3/5 ★ – sirvalkyerie's review of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated.

Battle for Bikini Bottom is a competent little platformer that does just enough to be enjoyable but not quite enough to really be memorable. It's a skippable game but one that is still plenty fun if you did take the time with it. Perhaps the nostalgia glasses are needed, I never played the original, but I did mostly enjoy the time I spent playing. I played alongside my wife, who remembered the original fondly from her childhood. It's bouncy and easy and kinda fast paced. The only major downside is how much the Switch struggled at times running it. A couple areas had some framerate drops and I found there were just way too many, sometimes lengthy, loading screens. Too many load screens between switching characters or map locations slowed down a game that really should be very snappy. Most of the puzzles were quite simple and straightforward. Only on rare occasion did the game actually present much of a challenge. I was fond of the number of collectibles though I found too much of the game's dialogue repetitive or just plain unfunny. I don't think the game did a fantastic job capturing the humor of SpongeBob but more clearly felt like something attempting to capture the humor of SpongeBob. Still, the game is scant on story as-is and you do get a mostly competent platforming experience which is nice. In many ways I wish there was a sequel instead of a remaster. Rehydrated shows why games of this style have largely been left by the wayside over the years. I think an updated take on a SpongeBob platformer could offer a real fun 3D platforming experience that you're just not going to get from a game that originally released in 2003