SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake Overview (PS4)

Aficionados of Nickelodeon’s iconic square-panted hero will largely agree Battle for Bikini Backside is the perfect SpongeBob sport. Practically twenty years later, developer Purple Lamp Studios introduced it again with a full remake, and it was clear followers had been hungry for one thing recent. The staff’s response is SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake, a sport which builds upon the gameplay of the 2020 remake with some unique concepts of its personal. The end result? This feels just like the remake of a PS2-era platformer that by no means existed.

It follows a lot of the identical design seen in Battle for Bikini Backside, giving the sport an old-fashioned really feel. Just like the 20-year-old fan fave, Cosmic Shake permits you to discover a easy hub world, with a number of comparatively massive ranges branching off. SpongeBob feels similar to management as he did earlier than, solely this time he has a number of new tips. It additionally options Tiki crates, large slide sections, and a handful of boss encounters. In the event you performed the remake from a few years again, you will know roughly what to anticipate by way of gameplay.

As an alternative of utilizing bus stops to journey to every stage, you will use massive portals to warp to alternate dimensions of Bikini Backside. That is as a result of SpongeBob will get his arms on a magical bubble wand that grants needs, and naturally, he will get somewhat carried away. His needs disrupt his hometown with dimensional rifts, flinging his buddies throughout actuality — even Patrick is caught within the chaos, became a balloon. The pair are tasked with touring to every dimension and retrieving their misplaced buddies to place issues proper.

It is a good excuse to supply some diverse ranges with neat themes; you will go to the wild west, a movie set, the stone age, and extra, and SpongeBob all the time has a dressing up to match. Every stage’s location is riffing off one thing from the cartoon collection, leading to seven distinct, enjoyable environments that’ll be acquainted to followers of the present. It is clear the developer took simply as a lot inspiration from the collection because it did the earlier sport, if no more so.

As talked about, the platforming and fight largely keep on with the blue print used for Battle for Bikini Backside Rehydrated. SpongeBob’s double soar, stomp, and primary spin assault are all right here, and so they really feel respectable sufficient to tug off. New talents embody gliding, a mid-air karate kick, a bubble that may activate sure switches or briefly entice enemies, and swinging from fishhooks. These further talents are doled out one after the other, giving the journey a pleasant sense of development. There is a contact of jankiness with a few of these, just like the fishhook swing, but it surely’s okay when you get used to it.

The gradual gathering of recent talents means you will have causes to revisit previous ranges. Every stage has secrets and techniques or alternate paths you’ll be able to’t work together with in your first go, so if you wish to see and do every thing, you will must retrace your steps as soon as SpongeBob is powered up. It is the identical for the hub, which progressively grows and modifications, introducing small challenges and minigames.

Talking of revisiting levels, characters within the hub can even give you aspect quests. These are quite simple, amounting to discovering X variety of Y in stage Z, but it surely offers you an excuse to dive again in and discover the degrees somewhat extra. Golden doubloons are your reward, which may also be discovered all through every stage, and these are used to unlock extra costumes for SpongeBob. There are dozens of those, and whereas they’re purely beauty, practically all of them are lifted from the collection, so they seem to be a good bonus for followers.

Jelly can be all over the place in every stage, which you will collect within the 1000’s as you crack open Tikis and defeat enemies. The one goal for Jelly is to buy the outfits you unlock, so you will wind up with an enormous surplus of the stuff. The dimensional jelly monsters you battle are loosely primarily based on the enemies from Rehydrated, with some capturing at you from afar, bigger ones requiring a number of hits to take down, and so forth. Utilizing SpongeBob’s common assault, his karate kick, and floor pound will get you thru every battle, however we discovered battles to be extra of a nuisance than something. They are not laborious and a few enemies are simply annoying to battle. Once more, it simply looks like design from a bygone period.

That sentiment extends to the boss encounters too. Every stage ends with some type of boss battle, and so they’re superb however not one thing you’d need to repeat. You would be pleased with them in 2003. Some are a contact extra impressed, just like the western stage’s pursuit of Mr. Krabs alongside a prepare, and one other tasking you with serving cake whereas a witch assaults from above. The extra conventional ones that have you ever leaping over increasing shockwaves whereas warding off common baddies really feel fairly performed out, although.

Whereas the journey is enjoyable sufficient from starting to finish, the presentation is not fairly there to assist it. Visually the sport is fairly good, evoking the cartoon with vibrant places and characters. Nevertheless, cutscenes really feel oddly erratic, with the timing on cuts generally so quick you barely have time to course of what was proven, or the joke that was simply made. Cuts to gameplay may also really feel somewhat jarring. Conversations you progress your self are okay however generally embody these grotesque close-ups from the present. They’re typically a spotlight of the cartoons, however they do not work right here. That is as a result of there are too lots of them to make an actual affect, they do not really feel earned, and so they’re delivered with nearly no sense of comedy.

Sadly, this leads onto the subject of bugs. The sport is significantly tough across the edges, with quite a few small points popping up throughout our 15 hours of playtime. Conversations would sometimes minimize off audio, music generally layered over itself, and interactive objects wanted to progress briefly vanished. Most of those bugs are fairly innocent, however they go away a mark on an in any other case nice-looking title. Whereas the developer has promised post-launch updates will tackle many points, for now the sport is somewhat shaky.

Conclusion

SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is an earnest effort to provide one other nice sport for the character, but it surely hasn’t utterly labored. The premise is nice, the extent design is imaginative, and there is a clear love for the IP with its numerous references and costumes. Nevertheless, a number of the gameplay feels very dated, whereas plenty of presentational shortcomings and a laundry listing of bugs maintain it again. In the event you’re an enormous SpongeBob fan, there’s completely a very good time available right here, however a normal lack of polish and a few played-out design imply it isn’t fairly the candy victory we had been hoping for.