Welcome to the Jam, then please uninstall.
With the upcoming Space Jam: A New Legacy movie hitting theatres and HBO Max on July 16th, Digital Eclipse, who has a history making Gameboy Advance games and various other retro collections, has just dropped Space Jam: A New Legacy exclusively on Xbox via the Game Pass Ultimate Perks program and will see a full free to play release hitting the Xbox store on July 15th as well, just a day before the movie releases. While I wasn’t expecting much, this feels more like something I’d find on a flash gaming site than a home console.
A New Legacy doesn’t really look to follow in the movie’s footsteps and instead is built around you finding four pieces of “Legacy Code” and defeating two members of the Goon Squad, before confronting Don Cheadle’s character, Al-G Rhythm, all in the span of around 40 minutes, and far less if you manage to force, er.. I mean, convince anyone into playing this with you. While beat’em up’s were never terribly long to begin with, they often had the buffer of difficulty to prolong that length. Here, A New Legacy is a walk in the park. While you’ll unlock Hard Mode after you complete the game, as well as its Boss Rush mode, you’ll not likely want to even play it a second time, unless you really need to unlock all the character assist cards; buffs that grant you extra strength or a buffet of health items.
While you’ll spend its short length fighting two major bosses and AL-G himself, you’ll contend with around 6 different enemy types as you progress. There is a standard robot you’ll see everywhere, a bomb-dropping robot, a faster more agile one, a little jumping frog robot, as well as a red robot that has a flame thrower, and a large four-armed foe that can dash at you fairly quickly. So yeah, everything you fight apart from the two Goon Squad bosses are robots, which you’ll easily defeat with just dropkicks.
In fact, while characters have standard punches, dash attacks, and special moves that consume health on use, dropkicks will defeat every single enemy with no resistance. You do have a basketball that you can charge up to throw, but you’ll rarely come to use it apart from maybe on The Brow, the first of the Good Squad bosses you’ll encounter. You’ll have a total of three lives, and dying will send you back to the start of that level, with your lives refreshed.
You’ll start your campaign by picking either Bugs, Lola, or Lebron James, each with the same overall ability and range. Each has their own special move, which is mostly something to deal with close-range combat, such as Lola dropping a safe, Bugs spinning around with boxing gloves, or Lebron just.. I dunno… holding his hand up towards a holographic basketball? Your special moves do consume health, but the Granny card that charges up pretty damn quick can often have you at full health in no time. There are other cards as well, such as Wile E. Coyote and his poison damage, Road Runner and their speed, Taz, who will go on a rampage, Tweety Bird, who grants you extra strength, and more. You’ll unlock them as you go, and in a single playthrough, I unlocked all but two as those are unlocked by completing hard mode and the boss rush mode.
While the game’s visuals are your standard pixelated retro look, this looks like something that feels at home on the Game Boy Advance, with some of the worst renditions of the Looney Tune cast I’ve ever seen. There is taking a cartoon and converting it into a video game via pixel art that can look good, if not amazing, but I cannot think of a single asset here that feels competent in any conceivable way. I mean, at least Lebron James looks like himself in the character select screen, and while Lola and Lebron don’t have black outlines around their portraits, Bugs does for half of his outline, as if they forgot to finish it.
I remember seeing the trailer and thinking not much of it other than sure, it could be a fun movie tie-in, but this honestly feels like I am playing that studio’s pitch game to Warner Bros instead of something deemed good enough for full release. Sure, it’s free, but there are tons of free games that at least look like they have had effort put into them. This feels like something made over the course of a day and found its way onto the Xbox store. Again, it’s free and does feature three-player co-op, so who knows, someone may enjoy this, but I couldn’t uninstall it fast enough.
Developer - Digital Eclipse. Publisher - Digital Eclipse. Released - July 1st, 2021. Available On - Xbox One, Series X/S, Windows. Rated - (E 10+) No Descriptors. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Space Jam: A New Legacy was downloaded via Game Pass Perks.