3.5/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide.

3D Platformers are probably one of my favorite genres of video games, unfortunately besides Nintendo games, there aren't a whole lot of them being made anymore. Growing up I had loved the early Spongebob platformers like Battle for Bikini Bottom and The Movie Game and both hold a very special place in my heart. The Cosmic Shake from a few years ago was the spiritual successor to those games and I was a little disappointed by the result, it's not a bad game it's just a very generic one that suffered from extremely linear level design and an overfocus on story rather than gameplay. Titans of the Tide is everything I wanted The Cosmic Shake to be, it's not perfect, but it does fix a lot of the problems I had with it's predecessor. Purple Lamp basically took everything that worked from the previous two games and refined the jagged edges. The movement is extremely smooth, the platforming has a lot of depth to it, and the combat has improved drastically since the previous games. One of my favorite mechanics was the ability to switch on the fly between Spongebob and Patrick and how often switching between them is used in different gameplay scenarios, it all just feels really fluid and less janky compared to Cosmic Shake. The platforming itself is really fun, you get a lot of different abilities for both characters that are expanded upon as the game continues that work in tandem with each other. There's several moments where you'll be mid air and have to switch to the other character to use their specific moves and I thought the utilization of those unique abilities was really well done. The actual levels are all great too, there's a lot more to them this time instead of them being really linear, there's secrets to uncover, places to explore and just more of what I wanted from a game like this. Easily one of the best aspects of this game are the boss fights and are some of the best I've experienced from a 3D platformer in a long time. The Neptune Statue and the Hibernation Sandy fights are both real highlights that were genuinely fun. Combat as a whole is also pretty good, it's not groundbreaking or anything but compared to the first two games it is a night and day difference. In my Cosmic Shake review I complained a lot about the story focused approach they took and how that was an overall detriment to the quality of the game. Titans of the Tide manages to have it's story in the background while also not shoving it in your face as much. There aren't nearly as many cutscenes as Cosmic Shake but it still manages to tell a serviceable story despite that. Not that this story is anything to write home about, in fact it's pretty mediocre, but it does the job for a Spongebob game. However I do have an issue with the cutscenes and a lot of that has to do with how it's animated. It's really hard to describe the exact movement they're doing, but everything feels bouncy and over animated, kind of like you're watching one of those cringey Tiktok videos of people overexaggerating their movements to fit with a song or clip or something of that nature. This is more of a nitpick than an actual complaint, but it did bother me enough to write it down in my notes. One of the biggest sins of this game, along with the Cosmic Shake, is the overreliance on early Spongebob references for jokes. There's so many moments in both games where they'll reference something from one of those early seasons out of the blue, it doesn't lead anywhere, it doesn't try to setup a punch line, they are just references for the sake of referencing something. It's not as egregious as the Cosmic Shake having entire levels dedicated to certain Spongebob gags, but it did still bother me. Another issue I have with this game is the length, It took me around 5-6 hours to finish this game, and I feel like I took my time too. For $40, I don't really know if a 5-6 hour experience is really worth the price of entry, regardless of how great the game actually is. Titans of the Tide is a really fun Spongebob Platformer and I truly hope Purple Lamp is able to continue this trend of making new great Spongebob Games. While I don't recommend buying it at it's full $40 price tag, I do recommend keeping tabs on it until a sale arrives as it's one of the best platformers of the 2020s.