Developed by Purple Lamp and published by THQ Nordic, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is a brand-new adventure game set in the SpongeBob SquarePants franchise. SpongeBob SquarePants holds a very dear spot in a lot of people’s hearts and people have been craving a good title for a very long time and finally, I can happily say that we have a title worthy of the name SpongeBob SquarePants. Packing humor, action, fun, epic platforming, silly banter, iconic locations, and characters, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is aiming to be the best SpongeBob game ever. This is our review of the Xbox One release of SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake in which we wear some silly costumes and rescue Bikini Bottom once again.
The story of SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake revolves around wish-granting Mermaid’s Tears that land in the hands of SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick the Star and you can expect them to go crazy with it. After playing around with them, Patrick the Star ends up as a balloon while nearly all of Bikini Bottom is sucked into a huge portal and arrives in different worlds. Wowing to bring everything back to normal, you set into different portals to explore beautiful worlds build around various themes complete with NPCs, missions, side quests, and challenges for you to complete. Each of these worlds is unlocked in a sequence with their portals located in different locations in Bikini Bottom. You have to play through the entire story of the game in order to unlock all of the moves and abilities so that you can complete all areas completely and access all of the secrets.
These unique worlds are absolutely gorgeous to look at with each location completely built around its theme. For example, the Wild West Jellyfish Fields are exactly like what you would expect from a real Wild West location only in the theme of SpongeBob SquarePants. You will find and ride sea horses while all of the characters and NPCs are dressed as cowboys. The props are based on the same theme as well. Similarly, if you head over to the fancy Hollywood-inspired world of Karate Downtown Bikini Bottom, you will find red carpets, movie sets, and giant bouncers that will annoy you at every entrance. Exploring these worlds is a charm and finding your favorite characters in new costumes and settings is always a pleasant surprise.
Apart from the main missions of SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake, you will also find different small challenges that you can complete apart from different side quests. Most of the side quests are given to you by characters after you have completed a world. These are not automatically assigned to you so you will need to explore Bikini Bottom and interact with different characters to trigger these side quests and challenges. Some of the challenges are located in Bikini Bottom itself as well so there is plenty to do everywhere. Each of the worlds is filled with tons of collectibles both hidden and visible that you can collect in the game. SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake features 7 worlds and each world is filled with these collectibles.
You have two main in-game currencies, one is jelly while the other is Golden Doubloons. The purple jelly is found everywhere in each of the levels as you will need to collect it in order to purchase costumes. This jelly is scattered randomly everywhere on levels that you can collect just by moving around or you can break boxes and defeat enemies to get them. You will also get this jelly from completing certain easy tasks in the game. The second currency Gold Doubloons is a difficult-to-find currency and is usually found in hidden spaces and after difficult platforming challenges. They are also obtained after completing some mini-games in levels and these are used to unlock Costume Tiers which allow you to purchase even more costumes.
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake features a large number of costumes that you can purchase and equip to play the game. As long as you can afford a costume, you can unlock and play the game with it equipped. There are no costume locks or limitations. You will find some of the most iconic costumes in the game from the series including KuddlyBob, Underwear, Wacky Child, KarateBob, PrimitiveBob, Band Geeks Uniform, SnailBob, and SpongeGar among tons of others. Each of these costumes is carefully recreated in the game to ensure that they look exactly like that in the series to deliver an authentic experience. Naturally, you will need to grind a little to unlock all of the costumes in the game because not only you will need Jelly to purchase each individual costume but also Golden Doubloons to unlock additional costume tiers.
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake nearly all of the iconic characters that you would normally see in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. There’s Patrick the Star, who accompanies you everywhere in his balloon form, Sandy the Squirrel, Pearl, Mr. Krabs, Plankton, Mrs. Puff, Squidward, and many others. The best thing about these characters is that for SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake, THQ Nordic, and Purple Lamp have hired the original voice actors for these characters which makes playing the game so much better. It is like you are actually living inside an actual episode of the series. Apart from these key characters, each world in the game is filled with tons of other NPCs as well which look like random fish characters that you had in the series. The animations of these characters are top-notch and they hardly feel like they are from a video game which is one of my favorite aspects of the game.
The gameplay of SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is exactly what you would expect from a traditional arcade, a platforming title. Apart from the basic movements including moving around and jumping, all of the moves are unlocked gradually with story progression. You can unlock basic attacks, ground pound attacks, Fishhook Swing, Karate Kick, and many other moves in order to defeat tons of jelly enemies. The enemy design in the game is pretty cool as well and the game quickly brings bigger enemies into the mix as well. As you reach key points in the main story of the game, you will unlock certain moves so you cannot explore all locations right away. Certain locations and secrets can only be accessed with special moves so you will need to return to these locations later once you have the necessary moves unlocked. You can also glide using a pizza box and you dodge like a cartwheel which just looks really cool in battle.
Combat in SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is not too serious but you need to combine everything that you have to win battles. While most of the enemies are randomly spawned on the map at key locations, sometimes you are locked inside a tight arena where you have to defeat all of the spawning enemies before you can progress in the game. You have ranged enemies that shoot soda, melee enemies that close in on you before dealing damage, and even huge jelly monsters wielding bathtubs that cannot be hit until they run out of stamina. Each enemy requires a different strategy but lucky for you, SpongeBob SquarePants has enough tricks up his sleeve to defeat all of the enemies.
At key locations in the main story, you will also fight different boss battles which are pretty cool fights. The bosses are not too difficult as well but you have to understand their attack patterns and work around them in order to win the game. This overall easy difficulty of the game could be because SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is primarily targeting a younger audience but me, a 31 years-old man enjoyed the game just like any teenager would so age is just a number for this game. The platforming is not too difficult as well and you can typically clear any section with a few tries. One thing that annoyed me is the checkpoint placement because if you run out of health(clean underwear), you spawn back at the checkpoint and you lose quite a lot of progress sometimes. It is not something too hard but gets annoying sometimes if you keep dying over something silly. When you revisit a map or respawn after dying, everything in the world is respawned including jelly, boxes so you can grind jelly if you are looking to purchase costumes.
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is one of the best SpongeBob games that have ever come out of any studio, and I am really happy to see this amazing franchise getting a fitting video game that all fans of the franchise can enjoy without any letdowns. The world of SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake feels alive and with Patrick always with you, it is like having a humor-filled balloon leaking jokes into your ears every now and then. There are a few technical issues at this point and THQ Nordic has already issued a statement that a fix is on the way in order to fix all of them. The random framerate dips are the one issue that is most notable in places where you would have a lot of activity. Playing the Xbox One version of the game on an Xbox Series X still gives these framerate issues so an optimization fix is needed for the game. Apart from this, if you love SpongeBob SquarePants, you need to jump into The Cosmic Shake.
Final Verdict:
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is a great arcade platformer that reminds you of the early 2000s with its simple-to-understand mechanics, humor-filled banter, and great, colorful environments to explore with a high value of replayability thrown in the mix. It is a wish come true for hardcore SpongeBob fans as it features the entire cast of the series, complete with their original voice actors as well as all of the iconic locations from the series as well. With simple-to-understand mechanics, and beautiful worlds to explore, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is a solid SpongeBob title that we all have been waiting for. If you love SpongeBob or just love good old classic-inspired arcade platformers, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake should be on your must-play list.
Final Score: 8.5/10
