Admittedly, I've never quite understood the full appeal of Spongebob Squarepants. Perhaps this has something to do with the only times I've seen it, it always seems to be one of the same three episodes over and over again, that I didn't really even find to be funny to begin with...hmm. Regardless, I decided to at least try to give this game the benefit of a doubt here.What an hour wasted.
Granted, this game is from 2005, when the DS was still relatively new on the market, and 3D platform games for a Nintendo system were practically unheard of still - note the almost complete lack of stylus usage in this game, it's almost all arrow pad keys. This wouldn't necessarily be such a problem (even with the graphics being extremely polygonal, poorly laced, and glitchy), except....... (insert pregnant pause)........you're limited to using only the left and right arrow buttons to navigate.
That's right. A 3D world that operates like an oldschool side-scroller. Oh sure, there's points where you're supposed to move forward and backward, but do the up and down keys work? NO. They don't. You press down, you duck. You press up, nothing happens. (WTF???) So, what to do? Oh... you stop in front of one of these directions, and apparently press left or right in whichever direction's closer. ............Yeah, that makes little to no sense to me either.
As for the actual plot, you're employed to help Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy save Bikini Bottom from The Dirty Little Bubbles. (Why yes, I do believe that's a double entendre.) This more or less involves jumping around on innocent victims' heads, then capturing the bubbles. (Oh yeah, that's real fun. Not.) Every time you see a jelly fish, you capture it and milk it for its jelly. Ummmmm......am I the only one seeing something not-so-vaguely phallicly referenced by that? >_> You have unlimited lives, but each time Spongebob dies, you pick up from wherever you started your last turn at, and you lose any and all progress you'd made on that turn. Ugh. I can't even BEGIN to tell you how frustrating this is, especially when the naviagational system makes things so damn impossible.
I feel like I'm being generous even rating this game this highly, but I'm rating it a 3 out of 10 Krabby Patties.
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