Heavy Iron Studios return from Battle for Bikini Bottom to helm the movie tie-in game.

While the game follows the movie pretty well, they added a few extra things to not completely spoil the game. The most notable example is not saying David Hasselhoff's name.

Spongebob and Patrick play pretty much the same with a few additions. Spongebob can't ground-pound. Patrick was changed a lot. He can now spin, cartwheel and swing on floating ice blocks.

While there are only 4 boss fights they are very different and need to observe what they do to find an opening.

While the game is enjoyable it is short due to the short development time. To obtain the final item, you will have to revisit other levels which contain different challenges.

The Spongeball is an obstacle course which has Spongebob turned into a ball who needs to make his way to the end. Combat Arena is combat focused where you need to survive three different waves. Each wave getting harder each time. Floating Blocks is a platforming challenge where you need to jump on different blocks to reach the end before the time runs out. Sonic Wave Challenge follows the rings before they disappear.

When you break open boxes and defeat enemies will give you manliness points. Collect enough of these and you will be able to upgrade Spongebob and Patrick. You will be able to upgrade their health and abilities for an easier journey. If you ask me upgrade the health and spin attacks first before the other abilities .

If you enjoyed Battle for Bikini Bottom, you will like this game but find it lacking in a lot of areas.

On paper, and to begin with, the idea of a SpongeBob movie tie-in game, from the developers of and using the same engine as Battle For Bikini Bottom, arguably one of the best licensed games ever (not my words), it would seem like this game is basically bound to be another classic.

Even when they announced a remaster of BFBB I was sure an updated version of the Movie game was around the corner (and I still do, considering the movie turns 20 next year), as it's become evident that it really could do with one.

When you start the game it's pretty fun and easy to get used to (although WOW that camera sucks), especially if you've played either version of BFBB, but after a while it starts to drain you.

Most of the game after a certain point requires you to go out of your way to collect tokens in order to unlock abilities you need to progress, which involves completing time trials in stupid amounts of time and collecting rings that are timed (that don't actually give you a proper visible time limit).

At first, I'd planned to complete as much as I could so I could go back and do some of these annoying challenges in order to get 100% post-game, but the game basically forced me to do them as a lot of the easier-sounding challenges were locked behind abilities I had yet to unlock, which require even more tokens.

It got to a point in which I had to use a cheat code to unlock every ability so I could at least play the game's story to completion and then get pissed at stupid challenges, because at least then I'd feel less like a quitter since I at least finished the story mode.

The game itself is basically just more BFBB type levels; platforming, abilities you've already seen before and enemies that are a pain to defeat. If anything it's kinda worse in that aspect since there's not much variation when it comes to, well, everything.
It's kinda samey.

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Game is to Battle For Bikini Bottom what Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels is to the original Super Mario Bros.
Only, at least with that game you knew it'd be harder than the original.

UPDATE: I've had to abandon the game because it turns out once you decide to start one of the "warp challenges" (a little plate in certain main missions that warps you to a sub-level) you're basically forced to complete it before you can go back to completing the game normally.

If you jump into one but then decide to just complete the main game first, you're shit out of luck. You either have to restart the entire fucking level from the start or complete the warp challenge.

I had planned to finish the story and then go through these sublevels for the 100% but I wanted to at least give each one a try before I continue, but you can't just "try them out", once you're in, you're in.
And that sucks.

When you can't finish part of a game because you're bad at it, that's fine, it's your incompetence, your problem. When you can't finish part of game because it is wildly unfair or badly done, it's completly frustrating. The SpongeBob Movie game starts all fun and happiness - for a moment, I even tought it would end up being one of my favorite games ever - but very soon becomes a patience test.

After a certain point, the missions don't give you the opportunity to miss a turn for half a second in the golden ring areas or to let you just just walk to the other side of the level, due to the infinite amount of ranged enemies and the difficulty to see how far their bullets and rockets are. There's also some platforming that require you to make millimetric calculated jumps and timing to work.

Someday I'll finish this game, but I always need a month - or so - long break to fully recover from the stress it causes me. If I ever played this game as a kid, I could blame the anxiety I have today on it.

EDIT: I finished it and now I feel even more frustrated :)