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 Logicware
(Epic MegaGames), $30. Requirements: PowerPC, 16MB RAM, Mac OS
7.5.3, 2xCD-ROM. For more information, visit Logicware at http://www.logicware.com.
Review by Bill Jahnel
You have to love Epic Megagames; here is the company that
developed Unreal, the processor-eating polygonal giant of a game.
It has managed to entirely rewrite the way that a 3-D shooter
can look, one-upping the competition in the lemming-like drive
for yet another successful deathmatch game. What does it do for
an encore? It returns to the roots of gaming and offers a 2-D
platform arcade game with cartoonish characters. In this age
of copycat consumerism, a decision like that takes balls. You
can count on your fingers the main list of truly engaging commercial
platform titles the Mac OS has had. There was the original Dark
Castle, its sequel and the later color version as our wizened
classics. Out of this World was a classic but sometimes hard
to control; the retro black and white Creepy Castle has long
been an underground arcade favorite of mine, which also had a
color update in the form of SkullCracker. Power Pete, which was
a truly cool 1995 release from Pangea (who later gave the Mac
Nanosaur) is not technically a platformer but in the same genre.
The last major commercial platformer of true note was the often-overlooked
1997 Animaniacs Game pack.
Into this august company, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, a sequel to a
game that was never released on the Mac OS, is a worthy title
that uses most of the standard mainline 2-D platform games. In
an era where Mario and Crash Bandicoot have hit the polygons,
Epic's hero, Jazz (and brother Spaz) remain charmingly wedded
to a 2-D world. However, certain tricks of multi-layered backgrounding
can often give a sense of depth to some of the backgrounds; the
castle levels use a differently paced background through windows,
a la the classic arcade game Rastan, to give a sense of movement
and depth.
In this game, Jazz has a series of tricks up his old genus
lepus sleeve. He jumps, butt-stomps (a somewhat more graphic
and colorful activity that Mario's classic step on and squish),
high jumps, shoots, and most entertainingly, has helicopter ears
to give him some hovering capability when he is in the air. His
brother Spaz, whom you can also play, has very similar moves;
his main difference is that instead of the spinning ears, Spaz
has a nasty sidekick, offering differing styles of play.
If you have ever played the classic platform games, whether
it is Mario or Sonic or Castlevania, you already know the basics
of Jazz Jackrabbit 2. You seek power-ups, specials, and secret
areas, all while dispatching colorful bad guys in levels that
lead to tougher and tougher bosses at critical junctures. Like
most mature 2-D platformers, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 also offers a
wide variety of bizarre and colorful locales in which to play
at your hare-raising adventures, including the somewhat now-mandatory
underwater / swimming sequences.
Since Jazz is a game of conventions, what gamers most need
to know is where Jazz truly excels at the conventions of the
genre and where it fails to live up to snuff. In the strong positive
registry, Jazz has a lot of energy and franticness to the character;
the art direction for the worlds, characters, and villains are
strong and interesting (I mentally dubbed the set of bee-bopping
chameleons in the third level "lounge lizards" for
their laid-back attitudes.) Like all games of its style, finding
secret areas and hidden or special power-ups is a main drive
in the game, and here Jazz has a devilish fun taunting you by
showing signs of where specials might be had, if only you can
figure out where to grab them. Compare this to the more-often
"random" specials of Super Mario, where you have no
clue of hunching down on a pipe or jumping up on clouds might
earn you a secret area, Jazz appetizingly tantalizes you by showing
goodies just out of reach, daring you to find the key to grabbing
them. I particularly liked Jazz's use of helicopter ears and
the large amount of undocumented specials. My favorites includes
huge gems that you can butt-stomp to shatter into tons of collectible
gems and the carrot with the spinning top that gives you a brief
ability to stay "flying" with helicopter ears rather
than just hovering.
However, not all is harmony and happiness in the land of this
jackrabbit. Jazz's main way of dispatching bad guys is supposed
to be the use of his various gun weapons, which you switch among
by the number keys. This DOOM-convention seems horribly misplaced
in a platform game; I would rather have seen the butt-stomp be
a primary way of dispatching foes or just kept multiple upgrades
to one weapon or weapon-like power (such as the bubble shield,
which was pretty fun to play around in.) Jazz also adheres all
too strictly to that most infamous of platform conventions, the
saved game point. While understandable on consoles, saved game
points are totally without merit or necessity on computer titles.
Another sore point has to do with "party mode," which
is a fancy way of saying either split-screen action of two players
on the keyboard or network multiplier. The network multiplayer
patch is still in beta (and a patch, grr) and setting up a game
fails to conform to ease of use conventions appropriate for any
network multiplayer game of the late 90s. When you set up to
host, the game just waits for someone to join, without a direct
indicator that you are actually setting up a game or showing
much in the way of status of who is joining. The Editor of MacReactor
and I were never able to connect ourselves into a mutual game,
whether I tried joining his game or he tried joining mine. The
types of games are also odd; while I finally got a local LAN
version of Treasure hunt running (which was fun), I am dumbfounded
by the idea of the "deathmatch" game. Epic, leave Unreal
to be Unreal, DOOM to be DOOM. Like the multiple guns, this is
a convention that fits very awkwardly into the platform genre.
Overall, Jazz is a fun platformer that has many more strengths
than weaknesses. For $30, it is a worthy addition to your drive
and worth a play if you've been missing platform titles and are
not Virtual PlayStationing yourself to death.
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