Music Jam 2016 Critique

Hello penguins! Welcome to my critique of the Music Jam 2016. I know I'm late, so I should begin my discussion as soon as possible.

The art of the latest Music Jam party is amazing. While a decent amount of the art is returning, a lot of it is remade or new for this party exclusively. Since there are many categories of rooms in this party, I'll discuss them all.

First, we have new rooms. this includes all rooms that are made new for this party. My favorite of these is the Beach.

It has some really nice art design. The Orca Straw looks really fine and well-polished. The design on the Lighthouse (which is a remake of the design from the Music Jam 2012 Lighthouse) is a really good recreation and works really well. The interview set looks really good, even though it looks like it may be copied and pasted with a bit of recoloring.

My least favorite of the new rooms is the Snow Forts.

This room is okay, but it has one isue that annoyed me for the entire length of the party- the stage does not have any shadows. That's the only issue I have with this room. If that isn't a testament to how good these few new rooms are, I don't know what is.

The next group of rooms is old rooms. The old rooms are very few, which means we get a bunch of new content. The old rooms chosen are good. We get the Backstage, Casa Fiesta, Coffee Shop, Pizza Parlor, and some of the rooms on the Music Cruise. My favorite reused room is the backstage.

This room was certainly a surprise. It's slightly modified in a few ways too; you can no longer buy instruments, and the door leading outside shows the night sky now. It's good to see this room reused; I really like how it was designed and there's a ton of details.

The Coffee Shop is also a good example of reusing rooms correctly.

This room was originally for the Hollywood Party back in 2013. I think it fits; the general aesthetic and color scheme work well for the Music Jam. The room uses a lot of blues and purples, just like the original Music Jam Coffee Shop from way back in 2008 and the newer one used from 2009 to 2012.

Music Jam 2008 - Coffee Shop

Ultimate Jam 2012 - Coffee Shop

A bad example of reused rooms at this event would be the Bridge from the Music Cruise.

Despite the fact that the rest of the party was at night only, the game designers neglected to realize that they left the daylight cycle on for the Music Cruise. So while a majority of the rooms are in the evening, the ship can be experiencing morning, afternoon, evening, or night. This was a big oversight and completely kills this room in particular. I'm clearly not a programmer, but I feel like it would be very little work to remove the daylight cycle. This is a big issue.

Another big issue with this party is that part of the island is experiencing the evening while other parts are as bright as day. Rooms like the Ski Village, Cove, and Iceberg are victims of this. In total, they would have to replace the SWFs of 7 rooms or so. If they had used the files from the Fashion Festival for those rooms, I doubt anyone would even care. But it's the same issue we experienced with the SoundStudio Party back in 2015. It's just lazy and it should have been fixed; but they went out of their way to make it worse by adding a gradient to the Beach and Forest showing that only parts of the island are lit in such a manner.

Being the Music Jam, you'd think it would have some good music, right? Well, you'd be correct. All of the music in this event match the context pretty well. A good example of this is the Beach. The track that plays is not new, nor was it designed for a previous Music Jam. It was made for another event, but it sounds orchestral; and orchestral music is the theme for the Beach. It's a good way to reuse content while making it seem new by putting it in an entirely new context.

This party has a lot more to do than some of the previous events such as the Finding Dory Party and the Zootopia Party. Many of the parties in 2017 were based on very specific things; Zootopia is about the movie. The world of the movie was rich and diverse, so I think they could have expanded further than they did. The Finding Dory Party however.... Most of Finding Dory takes place under the sea from what I understand. It's hard to make a lot of rooms based on Finding Dory without it getting stale quick. I know I got sick of the underwater room after a few weeks.

Turns out it's called the Reef. I guess you learn more every day.

The Music Jam, however, has more interesting rooms. They all look different and diverse; and most importantly, there's tons of stuff to do in all of them. The Forest has a rock stage. The Plaza has a big red carpet event and a limo. The Snow Forts has a pop stage with Cadence and the Penguin Band. The Town has Times-Square type billboards on the buildings. The Dock has the Casa Fiesta and the Music Cruise. The Beach has the Orca-Straw. All rooms have something new and interesting added to them that makes them unique. No room is bland or uninteresting. (Okay, maybe the Arcade's decorations weren't very special. But that's one out of 22 or so.) It feels like each decorated room has its own purpose, like they were designed to be played with in a very specific manner. And for that, I commend the art team.

And finally, the collectibles. Does this party even have collectibles? Of course it does! It has mascot backgrounds- 2 of them. You can collect one for meeting DJ Cadence and another for meeting any individual member of the Penguin Band. And that's all.

Wow. That's a disappointing amount of collectibles.

What would have been cool is if they had put free item boxes around the island in rooms that normally aren't that interesting- The Arcade, the Ice Rink, and the Mine Shack, for example. This party would have been much more interesting and much more appreciated if they had done so.

So that's what I thought of the Music Jam 2016. So how does it rank? Well, you'll see when I release my new ordinal scale at the end of the month. Until then, see ya later!

Sources: Club Penguin Wiki Archives