Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle surprised audiences when it turned out to be actually good. The 2017 movie might not replace the 1995 classic starring Robin Williams, but the comedic performances of its core quartet proved for an entertaining trip to the movies. Moviegoers liked it enough to warrant a sequel– Jumanji: The Next Level due out this year. With this sequel comes a video game, called quite simply Jumanji: The Video Game.
The main gimmick of the newer Jumanji movies is that the characters are trapped in a video game. The first movie saw four wildly different teenagers get detention Breakfast Club-style and find the game in a basement, only to get transported into Jumanji and take the form of video game avatars. That’s where the superstar foursome of Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson come in. They play the video game bodies the teens find themselves in. They return in the sequel, only now the characters that inhabit their bodies are different. That’s how we end up with Danny Devito’s character inside Dwayne Johnson’s body. He’s also one of the characters you can play as in Jumanji: The Video Game.
The footage released so far doesn’t explain the story of the game. Are we meant to be playing a copy of the cursed Jumanji board game-turned-video game? Or are we simply playing through the events of one of the movies? Since this game is coming out close to Jumanji: The Next Level’s theatrical release, it makes sense for it to be based on the plot of the latest movie. Which means we could be playing as The Rock’s character, who is being inhabited by Danny Devito’s character. And what game could ever hope to match having both Dwayne Johnson and Danny Devito simultaneously playable?
That said, gameplay is also an important factor in any video game. At the moment, Jumanji: The Video Game seems to be a third-person platformer/brawler with shooter elements. It’s difficult to nail down a particular genre of gaming, but the Jumanji staples of exploring lost temples, dodging traps, and running from angry animals are there. There also seems to be the potential for co-op, which makes sense given that the movies put emphasis on teamwork.
Jumanji: The Video Game will release on November 8th for Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC. If it’s good, it might just get us through the wait for the actual movie, when the cinematic dream of The Rock playing Danny Devito will be realized.
