Before I start the opening of the reviews, it is always important to point out that I do all the achievements of a game before I do its review, so you can imagine that I not only fulfill the main story, but also do all the extras where the developers wanted our involvement (which is where I believe most of the achievements were supposed to be).
The opening of this portal then begins with SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake.
Game developed by Purple Lamp Studios, which in addition to having partial involvement in the development of Sea of Thieves, also independently carried out the development of the previous game in the franchise, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated. Game was published by THQ Nordic (Darksiders, Destroy All Humans, Desperados, etc.) and it was precisely through THQ's partnership inclusion programs that we got access to the game key to be completed in advance.
SpongeBob: The Cosmic Shake is a single-player third-person action-adventure game and is available for the following platforms:
STORY
You will command SpongeBob accompanied by his faithful squire Patrick Estrela, both meet Madame Kassandra (character introduced for the first time in the franchise in this game), she gives them a jar full of Mermaid Tears. According to legend, these tears can fulfill the wishes of those who are pure of heart. But as not everything is flowers, the wishes mess with the reality of Bikini Bottom, so that puts them inside the main adventure and we will have to reestablish normality. We will enter different worlds where the famous characters of the classic cartoon are in different roles, like a multiverse.
To accompany us, Patrick is previously transfomed into a balloon and serves as an assistant (like Navi in Zelda), But make no mistake, the best dialogues are between sponge bob and Patrick, who genuinely managed to get a few laughs out of me.
We spend during our game trajectory jumping between several universes, be it the pirate world helping the Flying Dutchman, in the Desert capturing the thief Seu Siriguejo or facing Karateka Sandy Bochechas in the cinematic world and several others that make references to the classic series and pop culture in general. In the middle of our journey, we manage to collect collectibles, find secrets and interact with several characters whose lines always bring at least a smile if you are a fan of the cartoon, such as the secondary character Fred, who will always shout "MY NECK".
Your ultimate goal is to rebalance the universe and restore order to Bikini Bottom. To do this, we need to rescue all the characters that have been lost in the multiverse to our Bikini Bottom and in between collect as much Cosmic Jelly for Madame Kassandra as we can.
VISUAL
As the game needed to be included on the previous generation of consoles and also on less robust platforms, it utilizes the Unreal Engine 4. Incredibly, this did not affect the visuals of the game at all, even though it is a game that in theory is not supposed to be a game with incredible graphics, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake has some of the most beautiful graphics for cartoon graphics that I have ever had the pleasure of seeing, especially speaking of lighting and cutscenes.
Despite this, the game is not perfect in terms of performance, it is worth mentioning that the platform on which I performed all the gameplay was the Xbox Series X, which despite being the most powerful console in the world today, encountered some frame drop problems especially in the world of pirates with their intense explosion effects and among other things. However, as this is a pre-release version, I believe that these problems will be fixed soon.
Gameplay
During the gameplay, we face enemies that are made of some cosmic jelly that when we defeat we can collect this jelly as a kind of currency. Speaking of coins, we also collect coins hidden within the worlds and with them it is possible to release new categories of clothing that are available as we spend the cosmic jellies.
The gameplay is very diverse and we can find different types of mini-games throughout our gameplay, but nothing that is so complex or that reinvents the wheel, in reality everything we see in this game we have already seen in other games before, some of the coolest for me were those of Surf with the tongue where we dodge obstacles and collect jams and coins on the way.
The game takes several inspirations from important games, I could name a few like Yooka-Layle, Crash Bandicoot, Zelda and etc. And with each new world we learn something that diversifies our gameplay in addition to releasing new areas in other worlds thanks to the evolution acquired as our progression in history, for example in one of the worlds we learned to give a belly on the floor to which we managed to open secret areas to get coins.
SOUND
The sound effects of the game are very characteristic and unique, some bring characterization directly from the cartoon, for example when we have a small Loading of 3 seconds (in the new generation) represented by the classic speech of the narrator of SpongeBob:
But the great highlight of the game is for dubbing localized in our language, THQ Nordic did their homework, that is, they made a point of bringing all the voice actors of the original drawing to dub the game. In other words we have Wendel Bezerra as SpongeBob, Marco Antonico as Patrick and all the voice actors that we are already used to here in Brazil, I would say that perhaps this is the biggest hit for the Brazilian public of this game (in this part of the analysis it makes you want Dragon Ball to be from THQ for us to have a dubbed game).
ACHIEVEMENTS
Most of the game's achievements are related to completing the story, so you play organically will complete a part, but I recommend in all the bosses of the game you perform them without taking any damage from anyone, as this will unlock an additional achievement in each of them. In addition you will need to get all the coins hidden in the worlds and collect some secrets but that sincerely are not so well hidden so that you need to worry that much.
The big problem is that until the moment of this review there is a bugged achievement and it is the last achievement, I have already communicated those responsible for giving me the key to the game, but I did not have a very encouraging answer about it, but I sincerely hope that they will fix this soon, because only this is missing for me to completely uninstall the game, since I have already done absolutely everything possible in the game.
Trailer
CONCLUSION
Despite the technical problems that SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake faces, it is certainly the best of the franchise so far. It's a game that you can really enjoy with the story and its beautiful graphics, without having absolutely any frustration with the gameplay. The voice acting is the key point that made me play this game and it is something that I really cannot fail to recommend, especially not being a AAA priced game, it is currently costing around 110 the PC version at Green Man Gaming.
I will certainly be keeping an eye on what this studio will bring from now on, because it is a definitely very competent studio, I would like other games in this style, maybe dreaming of a Hey Arnold game along the lines of Grim Fandango is too much? maybe, but it doesn't hurt to dream.
Review by Gamertag: Scoulz
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