Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated - An Adventure That Needed to be Reworked A Bit More

Written by Chris Woodside  on June 26, 2020

Reviews: While showing a clear love for the source material, Rehydrated remains more at home in Weenie Hut Jr than it does in the Salty Spitoon.

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One of the characteristics of the Nickelodeon show Spongebob Squarepants that made it so popular was the show’s ability to entertain children while also providing just enough hidden humor to keep the adults occupied, and not mind sitting down with their children for a few laughs as well. Spongebob was a show that was loved by everyone, kids and adults, for its witty humor, charming characteristics, and special charisma. While the original Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom did a great job of capturing most of the charm of the original television series, this remastered (or rehydrated, as THQ cleverly calls this), the gameplay and features certainly have not aged well and feel every bit of the seventeen years since it released in 2003.

Battle for Bikini Bottom provides players with a fairly basic story premise that feels right at home with the spirit of its television inspiration. Plankton, set on dominating Bikini Bottom, has created an army of evil robots. Unfortunately, as with all of Plankton’s plans, this has gone horribly wrong and the robots have rebelled against their tiny master and are wreaking havoc across the underwater town. As with most episodes of Spongebob, the story progresses fairly predictably, there are no major plot points or twists to speak of, and the plot takes a back seat to the platforming gameplay.



Fans of the platforming genre in the vein of Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie will find a lot of familiarity in Battle for Bikini Bottom. Stars are replaced with golden spatulas, “shiny objects'' (yes, that's what they are called) take the place of coins. Just as in the other popular platformers of its day, Spongebob begins in a hub world of the “residential” area of Bikini Bottom, where he can slowly gain access to a variety of levels that visit some of the most recognizable areas from Jellyfish Fields to Goo Lagoon. While these levels are all successful in bringing about a certain level of nostalgia from the player who is familiar with the source material, they don't do much when it comes to actually providing entertainment to the player. Outside of a few challenging boss battles (including one in particular that was cut from the original and added here for Rehydrated), the platforming is incredibly simple. While this may not be overly surprising for a game based on a children’s show, without any real challenge level present throughout the game it makes puzzles and enemy encounters feel more like chores that must be completed rather than moments of genuine fun.

The monotony of the platforming is broken up only by the inclusion of a variety in the cast of players that you can control. While you begin the game as Spongebob, you later gain the ability to switch to controlling Patrick or Sandy. Some puzzles intentionally require (or at least heavily benefit) from being solved as a particular player, but most of the time I found these changes to be cosmetic more than meaningful. While they all do have different abilities that may slightly change your game style, it never feels as though one character outperforms the others in a drastic manner. During my playthrough for this review, I found myself playing as Patrick for the majority of the game when possible, simply because his dialogue in common situations proved to be the most entertaining to listen to. (That is, at least for a short time. You will hear the same dialogue countless times during your time in Bikini Bottom. If repetition gets on your nerves, you won't make it far beyond the first world without wanting to mute the game.)



In the interest of talking about dialogue, the voice acting was the largest disappointment in this game. While most of the main cast as their original voice actors from the television series, including Tom Kenny as Spongebob and Bill Fagerbakke as Patrick, some of the most noteworthy and well known characters in the game are not given their original voice talent. Mr. Krabs, in particular, suffers in the vocal department. This is a surprising omission, since the voice of Mr. Krabs on the television show is provided by Clancy Brown, who has quite the experience in video game voice work from contemporary titles such as Crash Bandicoot, as well as in more modern titles like 2018’s Detroit Become Human. While other characters' voices are hardly recognizable from their more famous counterparts, Mr. Krabs seems to have suffered the worst treatment in this regard.

Oddly, Battle for Bikini Bottom feels stuck between two generations. While its controls and clunky platforming at times do certainly make it feel exactly like a 2003 game might feel like, it does push the bubble (pun intended) beyond the more linear nature of platformers during its time. When collecting a golden spatula, for example, Spongebob and his friends remain free to uncover the next secret on the island, something that this game has more in common with 2017’s Super Mario Odyssey more than it does with Super Mario 64 in 1996, where collecting a star automatically boots you from the world. This mechanic gives Battle for Bikini Bottom more of a modern feel, which clashes with the very dated platforming mechanics of its time. Because of this, it feels that Rehydrated is more of a remaster with a fresh coat of paint more than it actually reimagines the game in any profound way.



By far, the largest addition to Rehydrated is the inclusion of online or local couch cooperative play. While the gameplay can have some fun and redeeming elements with a plan, such as having the opportunity to control players that are not playable in the base game, this is not a mode that players will spend a ton of time in. This new horde mode plays more like a worse version of Zombies from the Call of Duty series. You and a friend can take on (seamingly) endless waves of enemies from the game. Unlike in zombies, however, Rehydrated’s horde mode is more of a test of endurance than it is a test of strategy or skill. There are no windows to board up, no saving up points for the best weapons. Rather, it's a test of whether you or your friend will get bored of many many waves that spawn first. It's disappointing this was billed as one of the major new additions to the game, since I don't see many players returning to horde mode after their first experience with it. There just is not a lot to see or experience with a second playthrough.

This, though, speaks to the fundamental flaw with Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated. Countless fans remember the original game with fond memories, and to its credit, it remains one of the best Spongebob games ever made. However, with the incredible success of some of the remakes we have seen with many older games over the past few years, the Rehydrated edition provides players with too few reasons to return to Bikini Bottom in HD, while highlighting the faults that were easier to overlook in 2003. It will be interesting to see if this new coat of paint invites a new community of speedrunners that have built up from the original game, but other than this, it's hard to see this garnering much of a following among Spongebob’s most loyal fans.