Story: One day, Spongebob wakes up and begins playing fetch with Gary, leading the snail to dig up a treasure chest. Spongebob opens the chest and finds a magic bottle, which, upon rubbing it, he accidentally releases The Flying Dutchman. The Flying Dutchman tells Spongebob that he will take Gary to work on his ship for all eternity; after briefly leaving to check on his ship. SpongebobStory: One day, Spongebob wakes up and begins playing fetch with Gary, leading the snail to dig up a treasure chest. Spongebob opens the chest and finds a magic bottle, which, upon rubbing it, he accidentally releases The Flying Dutchman. The Flying Dutchman tells Spongebob that he will take Gary to work on his ship for all eternity; after briefly leaving to check on his ship. Spongebob then must travel across seven different worlds to recover letter tiles in order to defeat the Dutchman...
Pros:
• Although it's simple, I do like the story in this game. It does feel like something that would be in a special for the show (edited to work of course).
Cons:
• The ending for this game however is extremely underwhelming and feels flat out rushed.
Gameplay: The game is a 3d platformer and collectaton where you collect Jellyfish, Doubloons (Coins), and Letters that spell Spongebob's name that then leads to finding the Dutchman's treasure chest in each world. The game has seven of these worlds. Some are inspired by already-existing locations from the show such as Bikini Bottom and Goo Lagoon. Others, however are new such as Chum World and the Flying Dutchman's Graveyard.
Pros:
• The different costumes, Mermaid Man, Fishing and Reef Blower Spongebob can wear is pretty neat how they all have special abilities. (besides the square costume, that's useless)
• This game also has some neat concepts I find quite clever. Such as underwear for Spongebob being a healing item.
Cons:
• Terrible combat. The hit detection is just awful and it feels like luck whether you hit enemies or they hit you first.
• The game is too easy. Dying in this game has no penalty to the player so the fear of death is never really even thought off in this game. I know it's a kids game, but it's no excuse for no challenge whats so ever.
• The camera is terrible. It's not uncommon for 3d platformers to have issues with the camera. However this games camera is slow to move around and gets stuck in everything that messes up your vision.
• No real point in 100% since you don't get any bonus rewards. Your better off just collecting what you need to progress instead of everything.
• The Jellyfish outfit is much more useful compared to the other costumes, which you will most likely use for much shorter periods of time.
Sound and Music:
Pros:
• The voice actors from the show are present and do an excellent job. Only off ones are the narrator sound weird and creepy and Larry who's just out of character and kind off a jerk.
Cons:
• The music isn't bad in this game, but there's only nine tracks in the game. Only two worlds in the game have an actual soundtrack to accompany the area. The rest of the soundtrack plays depending on what costume your wearing and that get's very annoying hearing the same music over and over again.
• The sound effects come off really cheap and crappy sounding.
Performance and Graphics:
Pros:
• The depiction of Bikini Bottom and Sandy's Treedome is actually well designed and I think it represents the location of the show pretty well.
Cons:
• The other five worlds however are really poorly made and some areas look questionable and not what I would expect to be in locations like Jellyfish Fields, Goo Lagoon etc.
• I'm not fuzzy over graphics in general, even if they are bad. It has to be said though they do not look good even for 2002.
• The performance is inconsistent. The smaller areas run well. In the bigger areas however the frame rate starts to be very inconsistent.
• The in-game cutscenes look dreadful. The animations are weak and character models both in and out of cutscenes are hideous, especially NPCs and enemies.
Verdict: The more I play this game, the more its flaws just become more bothersome for me. This game is just s**t and you will need to be a big fan of the show to get through this muck. I'll give a little bit of credit for this game starting the long list of console Spongebob games that we got after this one. But at the end of the day, this game feels like a early demo version of the games to shortly follow this one. If it wasn't for a nice simple story and the excellent voice acting, this game would be even worse
Story: 7/10
Gameplay: 3/10
Sound and Music: 4.5/10
Performance and Visuals 3/10
Overall Rating: 4.0/10… Expand
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