After almost 25 years, the sequel to Space Jam is here, and as in the original, this new film called Space Jam: New Legends has received a video game that references the very original title of Space Jam: A New Legacy – The Game. . This Digital Eclipse work has been available for two weeks with the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, but is now available to everyone as a free Beat’em Up experience. I recently played on a Gamereactor Live (which you can see in full below) and after completing it on Live several times I think I have enough to give you a review.
First off for those of you who don’t know, the title takes place before the movie’s big basketball game, and features Bugs Bunny, Lola Bunny and LeBron James in a digital retro landscape where they defeat different kinds of robot enemies as they go after the old one Search code Ancient (“Legacy Code”), which contains the information about the whereabouts of the hiding place of AL.G (the villain played by Don Cheadle in the film).
It’s a classic beat’em up, which means that the control design is more limited to pressing a button or two to perform a few different movements, but there are some notable features that try to set it apart from its competitors such as the fact that the three characters can carry a basketball and use it as a weapon against the dangers that lie in wait for us. I’m not going to lie, the limited number of combat mechanics was a little disappointing and means you can’t do many combinations of moves at the same time. In fact, the amount of combat mechanics would make this a perfect game for the NES controller – it’s that limited.
That’s not to say that the gameplay itself is tedious. For a bit of beat’em up (and it’s short but I’ll cover that later) it’s fun and has a decent challenge that never gets you down, but won’t hesitate to lower your vapors if you don’t stay focused . Often face challenges with new enemies and boss encounters to get your attention. And to top it off, the game also features cards adorned with Looney Tunes characters, which when used provide special abilities and can drop a variety of healing items or increase the damage done to any character you play.
It should be noted that while LeBron, Bugs and Lola have different effects on their abilities, every single move and combat mechanic is exactly the same for all three characters.
As a final note on the mechanics, using the basketball as a weapon is by far the most distinctive part of the game itself. Using the ball allows you to charge it to throw it and do massive damage, jump and throw it for area damage cause, and the best part is that every time the ball goes outside the limits of the screen, Tweety (the yellow canary) will select it and you will return it. They are fun to abuse.
Anyway, one of the most important and surprising points: this game is very, very short. Okay, it’s a free game, which means you shouldn’t expect a very long experience of more than 30 hours. But even so, I managed to get through the game on normal difficulty in less than an hour before deciding to switch back to the hard mode that you unlock. Considering that the only other game mode is “Boss Rush” that asks you to defeat each of the three main bosses with a single life, you will likely get around 3 hours of gameplay in a row, which is significantly less than I personally expect.
Since there are three playable characters, you can share the game with up to three people at the same time and even pass the ball to each other like in a normal NBA game when multiple users are connected at the same time.
All in all, Space Jam: New Legends: The Video Game offers a decent yet very simple beat’em up for such a short free game. It’s fun, varied and captivating despite its short duration, especially when played cooperatively. Given that you can download it for free and play it right away, I recommend you try it out as it is at least a fun way to spend an afternoon.
