Dudes was pretty silly, and it looked like a pretty decent level to boot. Any level that makes me laugh sits alright with me.
A Swim in the Sinking Lake was a pretty neat concept and take on the name, but the level itself didn't have a lot to it. The sinking water part was a neat concept, though swimming between spikes and having to contend with already vile bloopers and fish while sinking is pretty stressful and not a terrible lot of fun. And I get this was the joke, but the ending was just so abrupt that... yeah. Wish it could have had something more to it. The use of Aqualiss music was great, though.
Lava House was an interesting way to end World 2. It's a difficult level, but not a lot of consistency from challenge to challenge, it felt a lot like an odd obstacle course than an actual level. But, I have to admit, I think this level is one that tackled hard difficulty best so far - for what it's worth, the obstacles were challenging, but I'd say each of them was fair and let you contemplate your next move, and after you beat this, I think it would feel like you accomplished something. Making something hard is a difficult task, and I've gotta commend the author for this.
I dunno, I love Persona 4 but I don't think those music choices in the non-main areas in Lavahouse were terribly appropriate when all they did was add on several megs to the already large filesize to the whole thing. Unless those very same MP3s are coincidentally reused to a greater extent in someone else's level then it might have been better to just use built-in MP3s for the side areas. The MP3 for the main area of the stage was fine though.
I can kind of see why it is the way it is. It's absolutely true that a lot of tracks are pointless or not needed, but a good ten points on the judging rubric were devoted to music alone, which I'd assume scared a lot of people off from using default music and instead use a custom track, even when it wasn't really necessary. Especially considering how easy it is to implement custom music in your level as opposed to, say, custom graphics. Though what I might suggest if this thing is released to the public might be to bundle the music in a separate zip (or zips) from the game to make the game a bit more downloadable, considering you can go without music without the game crashing anything.
Horikawa Otane wrote:Everyone, what were your favourite World 2 levels and why?
Ah, man. Bowser's Old Castle probably stuck out as the most
memorable, if maybe not my favorite level from a gameplay point of view, just because of the sheer cleverness and memorability of the concept. If this were ever polished up, I'd totally play it.
But for a level level, I'm going to have to go with Ocean. If you take the the ear-rending music out of the equation, this level is very pretty and nifty from a gameplay standpoint, and I loved how you had to maneuver through the underwater plants in particular. Good stuff.
#1 mega cd enjoyer AND "making fun of"-er 
