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Space Jam: A New Legacy debuts on Friday, July 16, in theaters and on HBO Max.

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It’s impossible to watch Space Jam: A New Legacy without comparing it to the original 1996 Space Jam starring Michael Jordan. The sequel, which features LeBron James as its basketball star this time, makes big strides in updating the premise for 2021, but ultimately acts as a calling card for Warner Bros. properties the way Ralph Wrecks the Internet was for Disney. There’s still, however, a surprising amount of heart in this story, reminding audiences to stay true to yourself, but to keep things fun as well.

The movie takes on the same beats of the original film: an all-star basketball star is trapped in a universe where he plays a high-stakes basketball game against a team composed of, by some measure, pro-basketball players. This time, however, the stakes are more personal. The movie’s LeBron James is a multi-championship winning, social media-influencing entrepreneur/basketball player who only wants his sons to focus on basketball. His son Dominic has greater passions for video game development and feels misunderstood that his dad won’t let him be himself.

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After LeBron rejects what is essentially a deep-fake pitch from Warner Bros.’ AI program, Al-G Rhythm (Don Cheadle), LeBron and Dom are kidnapped by the scorned Al-G and trapped in the studio’s Serververse. LeBron is challenged to a basketball game where winning means saving his son AND his likeness. However, the game of “basketball” Al-G challenges LeBron to is based on the version from Dom’s video game, where participants play with style and fun rather than with the rigid fundamentals of the sport. It’s a lesson LeBron struggles to learn throughout the film, which is more than enough time for Warner Bros. to showcase a huge chunk of its catalog of movies and TV shows.

The original Space Jam placed the weight of the movie on Michael Jordan’s back, but in this more fleshed-out (pun intended) sequel, LeBron also has an engaging supporting cast of characters that evens out LeBron’s more grounded performance. So while LeBron’s performance in Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck garnered him praise and confidence in leading the Space Jam sequel, it’s harder to see his charisma past a string of lines that are nothing more than stern, motivational mantras. LeBron’s fictionalized version is just a 2D avatar of himself, ironically becoming the very thing Al-G Rhythm wants. However, when the script allows James to lean into being Looney or playing the compassionate father, he is the ultimate showman athlete.

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Removing himself from his superhero armor, Don Cheadle is an unhinged villain as the all-powerful king of the Serververse. Channeling his unnerving spoof performance as Captain Planet, Cheadle’s Al-G pits son against father with a smile on his face, manipulating their relationship all for his own gain by hacking into LeBron’s social media feeds. Al-G’s ease of control of technology outside of the Serververse is questionable, but also serves as a reminder of the larger surveillance state we actually live in.

The emotional core of the film is Cedric Joe’s Dom, who has defeat and hope written on his face as he sorts through this complicated relationship with his father. He avoids tropes of being either a jock or a tech fanatic by being both; he could be great at basketball, but his face lights up when he talks about his true passions in tech. It’s surprising, and a little hard to believe at times, that LeBron wouldn’t encourage his son to be the best in anything he wanted to do.

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There’s no denying that the movie is visually exciting, inviting comparisons to Warner Bros.’ similarly flashy Ready Player One. The movie seamlessly transitions through different styles, from Looney Tunes to Bruce Timm to classic Ben Day comic book styles, while also mixing in live-action modern and Old Hollywood film aesthetics. The most impressive feat of the sequel is now incorporating video game design as a form of entertainment, and the CGI of the digital/video game space is impressive. The Goon Squad is a team of elemental monster/human hybrids, favoring to show more physical resemblance to the pro-basketball players over the extended cameos in the 1996 movie. The worlds and characters also move smoothly within these dimensions, with only a few of the Looney Tuners looking a bit off. (Here’s looking at you, Bugs.) The background live-action characters we see at the game, however, are distracting and underwhelming. It might have been better just to digitally insert actual movie characters, instead of seeing unsettling Halloween costume versions of Pennywise cheering alongside White Walkers and Droogs.

And yet, for all the spectacle, our Looney Tunes characters are sidelined and wasted in this sequel. Even Zendaya’s buzzy casting as Lola Bunny gets lost when you have dragons and the exciting Goon Squad filling every second in the Serververse. As Warner Bros. faces tougher competition than it used to — with Disney and Pixar’s continuous output, the rise of adult-oriented animation, and anime becoming more accessible and popular in the U.S. — it feels more like a passing of the torch. And that’s a little odd, considering the Looney Tunes brand has been revived on HBO Max with new episodes and if anything, this should serve as a revival of the franchise for new audiences, or even a reminder for old fans.

Hello IGN readers — I’m the new Community Lead for IGN, Jada Griffin. You may have seen me on NVC as well as commenting and moderating across Twitch and Youtube during E3 last few weeks. I wanted to take some time today to introduce myself as your point of contact to the IGN Team. To kick things off, a bit about myself and what I like to do and play. In my past life, I worked as a journalist covering everything you frequently see under the IGN content umbrella. I have led community efforts, content teams, and worked directly with game developers in a business development capacity for various companies like FANDOM.  While I enjoyed these areas I worked in, I inevitably found myself missing the connections I made when working closely with the communities connected to those industries. All of this brings me to this exciting new opportunity at IGN. 

