Story: The producer of the superhero show The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy is filming a special episode in Bikini Bottom andStory: The producer of the superhero show The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy is filming a special episode in Bikini Bottom and using the locals as actors. Spongebob and his friends must then audition for the different parts of the special and see who can win the super villain role...
Pros:
• This is a pretty simple concept that ends up being quite unique for a Spongebob game. I like how it's taking a smaller aspect of the show (Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy and making it the focus of the game.
Gameplay: Lights, Camera, Pants! is a party game influenced mainly from Mario Party. The game is made up of eight different areas for each audition, with all of them having three mini-games based around the location. The contestants must earn performance points in order to get the different parts in each scene and whoever has the most by the end of the auditions gets the super villain role.
Pros:
• The mini-games for the most part quite different from each other.
• The reward for this games way of 100% is actually rally good with "Make your own movie".
• You can play as six characters from the show, the most in any Spongebob game. Although they don't actually different about them in gameplay, the fact you can play as Mr. Krabs, Plankton and Squidward with Spongebob, Patrick and Sandy returning is welcome.
• It's a party game so of course it's better with people to play with.
• The different environments for each audition are great, seeing many of the locations from the show.
Cons:
• The collectables are very annoying in this game. You have to do certain challenges which are quite hidden away from the player. If your not careful, you could not be able to get the collectables since they are missable. The action figure and artwork is cool to look at, but not worthwhile and a pain to gather them all.
• The mini-games are very mixed in quality. A few are really good, a few terrible, but mostly just alright. It's the mix in quality of the mini-games that is one of games biggest issues.
• The AI is also a little random. Sometimes setting them on smart difficulty perform the exact same as a normal difficulty AI, or the normal AI completely dominates.
• If your playing with AI, be very careful on what difficulty you set the game and the AI. Since you need a certain amount of performance points to progress. However, if you get stuck on a certain area since you and the AI can't get enough points... you might be stuck for a while.
• Besides new collectables to unlock and a new challenge to unlock in single auditions. Silver Mode and Gold Mode in the somewhat campaign mode for this game are the exact same as bronze, but just harder and you need to beat all of these to technically get the 100% reward. Just a wasted chance to make all the modes more different.
Sound and Music:
Pros:
• Music is quite good in this game. I wouldn't rate it as highly as some other Spongebob games, but it does have it's awesome tracks.
• The voice acting is really spot on in this game. The dialogue is probably the best written out of all the Spongebob games. Many of the smaller characters are present in this game as well. The best performances by far being Mermaid Man (who get actually got the show voice actor this time) and Barnacle Boy. Both the late Ernest Borgnine and the late Tim Conway really showed how great of a duo and how iconic they were to the show.
Performance and Visuals:
Pros:
• The game ran smoothly the whole time I played it
• Although the animation is awkward at times. The best parts of the game are the cutscenes. All the characters' audition parts are done differently depending on who wins the role and honestly it makes you want to watch all the different possibilities with the cutscenes.
Cons:
• The graphics have taken a downgrade from the last few games. They aren't that bad for 2005, but it doesn't look as good as BFBB and The Movie game.
Verdict: If I'm honest, I'm not a big fan of this game. However, I think it's a slightly above average game and better then most of the other Mario party clones mainly because of the cutscenes, the voice acting and the cool concept of story. The gameplay is very average though. However, this is a unique Spongebob game that I can get enjoyment from it and if your a fan of the show, I think you will too.
Story: 7/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Sound and Music: 8/10
Performance and Graphics 7.5/10
Overall Verdict: 6.2/10… Expand
