Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game (Xbox One)
The original Space Jam film managed to land itself a spot as a nostalgic classic for a generation, uniting the beloved cartoon characters of the Looney Tunes with the biggest athlete in the world at the time Michael Jordan. However, when Warner Bros. started to look into the possibility of a sequel, they just couldn’t seem to get anything together. A second film starring Michael Jordan had its production cease when they realized they didn’t actually sign the basketballer on for a second film. Attempts to transition the movie into different sports never gained much ground, a skateboarding film with Tony Hawk, a golf film with Tiger Woods, and a racing film with Jeff Gordon all falling through. There was even talk of a spy movie with Jackie Chan to be the follow-up, but after so many false starts, the company would go back to basketball and snag LeBron James for a sequel that finally did get off the ground: Space Jam: A New Legacy.
Perhaps this tempestuous development process is why Warner Bros. felt like the movie might need an extra push despite having one of the biggest athletes of the time, some of the most recognizable cartoon characters of all time, and a previous film that was part of many people’s childhood. That is where we get Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game, a game that is available as a free download seemingly as a way to advertise the 2021 family film. This beat ’em up’s run time certainly makes sense when viewed through that lens, the game only lasting around an hour, but despite its origins seemingly being in a marketing attempt, it’s actually a fairly solid member of its genre.
In Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game, basketballer LeBron James finds himself sucked into a digital world where Al-G Rhythm, a malicious AI construct, aims to wipe him and the Looney Tunes out before proceeding with his plans for global domination. However, LeBron James, with the help of humanoid rabbits Bugs Bunny and Lola, aim to collect pieces of the Legacy Code that can put a stop to Al-G’s plans. The game keeps its plot pretty lean, perhaps not intending to spoil the film that it released in close proximity to, so it mostly ends up a pretty standard adventure to take down an evil villain. Along the way though the characters will chat, LeBron and Lola not having much to their dialogue beyond speaking on the events that unfold in the story, but Bugs does crack some fairly tepid jokes and makes a handful of references to his old cartoons.
Perhaps more interesting than the story though is how it chooses to handle its setting of cyberspace. The movie version of Space Jam: A New Legacy seems eager for you to soak in all the character cameos from a plethora of Warner Bros. properties, but Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game isn’t as in-your-face with its allusions to other media. The pixel art backgrounds with their soft blue, purple, and green tones keep the game rooted as something clearly unnatural, but the technological reproductions of real world areas like a mine, museum, and desert manage to slip little jokes and cameos in where they aren’t outright demanding your attention. The Magic Flying Balloon of Peter Potamus will drift into view behind the action in a way that is easy to spot but doesn’t feel like some out of place reference made for the sake of it, and the museum goes for smaller references to cartoons like The Flintstones such as having Fred’s loincloth on the wall or a dinosaur styled like Dino are more fun touches to notice than something the game crams in your face. There are just as many moments where there’s nothing in the background to distract you or it’s just going for a gag like having a fish hanging alongside mining pickaxes, so the little things you do spot are a nice little treat that doesn’t disrupt the game flow.
For a brawler that only spans an hour, Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game handles itself fairly well. There aren’t a huge amount of enemies but they’re introduced pretty rapidly, mixed together, and then a few last additions are added to the groupings before you’ve wrapped the adventure up. Almost every enemy brings something new to the fights, the basic burly robots there to help you get acclimated to fighting and appearing in greater numbers to make up for their simplicity before the yellow leaner ones come in with better battle sense. Frog robots hop around battlefields that you’ll want to deal with before they ram into you over and over and the robots that zip about dropping bombs mean you have to avoid small segments of the screen unless you want to take heavy damage. When the robots with flamethrowers and four armed burly bots enter the mix, you’ll be at a point where fights really do ask you to figure out who to beat up first while also making sure explosives and weapons don’t start tearing through your health bar.
This enemy set actually has a good bit of variety that would make them a nice fit for any beat ’em up, but our three playable leads are a little simple in terms of how they fight back. LeBron, Bugs, and Lola all fight differently, but the two toon rabbits definitely seem to have an edge over the real human being. LeBron will attack with fairly realistic punch combos, but the rabbits will whip out cartoon weapons and stretch more for attacks that seem both more visually interesting and better for hitting foes. Jump attacks are fairly standard across the cast at least, but each character has a special move unique to them. Bugs will spin in place to attack any enemy around thim, LeBron lifts a ball skyward to send a little burst of energy out towards anyone nearby, and Lola gets the short end of the stick here as her suddenly descending from the sky in a safe seems hard to target and not as reliable as a tool for getting groups of enemies off you.
