2/5 ★ – KHFanXIII's review of Spongebob Squarepants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman.

There is one word I would use to describe this game and that is underwhelming. I get it, this is the first SpongeBob 3D platformer, so I expected it to be rough, but boy oh boy, this is *really* rough. The story begins with (what I feel) is an oddly out of character moment for SpongeBob who, after unleashing the wrath of the Flying Dutchman, throws Gary under the bus and blames him for unleashing the Dutchman. I just don't feel like SpongeBob would do that, and it immediately stuck out as odd to me. Other than that, the story is kind of bland, but nothing I didn't expect. It was neat to hear Clancy Brown as Mr. Krabs in a game, I didn't initially expect that. Gameplay-wise, ooo boi, it's rough. I recommend not coming to this after playing the Heavy Iron Studios developed SpongeBob games (if you aren't very familiar with those games, or haven't played them in a long time, you should be fine however). It will just mess with your sense of timing and flow. It feels very floaty? But also not very free flowing. You have a wimpy jump, a short glide, and a power jump. There isn't one scenario I could think of where I didn't want to use the power jump, so this basically resulted in me holding down the R button (which is how you charge the power jump) and standing still whenever I wanted to make a jump. You can't do so while moving because that activates SpongeBob's rolling move, a move which is fairly useless. There are also several areas where they lock the camera and it makes it hard to determine where you're going to land during the platforming sections. One of the bigger issues is the music in the game, which is tied to the costumes. So, there are four outfits you can access when going to a changing tent. Each outfit has it's own music track (singular not plural), meaning four tracks in total, in addition to a few areas which have their own music. However, you mainly want to constantly be wearing the jellyfishing outfit as in every level there are jellyfish scattered throughout. Every costume has their own unique gimmick, but I can count on one hand the times I had to switch to another costume other than the jellyfishing gear (and it wouldn't even fill up the full hand). Because of this, you're basically only going to be hearing ONE music track throughout the entire game, and boy, does it grate on you after awhile. I had planned on 100%-ing the game, however, I ended up missing some barrels on the pier in the Goo Lagoon level which contained some doubloons (the common collectible of the game), and the pier gets destroyed after a certain point, meaning I could no longer go back and get those doubloons (at least to my knowledge. I looked it up, but it's not like tons of people are playing this game). I think it's below average. If you have nostalgia for it, that could probably help you look pass the less stellar parts of the game, but otherwise I would stay away and stick to the future 3D platformers.