Welcome to our review of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated, a game with two playable characters and also two faces.
Are you ready, kids? The cult classic is back, faithfully remade in spongetastic splendor! Play as SpongeBob, Patrick and Sandy and show the evil Plankton that crime pays even less than Mr. Krabs. Want to save Bikini Bottom from lots of rampant robots with your mighty bubbles? Of course you do! Want to underpants bungee jump? Why wouldn’t you! Want to join forces in a brand new multiplayer mode? The battle is on!
Originally released back in 2003 and it was available on the big three platforms as well as Windows and Game Boy Advance. It had a somewhat lukewarm reception at the time and its current metacritic score of 70 percent clearly shows this. I personally own it on Gamecube and can not remember whether or not I liked it back in the day. I had way too many other games back in the day and I admit to being a Scooby Doo fan on cube.
Fast forward to today where I am writing the review for the remake of this game and I had quite some issues in my playthrough. I will do my best to explain my lower score as well. First up, my previous comment about this game having 2 faces. There is a great side and there is a janky side. First off, I would like to mention this game really grabs the Spongebob feeling and does show us some very pleasant graphics.
A minor detail that I really appreciated, the shadows of our characters. When you jump with either of them, you can see their shadow and see whether or not you already reached that next part of the map where you need to be or if you will end up falling down. It may sound stupid, but it really worked very well.
It also should be mentioned that this is available for all and Spongebob especially feels really nimble and well, he plays incredibly well. Quick to the touch and just overall the best way to play this game. Whether he is sliding down a ramp or attacking or even running away… Spongebobs’ movements are quite possibly the best out there.
And then there is Patrick, who is by far one of the worst I have played in ages. He is slow, janky at best and well, I hated playing with him. He has this weird mechanic where he can pick up an item and throw it. But as the item is very limited in time, the bad mechanics to either throw them or stack them, they are counterproductive and slow and incredibly irritating. We have a clip up on our youtube to showcase how he plays and yes, you can see me shaking my head the entire time in the reflection. It was my first time playing that specific section and I literally felt like throwing away my switch at that time.
In conclusion, Spongebob has a really fun and novel side to him but Patrick is just plain ruining the experience for me personally. So how do you rate a game like this, Spongebobs parts are quick and fun compared to very long and painfully annoying Patrick parts. I pondered between a six and half a point higher and decided to give it the higher of both ratings because you can play with Spongebob most of the time after all.
