GAME CLEAR No. 42 -- Space Jam: A New Legacy - The Game

Space Jam: A New Legacy - The Game (2021, Xbox One/Series X|S)

Developer: Digital Eclipse
Publisher: Digital Eclipse
Clear Date: 7/15/2021
Clear Platform: Xbox One

Space Jam is an intellectual property that I have some nostalgia for because it was a movie I loved as a child, and the game for the original PlayStation was one of my very first video games. When I saw this beat ’em up based on the new movie was coming out for free, I figured I had to play it.

And play it I did! Apparently this game was created after Xbox made a call for fans to submit an idea for a game based on Space Jam: A New Legacy. Two individuals by the names of Ricky and Narayan are credited on the game’s store page with having had their ideas chosen, and their ideas were brought to life by Digital Eclipse. How fun for them!

The game is pretty clearly a promotional freebie, and it plays like one. The gameplay is pretty standard brawler fare. It supports up to three players, but I just ran through it solo. LeBron, Bugs, and Lola have the usual moveset of “press attack over and over to beat guys up” along with a jump and aerial attacks. They are always in possession of a silver basketball that they can pass back and forth or sling at enemies for a ranged attack. It can also be used, at the cost of some health, to do an AoE attack to make space if the player gets overwhelmed. Finally, the characters also have “cards” containing the image of other Looney Tunes characters at their disposal that can be used to activate a super move of various types. Roadrunner confers a big speed boost, Taz does a screenclearing attack, Granny drops huge health items, etc. These powers charge passively over time and can certainly help in a pinch. Overall these mechanics are executed perfectly well but are pretty boilerplate by today’s standards.

The game takes place over a handful of courses, as LeBron and Co. pursue Al-G Rhythm (antagonist of the film) and defeat his minions and ultimately him. The bosses in the game are members of the Goon Squad that play against LeBron in the basketball game from the film. These boss encounters are pretty well-designed and actually a highlight of the game in my opinion.

It took me about 45 minutes to beat the game on my first (and likely only) attempt, and all I can really say about it is that it’s fine. For $0, I wanted to give it a shot because of its ties to one of my first home video games, but I can’t really recommend it to anyone else. It doesn’t do anything poorly, it’s just extremely plain, so I have a hard time recommending anybody spend three quarters of an hour on this when they could play something else.

One thing you could do is watch 45 minutes of the movie instead. I found it surprisingly decent! I agree with most reviewers that it’s largely a longform, cynical advertizement for Warner Bros., but there’s actually some story and character development in this one. LeBron James is a bit of a better actor than Michael Jordan too. Much like the game, I mostly saw the movie out of a sense of duty to my childhood self, but I was not nearly as annoyed by it as I was prepared to be. It’s fine.