabbit 2, as a playable game, is perfect. You can play it for years and still not get particularly tired. With the abilities to make your own levels, tilesets, and combine events in ways never thought of before, an endless stream of originality can come forth from all players. Internet play, network play and splitscreen (the third of which can be tacked on to either of the others) increase lastability so much, I do not doubt the game will still be going strong in three more years.

The Bad
Despite the quality of the game, JJ2 has all too many bugs, which become more and more noticable the more you play. So many, in fact, it's not really possible to list them all. Events stop generating, events don't work, bosses fly out of the level, coins turn into gems, trigger crates won't stay hit, bullets don't appear to hit. In addition to this, the official levels are either all easy (SP) (though admittedly well designed), or just poor (MP), so unless you go to http://www.jazz2online.com or make some levels on your own, you may accidentally become bored with the game. As for the tilesets, their tile placement is all rather strange, and the masking is frequently quite bad.

The Bottom Line
JJ2 is a game with flaws, but these flaws do not wreck it. Especially since the ways of getting around them often turn out to have more possiblities then if the flaw hadn't existed in the first place. Whether as Jazz, Spaz, Lori (in TSF), Frog or Chuck, playing JJ2 ought to be an enjoyable experience from beginning to end. Infinitely superior to most games out there.

The Good
What's not to like? from the brightly colored, highly detailed graphics with gobs of animation and multiple background layers, to the spot on cartooney sound effects and cool music, Jazz 2 is truly THE platform game for the PC. You can blast right through the levels, or you can take your time and find all the secret nooks of treasure. The included level editor lets you create your own levels and is fairly easy to use. The multi-player mode is highly addictive, and the lag is(was) pretty tolerable, even on slower connections.

The Bad
It's not very difficult, even on the highest difficulty level. An extra episode or two would have been nice.

The Bottom Line
It's like being in an interactive cartoon, and once you have played it, it will make you forget about Sonic the Hedgehog for a while. Very good game in every aspect, I highly recommend picking it up.

The Good
Graphics and gameplay are just amazingly good, this is actually one of those few platformers that I really enjoyed playing!

The music is ten times better than that crappy Adlib-shit from the original. I even like it.

This game supports 3D-cards... That's where the fun begins, you can actually play this in 3D (imagine it to be sorta like Duke Nukem's Manhattan Project)!

I think everything else not mentioned beneath is just great!

The Bad
It's buggy. It crashes quite a lot.

The DirectX software rendering is a total failure, either it crashes, or it makes your monitor go crazy.

The Bottom Line
This game is really nice, if you liked the original, you'll enjoy this GUARANTEED!

The Good
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is quite simply a quantum leap from the original Jazz Jackrabbit, a technicially magnificent game in its own right. Jazz Jackrabit 2 perfects the jump-'n-run style found in other classics (Sonic the Hedgehog comes to mind) with the following features:

• Demo-coding power! Arjan Brussee, originally of the famous demo group Ultra Force, did such a great job on Jazz Jackrabbit - no matter the resolution, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 will run absolutely smooth and look great on any adequate computer (I could run it in just about any resolution on a Pentium 166 with a fast video card). Jazz 2's engine is a marvel of modern programming technique, and without a doubt the best game engine in any platform game to date.
• The music in Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is absolutely marvelous. Written by one of my favorite trackers, Alexander Brandon of Straylight, Jazz 2 has some of the best music in any computer game to date, professionally tracked and with great quality samples. It creates the atmosphere for the whole game, and damn well too.
• The graphics in Jazz Jackrabbit 2 are simply amazing (see screenshots): lighting effects, sprites, explosions and just about everything looks magnificent. Epic simply outdid themselves this time by creating the best-looking platform game ever.
• The level design is great - a few touches of puzzles and generally thoroughly pleasing gameplay.
• Coolest menu system in any game to date!
• The controls in this game are excellent. 'nuff said.

In short - Jazz Jackrabbit 2 rules!

The Bad
Only a few complaints:

• The introduction sequence is simply horrible. While the actual idea isn't a bad one, the execution is simply not befitting the quality of the game, with pretty bad drawings and non-smooth animation. The only spot of light in the intro is the wonderful music.
• The game is unbelievably easy! Even in the toughest level, it's unlikely that you'll ever find yourself in a really bad situation where you're out of lives and have to rely on luck.

The Bottom Line
The best platform game on any platform to date. You can't beat Jazz Jackrabbit 2 - it's as close to perfect as it gets.