However, all three of the characters are able to tap into some of the ideas that do set the action apart from the beat ’em up staples. While you literally only have the one attack combo, you can use a basketball to aid in the fight. So long as it’s in your hands, you can hurl it at a foe or even charge it up for a more powerful throw, this giving you a projectile that’s almost always available thanks to Tweety Birdt flying in to deliver it whenever it goes off-screen. Perhaps more interestingly, after the ball is in the air, you can attack it to keep bouncing it against your enemies, dealing heavy damage so long as you can maintain the tactic. Unlike the bothersome ricochets of items in fellow brawler Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, the ball will never hurt you so seeing it bounce around the screen is always a welcome sight.
Providing less of an impact but still an appreciated little addition are the character cards. Once you’ve built up enough energy, you can use a preset character card to call on the help of other Looney Tunes, this providing immediate benefits like the Tasmanian Devil attacking all enemies on screen, Granny scattering healing food around your character, or the Roadrunner making your character move at a faster clip. It’s definitely hard to argue with the effectiveness of heals or group damage, but Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game isn’t a hard game despite giving you limited lives so you won’t be harmed too much for experimenting with the other options. At the same time though, the game is no pushover precisely because its enemies do post a threat, but even with all the little extras like the basketball or card it still feels like your combat options are a bit too plain to really push this onto the same level as other memorable beat ’em ups.
Boss fights in particular aren’t the kind of huge highlight you’d hope them to be. Choosing to bring in only two of the athlete-themed monsters from the film before wrapping up with a fight against Al-G, the patterns are perhaps too easy to identify and your basketball can help you overcome some of the challenges they might pose otherwise. They do at least progress through a few different moves the later in the fight you are, but if you do decide to do the unlockable Boss Rush, beating all three bosses without losing a life isn’t too tall an order save for the fact the final boss calls in smaller enemies who are a bit harder to handle than the pattern-obedient big guys. Besides some moments where you rather simply dodge rolling barrels or falling rocks, the boss fights are the main breaks from fighting enemies, but thankfully the normal fights are solid enough the game never gets dull, it just doesn’t do much more than provide a perfectly serviceable brawler experience for an hour.
THE VERDICT: Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game has more to its beat ’em up formula than you might expect considering it is a free game meant to advertise a film, but it never elevates itself beyond just being a bite-size bit of brawling action. The basketball and card system increase your battle options so you’re not stuck just pressing the attack button to win, and the regular enemies challenge you just enough that you’re picking your targets and need to work around their abilities and group dynamics. Bosses feel too few and somewhat simple, but the game keeps its pace up and rolls out new content often. It doesn’t have any real strong unique draw to its gameplay, but it is a short bit of fun for people who like the genre or just want something simple to supplement the film.
And so, I give Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game for Xbox One…
An OKAY rating. The main things that make Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game work as well as it does are the enemies who are a good fit for your limited attack options and that basketball that helps it avoid the fate of being a beat ’em up button masher. There’s a good amount of substance to a regular combat encounter that help it avoid growing old as you move from battle to battle, but it definitely does feel like some more attack options would help the player’s part of the fight feel more meaningful. One thing that makes the bosses less exciting is a lot boil down to either pestering them with a basketball or waiting until the moment where you can smack them with your basic combo. The action does last long enough to never feel like its simplicity is a problem that would hurt the experience at least, and the little interruptions with dodging sections or a big boss mean you don’t get tired of the small enemy stable featured. A lot of the suggestions like boss fights with more texture and challenge to them or just more bosses in general are probably the kinds of things you would see if the game was a full-fledged retail product, but as a free giveaway it’s remarkably solid and doesn’t seem to skimp on anything, it just doesn’t go the extra mile since it doesn’t feel like it needs to hook players.
Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game is good for a quick bit of co-op fun or just a way to kill some time when you don’t want to pick something bigger up. It may not have a complex development story like the film or really much of a chance of affirming itself as a nostalgic classic in the minds of a generation, but it chose to put LeBron and the Looney Tunes into a beat ’em up game and, like with the movies it is based on, it’s a better fit than you might expect. In fact, with more attention it could have been something potentially great, but this small sampling is still solid enough.