As a pink, rock-dwelling starfish once said, "Being grown-up is boring."
With The Powerpuff Girls on TV and a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch at my side, I settled in for a playthrough of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated early last week. The convenience of playing this remake on my (appropriately yellow) Nintendo Switch Lite and not a clunky PlayStation 2 promised a comfortable and rewarding night of nostalgia — one I, at 24, intended to take full advantage of. I'd bask in the updated graphics, revel in the improved mechanics, rejoice in the promise of multiplayer content. I'd play until I wanted to stop and not because some adult told me I had to. Suffice to say, I really wanted to like this game.
Rehydrated slaps a shiny new coat — and little else — on a game that needed some serious help to be fun in 2020.
But less than a week later, I've made the painful decision to leave Bikini Bottom to battle for itself. Not because this remake strays too far from the source material I enjoyed as a kid or includes too many recent references adult me just doesn't get, but because Rehydrated slaps shiny new aesthetics — and little else — on a game that needed some serious help to be fun in 2020.
Think Pretty Patties, but...worse.
THQ Nordic's 2020 take on the 2003 Nickelodeon platformer starts out strong. Embodying SpongeBob, Patrick, and Sandy, players wander through iconic SpongeBob scenes solving puzzles, collecting golden spatulas, and battling a legion of evil robots brought on by the perpetually exhausting Plankton. The graphics are a big step up from their early-aughts origins, appearing more vibrant, colorful, and detailed across the board. Your adventures take you to Goo Lagoon, Jellyfish Fields, Rock Bottom, the Mermalair, and more. Along the way, you receive tasks from Mr. Krabs, Squidward, Gary, and a smorgasbord of other recognizable Bikini Bottom residents.
For lifelong SpongeBob fans, it’s an interactive VIP tour of your favorite early series memories, right down to the original voice acting. Helping Larry fix his TV antenna? A joy. Assisting Mrs. Puff in finding eleven (???) steering wheels? A pleasure. Going toe-to-tentacle with King Jellyfish himself? An honor! Cackling at lines I’d forgotten and delighting in this TV world come to life, I enjoyed every moment of Rehydrated's nautical nonsense — right up until it started to feel like work. Like "What I Learned In Boating School Is..." levels of work.
Image: thq nordic
Rehydrated or not, Battle for Bikini Bottom has two major issues that prevent it from being properly enjoyed. First, the mechanics, while inventive, lack the flexibility and precision needed to make platforming fun. Sure, you can swing with Sandy's lasso, hit targets with Patrick's never-ending supply of watermelons, and tackle all kinds of tasks with SpongeBob's handy-dandy bubble wand. Unfortunately, switching between characters is as clumsy as ever (you still need those telephone pole/portal things that seem to appear with zero gameplay logic) and hitting dead ends because you're deploying the wrong avatar is frustratingly common.
A chunky exercise in way-finding I just don't enjoy like I once did.
What's worse, certain combinations of moves seem to overload the game's technical infrastructure. I was forced to restart the entire program when Sandy unexpectedly froze midair, and faced similar glitches when approaching arena edges with SpongeBob. Spontaneously getting stuck inside walls became a frequent step in my undersea collect-a-thon, an annoying reality that made exploring much more daunting. Even when I thought taking a leap of faith towards a certain platform was the right move, the possibility that I might lose all my progress by accidentally getting out of gameplay bounds was maddening.
Second, the game's narrative design, which relies heavily on the use of teleporting from objective to objective via "taxi," is a chunky exercise in way-finding I just don't enjoy like I once did. Being presented with an open map to explore is one thing, but aimlessly trying to find a task you've earned all the abilities to complete is another. More than once I had to turn to 2003 walkthroughs to figure out that I was attempting a golden spatula retrieval intended to come later in the story. Of course, I understand not wanting to entirely restructure the game, but a resource clarifying which destinations you have executable endeavors in would go a long way — color coding, labeling, random hints, anything. Otherwise, you get stuck ping-ponging between levels and looking for new assignments to complete, which is about as fun as it sounds.
For younger players eager to enjoy a SpongeBob game, Rehydrated is an obvious miss. It lands leagues below its modern competitors and doesn't offer enough franchise fun to make playing the game more fun than watching the show. For older players, this can be a worthy outing in nostalgia, but it's unlikely to carry you beyond a session or two. Tartar sauce.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated is now available to play on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
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