Jumanji: Wild Adventures is a new game coming out for some reason and it doesn’t look good. In fact, if we’re being completely honest. this licensed tie-in game looks like absolute bumwater.
No new movie with this cast has been announced at the time of writing, unless this is supposed to be secret marketing. The Jumanji movie franchise has been rather silent since the release of 2019’s Jumanji: The Next Level.
The new tie-in game blasts gameplay that looks like a less impressive version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance. Bringing back the same cast as the last two movies, players will be able to control Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson and Karen Gillan lookalikes to their heart’s content.
Admittedly, it’s not just Marvel Ultimate Alliance this licensed game copies. We also see elements of Crash Bandicoot with some of the platforming. That doesn’t make it look better but it sure is something, we suppose.
If Jumanji: Wild Adventures came out around the same time as the third movie, we would understand this move. But it’s been three years since the last installment and we’re not sure why this game is happening.
We know it’s mean to pick on a licensed game that probably has a small team working on it but other titles have broken our expectations. Marvel’s Spider-Man, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and the recent Star Trek Resurgence shows good licensed games can exist. Then again, Gollum and Marvel’s Avengers exist, so the bad equals the good.
Prior to this, we did get a tie-in game in 2019 simply called Jumanji: The Video Game and it also featured the movie’s cast. That one looked like a poor Fortnite rip-off with a single-player campaign and it wasn’t good either. However, since we are getting a good game, maybe the 2019 title sold more than we thought.
This Jumanji reboot featuring Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Jack Black, and Kevin Hart continues to be some sort of miracle. Most of us expected the first movie to bomb since it came out in the same period as Star Wars but it was a financial success. The fact we got two more sequels and now two games shows that.
Jumanji: Wild Adventures comes out later this year on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series, Switch, and PC.