Hello Everyone, Welcome To My Review Of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated
Back Story: Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated Is A Remake Based On A Licensed Game That THQ Published Back in Late 2003, The Original Game Was Surprisingly a Big Success, Releasing To Positive Reactions From Both Critics And Players Alike, And Over The Past Few Years, It Gained Quite An Attraction Online (Especially With SpeedRunners), So Essentially, It Just Refused To Die.
With That Success, THQ Nordic Decided To Remake The Game For The Current Generation of Gaming, If I'm Correct, Completely From The Ground Up Too, The Original Developers of The Game (Heavy Iron Studios, AWE Games, and Vicarious Visions Respectively.) Weren't Able To Give THQ Nordic The Original Games Coding.
Also Before We Start, I Do Wanna Say That I've Seen Some Reviews of This Game, And While I Don't Want to Attack Those Reviews, A Lot of Them are So Out of Pre-Portions, It Makes me Question Weather Some Just Played The Original Game for The Rehydrated Review.
(Spoilers And TONS of SpongeBob References Ahead)
Story:
Plankton, Evil Genius And Owner of The Chum Bucket, Has Built a New Machine Called the Duplicatotron 3000 to Produce an Army of Robots to Use to Steal The Krabby Patty Secret Formula, But This Backfires When Plankton Doesn't Switch The Machine To Have All Robots Obey (He Should of Set It To Wumbo), Now SpongeBob, Patrick Star (And Later on) Sandy Cheeks Set Out On An Adventure To Restore Bikini Bottom To Its Rightful Peace.
Graphics and Engine:
This Really Should Go Without Saying For Most Games Nowadays, But my God, This Looks Gorgeous, Feels so Much Like The Show,
This Game Runs on The Unreal Engine.
Collectibles:
There are Three Main Collectibles in This Game, Being Shinys, Golden Spatulas, And Patrick's Socks.
Shinys Are This Games' Point System, Placed Down In every World For You To Collect, Sometimes In Crazy Areas, Sometimes Not. You Can Also Trade Shinys To Mr. Krabs For Golden Spatula's, Similar to That of Moneybags From The Spyro Games.
Golden Spatulas Are Battle For Bikini Bottom's version of The "Complete a mission, Get A Reward" Type of Thing, With 8 in Each World To Collect (sometimes a few extra spatulas that are hidden almost out of sight).
Patrick's Socks: So Quick Story, Patrick Lost His Socks And Needs Us To Get Them So We Can Bring Them Back to Him, Every 10 Socks The Player Earns, Patrick Will Give Them a Golden Spatula.
World Modelling:
The Entire SpongeBob World (or at least what Is Shown) Looks Great in 3D, I Never Really Realised That Before This Game.
When It Comes To Animation, The Incredibles Is Considered To Be The First Animated Thing With Characters That Look Great in 2D and 3D, But Incredibles Came Out in 2004, SpongeBob's Show Came Out In 1999 And Had Tons of 3D Appearances From It's Entire World And Characters Before Incredibles Came Out.
But Everything In This Game, It All Looks Fantastic, And The Characters Themselves, When It Comes To Their Animations, They All Move Very Smooth, which is a reason to why they look good in 3D.
Progressing;
Unlike Most Platformers Nowadays (and from 2003), Battle for Bikini doesn't levels, it just has a huge world to explore and do missions that are given by characters from the show, similar to that of Super Mario Odyssey, wouldn't say a lot of these are hard, but for a Licensed Game, a fair amount of effort was put into each one to make it entertaining, Each World Is Unlocked By Golden Spatulas.
During The Game, You Unlock A Few Powers for SpongeBob Only, All of Which Are Given To You By Bubble Buddy (A Character From One Episode Of The Show), And All Control Really Well, Even Better Than The Original.
Example: There's A Bubble Bowling Ball, And while you don't control the ball itself, you do control where it Aims before you launch it, And Yes SpongeBob Does Walk Forward While aiming, but that's not a big issue when you can just walk back and Get A Semi-Easier Shot anyways (Am I right George of Gamespot reviews?).
Personality:
Here Is Where Things Do Start To fall Down Though, And I Will Agree With Some Reviewers On This. The Game Has Lost Some Personality, Don't Get Me Wrong, It's Still Fun, and it's Still a Good Remake, But The Original Had a Lot More Pressure Placed Down, Giving The Game a Slight Serious Tone, That's Almost Gone from Rehydrated,
The Title Screen, While Reminiscing the Original, Feels Rinsed of Its Charm, It's Still The Same, But The Games Logo Had An Army Helmet fading in and out (hence the battle part of the games name), in the remake, however, it's a New Game Logo, I Gotta Say, I Miss The Old One, Not That The New One Is bad, it just doesn't feel right.
And At The Start Of The Campaign When You're in SpongeBob's House, Things Feel Off, Not Only Does Patrick Suddenly Turn Into Mr. Fantastic And Glitch Out In a Few Shots, When The Cutscene Goes To The Next Day and We supposedly See The Mess Plankton's robots Made While Trashing SpongeBob's House, It doesn't look like his House got Trashed, it just looks like he had a party and everything is messy, no joke either,
While In The Original, There were Broken Pots on the floor, and the Bikini Bottom Sucks Writing on SpongeBob's Wall Was Really Stretched and Creepy.
There's also Online Multiplayer Which I'd Like to Get A Proper Opinion On, But Last Time I Checked, It Was Dead on Arrival. However, The Few Matches I Did Get To Play Online Were Ok, Nothing Superior, But it Passed The Time and Seemed Semi-Decent To Play With Friends, though I'd Only Recommend it Unless There's Nothing Else To Play Multiplayer-Wise.
However, One Cool Thing Multiplayer Has Over The Campaign is the fact you get to play as more than just Sandy, SpongeBob, and Patrick, there's also Squidward, Mr. Krabs, and Plankton-Bot, I Really Liked That Add-On.
However, Personality and multiplayer issues Aside, I Really Recommend this Game to be picked up, A Ton of Thought Process Went Into This, and Considering That Apparently The New Developers weren't able to Access The Original Games Code, They Did A Good Job at Recreating The Main Game Stuff.
Again, Worth The Pick-Up, either this or the original really, even For a Non-SpongeBob Fan, and for those who Aren't Familiar With The Show, It's a Good Platformer, Kids Will Love Battle For Bikini Bottom and Adults Should Too.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle For Bikini Bottom Rehydrated Gets a 7/10.