I’m sure you all might want to know more about what kind of gamer I am, too. I play just about everything, so you can expect to see me across IGN in various discussions, podcasts, and live streams discussing easter eggs, optimized builds and loadouts, and probably my latest 100% game completion. A few of my favorite games include Apex Legends, Monster Hunter, Halo, LoL, God of War, Final Fantasy, and — my favorite franchise of all time — The Legend of Zelda. I could spend my entire introduction just talking about these games and others that have found their way into my list of all-time favorites. Instead, I would like to spend some time talking about my goals, intentions, and hopes for the future of the IGN community.

Games and entertainment (and tech and science, and the other topics IGN is increasingly exploring based on our audience’s interests) will always be topics that incite heated discussions of differing views. These viewpoints are born of our collective passion for the things we all enjoy. When we connect with games, characters, movies, etc, we often forge bonds with them. They sometimes then become larger than life itself and take on a greater personal meaning. This passion empowers communities and is one of the things I want to begin highlighting.

While many will probably agree with the fact that since its launch Final Fantasy VII has been the benchmark for what a traditional FF game should be, my aim is to have our community be one that ensures fans of FF can champion their favorite and share their point of view without the fear of toxicity. 

What to Expect

Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll be releasing blog posts like this to speak to various topics to further strengthen the connection between the IGN staff and our community. One of the first posts you can expect will be around subjects like our updated guidelines for communicating within the IGN community. Other topics will include discussions around how we approach reviews, moderation, upcoming initiatives, and updates to our existing formats and content. 

Now, I cannot speak for what has transpired within the IGN community in the past. However, I can address the steps we will be taking to put our best efforts into making this already great community even better, this will be through feedback surveys, Discord AMA’s, chatting regularly with viewers during streams, and more. I hope being transparent with you all about our practices, goals, and initiatives fosters and nurtures our relationship. 

This is where the community comes in. I am looking for your input and feedback. I’m not here to just moderate comments, I’m here for the bigger picture. This is a two-way street, and I’d like to be a resource to the community so we can make the best decisions possible to help you feel more connected to us and our work. This is going to work best with your input and assistance, with it we can make the community an even more vibrant, diverse, and inclusive space for everyone. There will be more options in the future for putting forward your suggestions but for now, the comments section of this post is a great place to start!. 

I look forward to working with you.

“Be Brave Enough to be Kind and Wise enough to continue learning how to be both”

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Jada Griffin is IGN’s Community Lead. If she’s not engaging with users here, chances are she’s developing her own games, maxing the Luck stat in her favorite games, or challenging her D&D players with Intense combat or masterful puzzles. You can follow her on Twitter @Jada_Rina.

Spoilers for The Last of Us Part II…

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Anyone that’s played The Last of Us Part II knows that there is a sequence while playing as Abby that sees her chase after Tommy. They also know that you don’t actually make it to Tommy and defeat them.

However, news popped last week that if you go too fast during this specific sequence, you can actually catch up to Tommy and kill him, as reported by Kotaku. This article spurred TLOU2 technical designer Asher Einhorn to create a lengthy thread on Twitter yesterday to explain how difficult it was to design this chase.

This sequence actually started off as a systemic prototype for a sniper enemy I made way back in 2016. This person was going to live in a number of levels and they would reposition if they saw you too close to them.

— Asher Einhorn (@AsherEinhorn) July 13, 2021

As noted by Eurogamer, Einhorn says that the Tommy chase in TLOU2 started as a sniper prototype he started working on in 2016 before the studio opted to turn this sequence into a boss fight. TLOU2 director Neil Druckmann decided that Tommy should be the boss.

“Tommy wasn’t going to die in this sequence, so we had the extremely difficult challenge of creating a boss fight where you weren’t going to win, AND one where you couldn’t even shoot him,” Einhorn said.

Einhorn said the team knew that if players shot at Tommy and he didn’t die, people would say he has “plot armor,” thus ruining the tension, so the team had a challenge before them: creating a boss fight where you aren’t supposed to win, despite feeling like you can.

So with that, I could focus more on the scripting. This whole sequence is pretty custom, and Tommy has a controller in each beat that will kill the player when out of bounds and punish them if they try to get a shot off at him.

— Asher Einhorn (@AsherEinhorn) July 13, 2021

Einhorn continued and said that it was important to the team to make the fight feel fair, which is why “Tommy gets into position before you can get to a good vantage point…so that you can’t ever really discover that Tommy is essentially invincible [as] he will shoot you pretty much as soon as you try to aim at him.”

Einhorn’s thread talks about how the team ultimately decided to create a sequence that linearly leads you forward, using destructible objects to make Tommy feel legitimately dangerous until Abby reaches the terminal lobby.

