Top Secret Magazine Urban Assault

Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is a humorous, and entertaining arcade action game. It stars two rabbits named Jazz, and Spaz, who, throughout the game, fight an evil turtle boss and his army.

Jazz, the main character in the game, is the green rabbit. His special move is his 'helicopter ears' which allow him to fly for short periods of time. This is done by jumping, and pressing and holding the jump key while in the air. He can also 'power jump' by standing still, crouched, then jumping. I found these maneuvers to be very useful. Spaz, on the other hand, is the red rabbit. His special move is 'karate kick' followed by a high leap. This is useful against a line of multiple opponents.

As for weapons, there are 12 weapons including powerups for each one. These include anything from your standard blaster type weapon, to flame throwers, to bouncing bullets. The enemies are claimed to be "intelligent enemies that dodge your attacks, leap at you and blitz you with multi-staged attacks." according to advertisements... Now, I don't know if I just missed some secret enemy that does this, because I haven't found any.. I found the enemies to be average for this type of game.

2jazz2.jpg (7631 bytes)

Maybe a little smarter than those found in the Mario Bros. series.

The environments are very detailed, and with 16 bit color they look great. Effects include dynamic lighting effects, scaling and warping. Not to mention thousands of frames of animation. Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is optimized to use MMX technology and even supports Direct 3D hardware acceleration. The gameplay is perfectly smooth, except in windowed full screen mode (which not many of you will use anyway). The detail in all resolutions stayed the same, as did the frame rates. The sounds are great too, and add to the atmosphere of the game.

There are tons of puzzles and secrets to be found which will aid your character in his mission. There are also 4 multiplayer modes included: two to four players on one screen; up to eight players on 2 screens via modem; and up to 32 players on eight screens via LAN or the Internet.

Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is one of the best, most graphically superior, and most entertaining arcade action games I've played in my long history of gaming. I suggest this to anyone who enjoys arcade action adventures.

Company:
Epic MegaGames
www.epicgames.com

Category:
Arcade Action

NOTES:

Interest: 80%
Maniability : 80%
Graphics: 85%
Sound : 87%
Originality : 75%

TOTAL : 81%

Requirements:

Operating System:
Windows 95/98

Processor:
Pentium 90MHz or higher

Memory:
16 MB of RAM

Hard Drive:
11 MB Uncompressed

Sound Card:
Windows compatible sound card

Video:
Direct Draw compatible video card

Joshua Westhoven

DEMO