SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake

SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake
Protagonist(s): SpongeBob SquarePants Genre(s): Action-adventure Platformers Platform(s): PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Microsoft Windows Xbox One Xbox Series X/S Nintendo Switch Android iOS Release Date: PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows January 31, 2023 PS5, Xbox Series October 23, 2023 Mobile December 21, 2023 Developer(s): Purple Lamp Studios Publisher(s): THQ Nordic

SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is a 2023 platform video game developed by Purple Lamp and published by THQ Nordic. The game is based on the Nickelodeon animated series SpongeBob SquarePants. The player controls SpongeBob, who, along with Patrick, journeys across several alternate realities called "Wish Worlds" to save their friends and the town of Bikini Bottom while collecting Cosmic Jelly for the mermaid fortune teller Madame Kassandra. It was released for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on January 31, 2023. It was also released for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 23, 2023, iOS on December 12, 2023 and Android on December 21, 2023.

Summary

SpongeBob and Patrick meet the mysterious fortune teller Madame Kassandra who gives them a vial full of Mermaid's Tears. Legend claims they grant the wishes of those who are pure of heart.

Naturally, the two best buddies get overexcited and their flurry of wishes tears open the very fabric of space and time. All while releasing Cosmic Jelly onto Bikini Bottom and opening portals to strange Wishworlds in the process.

Now it's up to our heroes to rescue their friends who got lost in the Wishworlds and bring back Bikini Bottom's most iconic buildings.

But Madame Kassandra has her own devious plan.

Why It's Cosmic

1. Like BFBB: Rehydrated, The game is faithful to the source material.
2. Unlike the previous games, here, there's so many language options that you can choose from, including the Indonesian, Hindi, and even the legendary Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American dubs.
   • The voice acting is also good in every dub and all cast in every dubs are reprising their roles from the show.
3. The graphics are great and looks much more appealing than Battle for Bikini Bottom, which already looked amazing, especially in the Rehydrated version, but this game’s visuals manage to surpass both games’ visuals.
   • The close up looks was added to make it more true for source material.
   • They are once again very colorful to look at, due to how great the colors palette is.
4. You unlock moves and gimmicks as you progress through the levels, just like in Battle for Bikini Bottom. You unlock these moves:
   • Bubble Button during Wild West Jellyfish Fields.
   • Karate Kick during Karate Downtown Bikini Bottom.
   • Fishhook Swing during Pirate Goo Lagoon.
   • Grand Slam during Prehistoric Kelp Forest.
5. It’s fun to collect Golden Coins, because every levels has many Golden Coins you unlock after you get moves from later stages. For example, you get a lot of Golden Coins in Pirate Goo Lagoon by doing the Grand Slam, but you don’t unlock Grand Slam until you get to the first parts of Prehistoric Kelp Forest. This gives the game a lot of replay value.
6. The bosses are great in this game, although the Red-Handed Bandit (Mr. Krabs) and Admiral Prawn are just get to the end bosses instead of bosses you directly fight.
7. After completing levels, you go back to Bikini Bottom and get some compulsory and non compulsory objectives. For example, finding Squidward a dictionary to help him relearn English is needed to be able to progress in the story to be able to enter Medieval Sulfur Fields, but finding Spot in every level and finding Refreshments for Squidward are both non-compulsory.
8. The dialogue and humor is as good as the dialogue and humor in the show.
9. The enemies are just as good as the enemies in Battle for Bikini Bottom.
10. Levels will never feel slow paced, because unlike Battle for Bikini Bottom, you have the dodge move, which not only lets you dodge enemy attacks, but it also lets you move faster. Not only that, but you don’t get loading screens every single time you teleport to a place (you sometimes do, but the loading screens aren’t as long). Every loading screen either has a time card or has SpongeBob going to a portal to a completely different area (except loading screens where SpongeBob teleports to a place in that same world, but they don’t take long and don’t appear as often).
11. Unlike BFBB: Rehydrated, where you just only 1 costume, here, there's so many costumes to choose from. Each costumes has many era that fitting on the level themes.

Not So Cosmic Qualities

1. As expected for gameplay and graphics, it feels like BFBB: Rehydrated expansion for some reason, due to how similar the gameplay and graphics are.
2. The bosses, while great, are not that much challenging (except for Pearl boss and final boss).
3. Patrick's design in this game is unfaithful to the original version due to him being really small and a balloon which he wasn't in the original though they did explain it in the cutscenes that he was transformed into a balloon by the Mermaid Tears and he does later get his show design at the end of the game
4. The game still has backtracking, much like Battle for Bikini Bottom.
5. You can't play any characters to choose from like previous games did, the only playable characters on this game is SpongeBob himself.
6. The Switch and particularly mobile version; especially for mid/low-range devices is even worse than previous SpongeBob games, having more frame-rate issues here and there, and has some bugs that could be ruined the game in the Switch/Mobile port.

Reception

The game received mixed to positive reception by critics, but positive reception by audience and fans alike. It praise for improvement from previous game and adding more replay value, but criticism for lack of the innovation.

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