Review: SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated

Who hasn’t grown up with Spongebob? You may have played this game on GameCube in your childhood. In any case, Spongebob is back in SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated. I played this game on the Nintendo Switch and thought it was time to take a closer look at this Nickelodeon game. I never played the original game, so luckily I can not get tricked by the nostalgic feelings.

A beautiful Bikini Bottom day

Because Spongebob is a wonderful character. That laughter, that stupid voice. The complete picture is just right. That crazy humor that you see and hear in the television series is also reflected in this game. You have to take this Spongebob adventure with a good grain of salt. You will regularly laugh because the game is so wonderfully humorous. The humor in the game is similar to the jokes made within all of the television seasons. If you enjoyed the television show, you will like the Spongebob humor of this game.

The story is quite simplistic. Bikini Bottom (Bikini Broek, which means, start laughing, Bikini Pants in Dutch), is overrun by robots. Those robots should actually obey Sheldon, but, as happens in any bad robot adventure, they take matters into their own hands and stop listening to their master. From that moment on, Spongebob, Patrick and Sandy have to take action. To do this, they must make quite a few gameworlds safe from robots before they can restore Sheldon’s mess.

Humoristic adventure

You will be presented with a 3D platformer whose gameplay is quite addictive. Although the gameplay sometimes feels a bit outdated, you can spend hours exploring game environments. They are filled with golden spatulas, which you must collect in a similar way to the stars in Super Mario 64. Although the game does not feel as smooth as such platformers, it is still quite entertaining to look for all those spatulas. Some are quite well hidden. Therefore, you won’t find them without spending a lot of time.

You complete the game with Spongebob, Patrick, and Sandy. Each time you only play one character at a time, but you can switch characters via a bus stop. This is done funny. Especially since that bus can apparently get to places that took you hours to climb. (Couldn’t the bus have dropped you off there right away?) Ultimately, all have their own set of skills. Spongebob dashes up with a big soap bubble, while Patrick uses his big fat belly as a weapon. Sandy can accomplish a lot of things with her lasso.

Collectathon? I am ready!

Finding all spatulas requires all skills. Therefore this game offers a lot of gameplay. Ultimately, this makes for great platforming gameplay. SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated is an big collectathon game, like yhe games from the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 area.

However, the Nintendo Switch edition may not be the best console to experience this adventure. The game regularly has to do with lag and graphically the game is not too interesting. In terms of controls, it’s all fine, but I have the feeling that the game runs much better on other consoles. I conclude this because I do not hear from others that they experience the same problems on PS4 or Xbox. If you take the graphic downgrade for granted, it is great that you can just play this game on the go.

Are you ready kids?

Lots of small parents might want to know if they have to buy this game for there children. For the really small children (<5) this game is probably a bit too complicated. I think you are mainly enjoying the game when you are older. Then more jokes fall into place. Somehow, the game may also appeal to people who have played the original and have nostalgic feelings for it. If you play this game as a parent on the bus or elsewhere outdoors, you probably get the necessary strange looks from passers-by.

Should you play Spongebob Squarepant Re-hydrated?

Not that, that matters to me. In the end, I enjoyed playing this game for a while. This will never become one of the best games released, but (especially if you look at what kind of Nickelodeon games have been released before), this game scored above expectations. I will not recommend the game if you are looking for something high-quality, but certainly not advise against it. This game is just okay. Nothing award-winning, but SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated is entertaining.

This game was released for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PC.