JUMANJI: The Video Game

My first ten minutes with JUMANJI: The Video Game felt promising enough. Four iconic characters, a jungle to fight through, friendly fire toggle on or off. It has the bones of a perfectly decent budget co-op brawler. Then I finished the first level, started the second, and realized I had basically just played the same level again with different wallpaper. The core loop is a third-person shooter with melee and a single unique ability per character. Dr. Smolder Bravestone hits hard, Ruby Roundhouse brings martial arts, Franklin "Mouse" Finbar handles animal communication and weapons support, and Professor Shelly Oberon rounds out the roster. On paper the four distinct kits should encourage teamwork. In practice, the level design never demands you use them cleverly. You collect four relic shards, carry a jewel to an obelisk while waves of identical enemies pour in, dodge some floor spikes and axes in underground corridors, then watch a result screen hand you experience toward cosmetic unlocks. Repeat across four areas, each distinguished mainly by lighting and texture swaps. The whole campaign can be wrapped up in roughly two hours, possibly less if your group is efficient. The supporting systems collapse under scrutiny. Online matchmaking is effectively dead, so expect AI teammates or a friend on your couch. The AI companions are functional enough that a solo run rarely feels dangerous, which deflates any tension on normal difficulty. Voice acting uses soundalike actors rather than the film cast, and the replacement one-liners loop so aggressively that by level three you will be mouthing them before the characters say them. Visuals sit well below the standard of games released in the same year; the character models are recognizable but the environments look like something from a significantly earlier console generation. There is no story to speak of, no boss encounters, and the cosmetic progression, new outfit colors and weapon skins, does almost nothing to motivate replaying the same handful of maps. The one genuine bright spot: very young fans of the movies, playing split-screen with a parent, seem to have a decent time with it. The controls are simple enough for children to pick up, the friendly fire option makes co-op forgiving, and the three lives per player system with the ability to share lives keeps runs from ending abruptly. If that is your exact use case, a heavily discounted copy could buy a couple of weekend afternoons of low-stakes fun. For anyone else, the content-to-cost ratio is hard to justify, and the baffling decision to omit bosses, story, or any meaningful character progression means there is nothing to come back for once the first playthrough is done. Alex, Scout Team