This next section was, to be blunt, a fucking huge pain in the ass to make work, but actually a lot of fun to do. I love doing this stuff. We wanted it to feel like you were just catching up to Tommy, that you almost had him, and that it was your brazenness that gets Manny killed pic.twitter.com/2y59m50fjE

— Asher Einhorn (@AsherEinhorn) July 13, 2021

Einhorn says that ultimately, he feels the sequence “suffers a little because it’s just not long enough to let the beat breathe.”

“I think it needed to be a much larger space, with more forced route crossing and zigzagging and way way more destructible things for Tommy to hit as he shoots you,” one of Einhorn’s final tweets in the thread reads. “It’s not quite the matrix lobby fight I wanted it to be, but I hope it’s still cool.”

“I was thinking about this sequence a lot post-launch because it was just SO much work but that work isn’t especially noticeable,” they continued. “We’re trying to prevent the player from doing something they’ve done all game so far and have it not be frustrating and that was SO hard. But ultimately, when you play it, you don’t FEEL the effort that’s been put in like you would with a bigger dramatic set-piece.”

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For more about the TLOU2, check out our thoughts on the game in IGN’s The Last of Us Part 2 review, and then check out this video about how its 1.08 Update on the PlayStation 5 pushes the game to 60FPS. Read what Xbox thought of The Last of Us Part 2 after that.

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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.

Since launching, Chivalry 2 has been plagued with a number of bugs, most of which relate to its party system on PC. Developer Torn Banner Studios has been working on a massive patch to address these issues, as well as some others, including the game’s performance on Xbox Series S consoles. However, the patch has been delayed due to issues found in its final stage of quality assurance verification.

According to a post on Chivalry 2’s site, the problems in question are directly related to the game’s matchmaking systems. While the patch would have fixed a number of issues with Chivalry 2’s multiplayer for most players, issues are present that “would have broken the matchmaking process for a portion of the population.” To spare that group of players from a below-standard experience, Chivalry 2’s 2.0.1 patch was delayed.

Torn Banner Studios also addressed why it wouldn’t simply release a hotfix for Chivalry 2 that would fix the game’s party system issues on PC. According to the developer, “a hotfix cannot be prepared due to the complex nature of how these patches are worked on internally (also known as branches that separate builds live on).”

Despite its issues, Torn Banner Studios is still set on releasing the 2.0.1 patch for Chivalry 2 this month.

Along with the upcoming patch, more content is also coming to Chivalry 2 soon. A new map, titled Galencourt, was revealed last month and will have players fight through the immaculate halls of an Agathian castle. A release date for the new map has not been revealed yet.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection received a playlist update on July 14 that brought back the Gun Game-style Escalation Slayer mode and removed a fan-favorite, Grifball.

In Escalation Slayer, you get a new weapon each time you get a kill. The fast-paced, frenetic mode is playable in Halo: Reach, Halo 2: Anniversary, and Halo 4 inside MCC. There is a dedicated playlist for it accessible through the match composer so you can play it 24/7 if you want.

As for Grifball, the popular mode involving huge hammers is now out of rotation. This is nothing out of the ordinary, as developer 343 regularly updates MCC’s playlists.

In other Halo news, 343 has been very vocal in reminding players to sign up for Halo Insider for a chance to be selected for the upcoming Halo Infinite beta test. Even the official Xbox Twitter account posted about this today, which may suggest the beta’s start is coming up soon.

Additionally, a new 500-page Halo Encyclopedia is set to be released in early 2022. It’s not coming until then to help avoid spoilers about Halo Infinite.

Dirt 5 came out back in late 2020, but a big update will bring new life to the game, especially the PS5 version. According to a post on the PlayStation Blog, the upcoming July 20 update will improve the game’s DualSense integration, with adaptive trigger support and full haptics that can simulate the clunk of a gear change, as well as the feel of different traction on discrete surfaces.

The update will also bring a ton of new content to the game, including weekly challenges and creator rewards in Dirt 5’s Playgrounds mode, five new Trophies, two new circuits, and 27 new events. Additionally, it will improve the game’s 3D audio integration on PS5, to really enhance your immersion as you race around each track.

It’s important to note that the 27 new events and four new cars does require the Amplified/Year One Edition, or a purchase through the PS Store. However, all of the other content is free to all players, so there’s something new for everyone regardless.

In GameSpot’s Dirt 5 review, critic Richard Wakeling praised the game’s arcade sensibilities and large amount of content, but faulted its handling model as lacking depth.

“Dirt 5 doesn’t quite stick the landing due to its simplistic handling model, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had when racing door to door in an excessive snowstorm or throwing a Porsche 911 R-GT down the side of a mountain in a frenetic race to the bottom,” he wrote. “It doesn’t reach the heights of Dirt 2, but that game’s influence is keenly felt in Dirt 5. If the series continues along this path, it won’t be long until it’s soaring high again.”