Instead, it plays like every forgettable, middling platformer I’ve played in the past 20 years, and that stunning lack of creativity in an underwater world that’s known for its hilarious originality is a throbbing disappointment for the entirety. For example, you don’t get any of the highly entertaining gymnastic platforming feats or unique and silly combat options you’d find in Psychonauts 2 – a game that feels like a lot of its bones would have suited a SpongeBob platformer perfectly.
It’s not that the controls or ideas in Cosmic Shake are poorly implemented, but that they haven’t learned a thing from practically any modern-day platformers that are far more interesting.
The only unique moments are at the end of each level when you fight a boss, like an evil Sandy the Squirrel in a Bruce Lee outfit, though even these highlights aren’t breaking any new ground in terms of gameplay – they just feel loads better than the rest of the boring trek. Even when you do get a special sequence, like a chase scene atop a seahorse or an extremely brief stealth section, it’s either incredibly short-lived or hardly different enough from the rest of the grind to keep things interesting.
#SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS THE COSMIC SHAKE XBOX MOVIE#
Variety, both in combat and in the “puzzles” that the platforming offers, is a major pain point, and even as you’re traveling through a pirate-themed realm or a Hollywood movie set, you’re fighting the same pushover purple enemies or hopping on the same floating rectangles. After the first few hours of its 10-hour campaign, I’d seen just about all the tricks up Cosmic Shake’s sleeves and had to press on through humdrum platforming and combat ad nauseum.Įvery level has you jump through some metaphorical and literal hoops, broken up by waves of enemies that can easily be swatted away in seconds before going back to platforming. Sure, you can double-jump, ground pound, glide across gaps using a pizza box, attack with your bubble wand, and sometimes activate context-sensitive prompts to do special things like karate kick enemies or swing on a fishing line, but that toolbox is extremely light and never puts you into situations – mandatory or optional – that require a mastery over any of these skills. Dreadfully simplistic jumping puzzles and combat against the same handful of enemies who posed absolutely no challenge wore thin quickly.
In one of the dullest platformers in recent memory, Cosmic Shake serves up a recipe that’s almost identical to that of its predecessor and had me nodding off as I played. It’s been almost 20 years since the release of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – and just over two since the “Rehydrated” remaster reminded us of how poorly that game’s mechanics have aged – and it’s shocking how little that formula has evolved for this followup. That’s what makes it a massive bummer that Cosmic Shake falls so woefully short when it comes to actual gameplay. So although Cosmic Shake does benefit from the quirky SpongeBob characters and their world, as a platformer it’s a terribly bland journey that feels painfully frozen in time even as the fans of the show have continued to age (also painfully). And yet, like a collapsing Squidward Souffle, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake dried up my optimism the more I played: it’s merely a thin, by-the-numbers sequel to the 20-year-old Bikini Bottom rather than the ground-up redesign that absorbs the progress genre heroes like Mario or Ratchet and Clank have made in the decades since that we deserve. While 2003’s SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom proved it could be done, we’ve been in dire need of a modern take on that idea starring everyone’s favorite fry cook. Through it all, the porous goofball I’ve known for years feels like the perfect mascot for an over-the-top, cartoonish platformer. Whether I’m enjoying my favorite memes or going back to rewatch one of the only cartoons I still legitimately laugh at as an adult, it’s hard to understate SpongeBob SquarePants’ influence on my life.
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