He lives in a pineapple under the sea and is back again in another triple a video game with SpongeBob SquarePants SquarePants The Cosmic Shake. SpongeBob and his friends are back in an all new video game for newer and older generations. This time the threat to bikini bottom has become cosmic and it is up to SpongeBob once again to save the day. Will he prevail or is bikini bottoms fate sealed in this all new action adventure.
The Story of SpongeBob SquarePants The Cosmic Shake is that SpongeBob and Patrick go on a trip to glove world and encounter a seemingly friendly fortune telling mermaid named Madame Kassandra who sells a seemingly harmless bottle of glowing bubble soap which turns out to be a bottle of King Neptunes magic Mermaid tears. When the bubbles SpongeBob creates from the magic mermaid tears collide with each other their bursts begin to suck all of SpongeBob’s friends and their homes into magical alternate dimensions that were created by the forms of the bubbles SpongeBob created. With Bikini Bottom in a cosmic shake of chaos and all of his friends lost in alternate dimensions it is up to SpongeBob, Patrick, and Madame Kassandra to work together to restore Bikini Bottom, save their friends, and save the day.
The gameplay of SpongeBob SquarePants The Cosmic Shake is simple because it is a mixture of past Spongebob games. The basic gameplay is as follows 1.) The square button is the basic attack. 2.) The x button is the jump button and hitting it again does a double jump. 3.) After hitting the jump button press the circle button to do a ground pound. 4.) After jumping hold the X button to glide with a Krusty Krab Pizza. There are also many abilities and equipment that can be unlocked through the many levels of the game from a Ka-Ra-Tay kick to a fishing hook which are both used as ways to traverse the maps to collect tier coins and find secrets.
The open world of the game starts off in Bikini Bottom where the player can run around and collect cosmic jelly to both give to Madame Kassandra and spend on various costumes that have all been featured in different SpongeBob SquarePants episodes and movies. Each of the 7 worlds are stylized around a different theme from a wild western world to a spooky Halloween world to even a swashbuckling pirate world which are all jam packed with secrets, side objectives, nostalgic references to old SpongeBob episodes, to tier coins and jelly cosmic that can be used to collect the costumes. While each costume does not come with their own special abilities and is purely cosmetic. There are a total of 35 unlockable costumes with 7 more made available through a purchase of a seperate costume pack which all together makes us to at least 42 different costumes in total. There is no skill tree in this game and most of the worlds have side quests or secrets that can be only accessible once the player unlocks specific abilities through advancing the game. This makes for great replay ability, but since it seems like the currency is only good for unlocking costumes there isn’t really a good reason to collect more once they are all unlocked. On the other hand though there are passive challenges in the game that are completed by doing some activities that could involve the unlocked abilities or just by completing certain requirements like completing a certain section in a short amount of time.
The visuals and audio of the game are a bit of an issue for me, but not because they look bad. I do like a lot of the colors used especially during the gameplay. The reason I have an issue with them is because some of the models for the characters either don’t look finished or a bit off. There were segments especially during the cutscenes where one character looked a bit too bright than the other. That could be because of the models or settings, but there was legitimately one scene where I thought a character was crossed eyed, but it was just because of the weird way the character was designed. There were also times where the audio would repeat itself as if the line was said too early. There were a couple of times where I would hear dialogue and it would start all over and then end too soon. There are also these small out of nowhere segments where during the dialogue a high definition artwork photo would pop up and display a bizarrely well detailed and simultaneously creepy image which caught me off guard a couple times.
My overall thoughts on this game are that it is a very fun game regardless of whether the player is a child or an adult fan of SpongeBob SquarePants there is plenty to enjoy in this game. Despite the bugs and disturbing pictures I had a good time enjoying this game. Clearly the developers love and care about this franchise and it really shows.
Score: 8 out of 10
Reviewed on PlayStation 4