SpongeBob SquarePants Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated (will be calling it SSBBB Rehydrated for your easiness) is a 3D action game. The game is developed by Heavy Iron Studios and ported by Purple Lamp Studios. It is published by THQ Nordic. Game developers and publishers released the game on multiple gaming systems like Xbox One, PC, and PlayStation 4 along with the Nintendo Switch. It released today, on 23rd of June 2020, and is priced at $30. You can buy it from different E-stores.
THQ Nordic did a good job to give this title a remaster rather than whole new game development. Remaster helps to keep the same game taste along with some major or minor improvements. If we get an analysis of the time just before the release of the SpongeBob SquarePants Battle for Bikini Bottom, the old one, 3D platformers had gained a huge hype. The game developers all fussed about these 3D models and all had their working going on. The ones that came to the market weren’t good, they didn’t have any proper game sight, inferior puzzles, and concepts along with uninteresting game stages. Those games had some serious design problems and gamers were very confused if this 3D thing could deliver up to the point. At that spot, influenced by the popular television show called SpongeBob SquarePants, a game was released named SpongeBob SquarePants Battle for Bikini Bottom. As people loved the show, it gained lots of love from the people due to its unique quality and nice implementation of the 3D platformer in the gameplay. This game remaster wasn’t for any performance improvement or removing or adding things. It was aimed to make the game look more visually appealing. And they managed to do it on this one.
SpongeBob SquarePants Battle for Bikini Bottom-Rehydrated is indeed a very beautiful game that automatically attracts itself towards you mainly due to the cartoon series almost all have watched and this version’s attachment with its classic one is what drives people into playing it. It has followed the same outline and game sense from the previous one. The game has some pretty punchy eye-catching colors and the characters from our series here have got some very cool animations that look exactly like those from the cartoons. The character’s dialogue delivery is also perfect as it doesn’t lag between the mouth movements of the character and what is being said. As known that these cartoons always had a funny element to them. Developers also added this comedy stuff in the game to make it look more interesting. The same jokey style is there with an impeccable dialogue delivery from the voice cast of the television show.
The game comprises of some game styles which feel as if they are ageless. You can say that many games from the previous era wouldn’t certify that way. However, having all those recent times looks, you will still feel if it is a seventeen-year-old game. Leaving all assumptions and minor details aside, SSBBB Rehydrated is an antique piece of a former age. You cannot say that isn’t a good game as it is one of the most popular titles the console gen knows of. It is one of the introducers to the design levels at different points. As for the gameplay, SpongeBob will be on a mission to gather all the golden spatulas. To complete this, he will have to give a beating to the robot army of Plankton. You will also find an excess of sliding levels along with the design support by the developers from this time.
SSBBB Rehydrated gets fit best in a fan following which are fans of speed running like the one from the old era. You will also like to play this with your buddies in the game’s multiplayer mode. You will then for a two-person team, and which gives you the accessibility to use 7 different operators which will be jumping in between islands. You will have to defeat more robots than usual which are routed towards you and our bud. You will be the Robo Squidward who is a powerful character and a boss which has also been added into the remaster from the original SpongeBob SquarePants Battle for Bikini Bottom. Sad to know that you cannot play this multiplayer mode with an Artificially Intelligent (AI) game friend of yours or with bots, you can play multiplayer by adding your friend either on a LAN connection or locally or online. You will love this as it gives a different type of gameplay for this game which will surely be enjoyable. Robo Squidward has some special type of attack range which makes him an ideal operator for inflicting damage to the enemies who are at a long-range from you. Many of the gamers will surely like it.
If you are only in the game for the fights, you will experience that it will be more convenient to play in the multiplayer rather than the single-player mode. There are some problems with the hitting controls for the SpongeBob. You can’t hit properly using his wand and ledge as the game does not detect your hitting properly. Sandy also has some issues with her jumps as well as Patrick’s automatic system of aiming also seems flawed as it fires the stones and watermelons wrongly which you didn’t want to throw. There are also issues with the controls where they work at one time but then they don’t after multiple tries even. It can be the issue with the game or the console. Talking about controls, you won’t feel any problems with the essential controls such as attacking and jumping but problems do occur when you need to throw things.
Game developers have been kind to add some elements in the game which bring you happiness and some smirk too. If you are a huge admirer of the SpongeBob cartoon series, you will love to find that you can have an adventure in the game by visiting the Kelp Forest and Goo Lagoon. Variance in different tasks along the game keeps things raw for you and helps you in exploring the places in detail. Addition of Karen and Pearl will have been amazing, but it isn’t something major as there are a lot of other things to bring to the table about this game which starts ruining your gaming experience.
It is very sad to say that you will be experiencing game crashes throughout the game. There are reports from the reviewers that their games also crashed just after fifteen minutes of gameplay. Recovering from this issue, your screen can go fully black-colored (averagely after an hour) and you will be hearing to the game audio but no graphic input on the screen. If you are in a wide location in the game, be ready as you are to experience some spikes in fps (frames per second). Spiking here means that fluctuation and that won’t let you play the game with butter-smooth or even a smooth experience. You will be experiencing some pop-in in graphics too; certain elements in three dimensions will create a performance issue where the objects and textures start to pop instantly into view rather than smoothly appearing on the screen. This along with fps drops bring a miserable gaming experience. Another issue found was the delay in loading screens. You will have to wait a lot longer when you either enter the location back retrying after losing a level or even when starting the game.
There are also some issues with game audio and sound calibration. You will find some audio amplification when on the bus in-game and there are also some cutscenes with less volume and pauses in soundtracks etc. The game also has some rules for which your liking and disliking may constantly fluctuate. For example, the presence of Goo sometimes appears advantageous but killing at some time. It looks identical to a SpongeBob made of water which is a threat. You will come through small pools of it where you need to be careful because if you get in contact with it, you will either jump and reach the point where you started, or it may get you killed. Your health doesn’t decrease from it so it’s nothing or everything.
It will have been far better if this remaster had brought some in-game improvements along with resolving these bugs and glitches of display and audio. As THQ Nordic and developers decided to stay within some perimeter around the original game, it tells us how much the 3D games have progressed from the past.