Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Review

At first sight, Spongebob Squarepants is a cartoon easily dismissed. It’s loud and full of childish tomfoolery, and kids love it, so it can’t be that great… right? But for those who have gotten past Spongebob’s high-pitched giggles, you’ve no doubt found the kind of random–and sometimes twisted–humor more notably known by The Simpsons and Ren & Stimpy. On that same precept, what looks like a typical video game cash-in, Battle for Bikini Bottom, is actually a fun platformer.

Battle for Bikini Bottom crams all of the Spongebob goodness you could possibly want into one game, so famous locales like Rock Bottom, tertiary characters such as Bubble Buddy and Mermaid Man, and plenty of references to the more popular episodes abound. Everything about the game does a great job reminding you of the show, and rarely will you feel like you’ve stepped into a different universe. What detracts from this is how the game implements generic, day-to-day 3D modeling. Any game based on a cartoon should strive for cel shading, because the end result always looks cheap and foreign. Battle for Bikini Bottom in particular shows little care for graphics. Characters’ faces have noticeable crease marks where the polygons didn’t mesh correctly, and body parts often crack to reveal a model’s inner emptiness. I guess this is made up for by the levels managing to be so big without sacrificing the framerate. The only problem with this is how you have to pass through a gate and a load time to access different parts of a level, which makes the overall area feel disconnected.

What really brings the game to life, then, is its great use of sound. Most of the voice actors from the show provided their talent to the game, and the resulting cut scenes end up being as hilariously delivered as a typical bout between Spongebob and Plankton would be. The accompanying music, on the other hand, isn’t quite as entertaining. It certainly creates a sense of being underwater and, more importantly, in a Spongebob game, but it tends to use the same songs too many times and starts to feel pretty uninspired.

And, as a whole, Battle for Bikini Bottom lacks any kind of creative punch to separate itself from other platformers. But what it does, it does well. This is as simple and pure as platformers get and isn’t burdened by problematic design which makes most other children’s games so frustrating. You just won’t find any kind of “novel gimmick” like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger’s array of boomerangs or Tak’s ability to interact with animals. In Battle for Bikini Bottom, you primarily play as Spongebob, though in certain situations you can swap out for Patrick or Sandy. Patrick is useful for carrying and throwing objects, and Sandy can use her lasso to float across pits and swing from grapple points. Though Sandy is secondary, her moments are when the game starts to feel like a truly good platformer. The basis of any platformer is the ability to jump, and Sandy has it made. Granted, she does nothing revolutionary, but it’s still a lot of fun to swing and float across the rooftops of Downtown Bikini Bottom. Unfortunately, Sandy doesn’t get to come out very often, and it’s mostly Spongebob who does all the work.

Playing as Spongebob or Patrick is still amusing, though. There are puzzles to solve and robots to smack around, as well as slides to brave, but the majority of the game simply consists of running and jumping. And that’s why it’s fun. You don’t get hung up on impossibly annoying tasks and mini-games. If you can’t do a certain section, you can take a taxi to a different area. As is the platformer tradition, Battle for Bikini Bottom is a matter of collecting enough “golden spatulas” to open up new levels and eventually the final challenge. You don’t have to collect all ten spatulas in every level to win, either. The game is very straightforward, though, so you’ll end up getting most of the spatulas on your first run through, anyway. These levels may be big, but they are broken up into smaller, separate, isolated paths that all lead to a spatula and eventually back to the beginning. It’s kind of nice having a set path to take, but then there’s also no cohesiveness to the overall world and no sense of greater exploration.

The difficulty in Bikini Bottom is fairly mellow, though it definitely ramps up in boss battles and later levels. Some of the slides can also be a little nerve-wracking. But none of it is ever overbearing. You have an infinite amount of continues, and checkpoints and teleports are frequent. There are even checkpoints in the boss battles. This game is simple enough for kids to enjoy without growing frustrated but not so simple that older gamers won’t find themselves cussing at a robot who keeps pushing them off a cliff or an over-demanding slide challenge.

Battle for Bikini Bottom takes 8-10 hours to beat, though there’s room for more if you have to collect everything. On top of the gold spatulas, Patrick’s also lost a bunch of socks, and “shiny objects” appear regularly. These objects are like the game’s currency, allowing you to buy golden spatulas from Mr. Krabs or open up new pathways (which would, of course, lead to more gold spatulas). I don’t see why anyone would want to spend the time gathering all of this stuff, though. The levels are oddly pieced together, and traversing them again for any lost goodies would just be a headache. Plus, overall, the game isn’t that good to merit playing it again. It’s simple fun for a reason.

Final Comments

Spongebob Squarepants is such a lucrative name, THQ could have completely skimped on this game and still made millions off all the kids who idolize–and can’t get enough of–this show. But Bikini Bottom is a surprisingly good platformer. Yes, it’s rather simple and doesn’t do much to separate itself from the many other platformers out there, but it also doesn’t come with the same problems and frustrations that they do. It’s easy to enjoy this game as a mindless diversion, especially for fans of Spongebob Squarepants. If you’re in need of a platformer, and you don’t care what it is as long as it involves running and jumping and collecting stuff, Battle for Bikini Bottom is not a bad idea.