3.5/5 ★ – WrathofBen's review of The Spongebob Squarepants Movie.

Yet another flea market find, this is a game I remember fondly from my childhood. And since I JUST finished Cosmic Shake on the Switch, this felt like a good time to revisit this hidden gem. While I don’t think everything has aged great with this title, it’s still a great platformer for the titular sponge. The story follows the basic plot of the movie, with some levels expanding on moments in the movie for the sake of extending the game’s length. Levels range from platformer levels, Patty Wagon stages, boss fights, and sliding levels. The platform sections are easily the best, with the Patty Wagon and sliding levels turning into a chore real quick. The game also ditches the open world that Battle for Bikini Bottom had in favor for more open levels. Enemies and abilities are similar to the previous game, with slight alterations to fit the movie. Abilities also have upgrades based on how many dumbbells you pickup throughout the game. Honestly, given how little time Heavy Iron had to develop this game, it’s honestly a miracle this game turned out good at all. However, that explains why the game’s progression is so insanely bloated. Like the last game’s golden spatulas, this game has you collecting Goofy Goober tokens. And BOY do they want you to collect these things. You are constantly locked from moving on, unless you have enough tokens. If the game was designed better, it would reward you for exploring each level by seamlessly letting you progress through the game. But instead, the game wants you to collect every token ever to continue through the game, including the extremely tedious time trials and ring challenges during the car and sliding levels. Instead of being extra collectibles at the end to unlock bonus goodies, it MAKES you get almost every token to beat the game. If the tokens were fun to gather in the racing levels, great. But it turns okay sections in the game to downright awful sections. ESPECIALLY the ring challenges, which often point rings in opposite directions than you’re intended to go. You HAVE to memorize these in order to beat them. It’s beyond annoying. Sound design and music are fun here, but I suspect some tracks are borrowed from other games. The first boss fight with the sandworm plays a song that I know for a FACT is in Star Trek: Shattered Universe for the PS2. It really stumped me as to why that was the case, but I’m ALSO pretty sure I’ve heard the track in X2: Wolverine’s Revenge as a kid. So, really odd. Anyway, graphics are also pretty solid for the time. Though it’s clearly still in that era of cursed 3D SpongeBob, and before they really figured out how to get these characters to work in 3D. Still, the game looks good most of the time. I really enjoyed this stroll down memory lane, even if there were moments it forced me to play longer because there was only so many levels. The game is genuinely funny, though. Like, SpongeBob has 3 increasingly difficult combat challenges, but Patrick gets one “INSANELY hard” combat challenge at the end, and it’s just a jellyfish. That cracked me up so much, what a clever use of a minigame for a joke. There’s even random lines that play when you are paused and going through options on the menu. This game, while clearly rushed, has a lot of charm. And it’s totally worth playing or replaying if you get the chance. 7/10. I wanted to rip my hair out at times, but it was a nice blast from the past overall!