The newest installation in the series offers more adventure, gameplay variety, and multiplayer action. With an expanded world, plenty of challenges, up to four-player co-op, and a story that can be slightly different every time, players are set for a wild gaming experience.
Story
In a short opening cutscene, gamers see a lightning storm activate a cracked and broken Jumanji cartridge that conveniently wiggles its way over to the console and plugs itself in, zapping the four high school students, Spencer, Fridge, Bethany, and Martha, back into the game. And boom! The game starts!
Players are immediately thrown into the tutorial by learning how to dodge, jump, and attack a giant octopus attacking the ship everyone has landed on.
Moments later, players learn that the Jewel of Jumanji has been stolen (again).
Backstory? Don’t need it! Characters? You should already know who they are, noob! Plot? Happening!
Gameplay
Players must find the thief and return the jewel by exploring the Jumanji jungle. As soon as I saw the vehicle I would need to drive to navigate the jungle, I immediately had flashbacks to Mass Effect Mako missions. Still, this jeep is pretty easy to drive. I wonder if the devs know how much gamers hate driving missions because this thing can turn on a dime and donut for days. As with any game, it is worth taking the time to drive around and explore because players will find chests to ram, secret doors, and even some sweet ramps to launch off of in search of coins.
When players are ready to actually start playing the game, they just need to drive to one of the classic green glowing jewels/portals that appear on the map and click A. In the early levels of the game, the levels are pretty linear. Still, my understanding is that this will change a little later in the game, as the devs have said that players can search the jungle in any order they want.
There are lots of bosses lurking in the levels, though, with both human and animal bosses ready to attack at any moment. Bosses appear randomly each time players start a new game, which increases replayability but also means that players could discover the jewel there right away, or they may have to tromp all over the world to find it. The actual boss who has the jewel does not change; they can just pop up at any moment.
The game supports a single-player or four-player couch co-op. Gameplay scales depending on the number of active players and increasing enemies, which means that lonely me was able to tackle the levels all by myself, but if I ever find a friend, then we can play together and still enjoy a challenge.
Gamers don’t have to stick with one character, either. When entering each Jumanji level, they are given the option to select whomever they want to play as. Each character has its strengths, weaknesses, and special attacks. Smolder punches and gets a boomerang, Ruby kicks and gets shuriken, Mouse whacks people with his backpack and throws dynamite, and Shelly, well, Shelly gets bug spray.
The new game has expanded environments, allowing for a more diverse and immersive game. From volcanoes to temples, the game offers a lot of variety. Players can search for collectibles throughout each level, including the scattered letters of JUMANJI. Players can exchange their treasure and loot to Nigel (i.e., Rhys Darby, New Zealand’s national treasure) for upgrades, power-ups, and special items.
Difficulty Levels
In Jumanji: Wild Adventures, players can choose their difficulty levels. Easy gets you infinite lives. Medium gets you three lives, and dying restarts you at the last checkpoint. Hard means three lives, restarting at a further back checkpoint, and super-strength enemies.
Jumping is a ridiculously large aspect of this game, which is not fair to those of us who CANNOT JUMP IN GAMES! For this reason, I started off playing on Easy because jumping off of ledges is a real issue for me. I’m the type of gamer who’ll jump, then panic, then wildly swing the joystick so my character rotates in the air, then completely misses the ledge and falls to their death.
Overall
8/10
Jumanji: Wild Adventures is an entertaining play, and I think would be accessible for younger gamers and non-gamers. This is the perfect game for a family night or to play with friends after school.
There were more glitches than I was expecting (enemies regularly got stuck between trees, behind boxes, etc.), but most of them seemed to favor the player. The story and gameplay are exactly what they needed to be: silly with lots of action.
Check out the Jumanji: Wild Adventures launch trailer:
Jumanji: Wild Adventures is available now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox X|S and PC via Steam, and the official website.
Related: Reviews by Michelle Jones
I'm a completionist gamer who just needs to find that one last object and clear that final dungeon. I love all video games, from open world sandboxes on a console to a mindless match three on my phone. In addition to gaming and writing, I am a graduate student working on a thesis about the ancient Icelandic Sagas. Feel free to ask me anything about Vikings.
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