Spongebob Squarepants: Titans of the Tide – Review

It appears that Spongebob is experiencing a renaissance in the video game world. Since the Rehydrated re-release of Battle for Bikini Bottom in 2020 each new title has been met with fairly universal acclaim amongst fans. So I decided to dive in to the latest entry Titans of the Tide to answer, is it a ten though?

Order up for fan service

What was immediately apparent when playing Titans of the Tide was just how well the developer Purple Lamp clearly understood the Spongebob universe and its characters. Not only does the original voice cast reprise their roles in the game making it feel like you’re playing an authentic episode of the show, it’s also brimming with references and throwbacks to iconic moments from the cartoon. As a fan who’s effectively been living under a rock when it comes to watching Spongebob recently, longtime fans will get immense gratification from just how many early show tropes are referenced here, within the games levels and its unlockable costumes.

Gameplay also takes cues from Spongebobs most critically acclaimed gaming adventures. Collecting chests to unlock Plankton challenges, I was overjoyed to see the iconic block platform levels return from Battle for Bikini Bottom and Slide segments with Spongebob sliding on his tongue I remember from the Movie game back in the day. These throwbacks and references helped shape the game as a genuine Spongebob experience of which I believe most fans will get a smile from.

“Oh brother This game stinks”

OK I’ll admit I’m jumping the gun on this a bit, but in truth whilst I enjoyed all of the fan service, I found the rest of Titans of the tide to be little shallow.

Upon entering the first main area of Titans of the Tide, Goldfish Island, you’re greated with a fairly big open area thats fun to explore. Whilst the game is pointing you in a certain direction, I found it was immediately rewarding to head off across the beach where I found a fair few side missions and collectable chests as reward for my intrigue. I got this immediate vibe that the game was going to be a really solid and fun collectathon style game in a similar vein to Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie (but was under no illusion that it would be as top tier as those games).

After my exploring however I was somewhat dissapointed that the game devolves in to a very linear platformer, which is absolutely fine, some of the greatest platformers are, but the initial premise of this game suggests its going to be more open in its design and it feels disappointing to find out that it isn’t.

Spongebob Short-shorts

The lack of open environments that the game seems to initially promise is only made more jarring by the overall games runtime. The game features a sum total of 5 levels… yes you heard me 5, I noticed that this was going to be a short adventure when I tried to fast travel back to the games hub world “The Floating Patty” within the second level, or shall i say I believed I was in the 2nd area but I had actually entered the third area unknowingly and was forced to complete it before returning to the games hub area. So all in all for this middle segment of the game you are actually locked out of the main hub and selecting previous levels to clean up missed side missions and collectables.

Not that this is a significant issue considering that theres not a great deal to do on the Floating patty, other than the odd side missions, some collectables and access to the already mentioned Plankton challenges (which there are far too few of) as well as a fairly challenging Krabby Patty minigame.

I finished the game feeling fairly ripped off even when only paying £25 and trust me “No girl ever wants to dance with a fool who went and got ripped off”.

To my surpise theres a fair amount of extra content locked behind a season pass, which actually fulfills a lot of the Plankton challenge content that I believed was missing, but buying this content would take the total RRP with the game up to £45 and I’m unsure that it offers much more value than the base game.

The gang’s all here…

The core foundations of the game is built upon the mechanic of swapping between playing as Spongebob and Patrick on the fly. I have to say, this does lead to some fairly intense platforming segments that require quick reactions sometimes mid jump so that you are the correct character to interact with the next obstacle, it’s fun but I found that it got old fairly quick, even in the games criminally short run time. The second area of the game introduces the mechanic of changing a light to blue or green to make platforms and doors appear and disappear. Its a fun little mechanic but it unfortunately makes up most of the rest of the platforming in the remaining areas of the game to which I can imagine would struggle to retain even the youngest Spongebob fans attention.

“We don’t need performance, as long as we use our Imagination”

Whats perhaps the thing that takes this game all the way to Rock Bottom is its performance on Switch 2. The frame-rate has this tendency to tank and it actually tanks mostly when the green and blue light puzzles are in play, I mean I assume the Switch 2 should have no problem with handling translucent textures so its frankly down to poor optimisation.

Another oddity I faced multiple times during my playthrough was loading mid cutscene, where voice lines would still be audible but the visuals disappeared behind a loading splash screen, I’d assume that the levels are loading whilst the cutscenes are playing but again its just a blatent lack of polish thats been overlooked that really detracts from the overall experience.

I played Titans of the Tide mostly in Handheld mode, which equally had its drawbacks. 1 very specific drawback was rather distracting and actually annoyed me for the entirety of my time with the adventure, I can’t assess how annoying this is on a TV but on the Switch 2’s built in display it was. I’m talking about the HUD, basically you will always have a populated list on the left hand side of your main objective and the most recent side mission you have in progress. I know it sounds like standard affair, but on Handheld this takes up a fairly sizeable amount of your display, it just feels like it gets in the way alot.

The options of what you can do to help ease this issue are extremely limited too. Your main mission will always be displayed when there is a main objective present with no option to hide it. Side missions will be pinned to this list every time you interact with a new mission whether you are actively aiming to achieve it or not. I discovered I could remove the pin from the mission via the pause menu but I was doing this a heck of a lot to a tedious level, I’d have prefered the option to just turn off automatic pins, its again just another oversight that could easily be fixed.

Is it a Ten though?

No and I felt it was far from reaching it. Its at that sweet price point that Grandparents visiting the store on a Saturday with the kids will likely look at and say “oh go on then!” but for those generous grandparents who are savvy shoppers they’ll find that theres far better value to be had elsewhere even at this price. Theres plenty of fan service that will be sure to give a chuckle along the way but content is light and whats here plays poorly on Switch 2. Even for the youngest player, I feel theres only just enough content to last a weekend before the cartridge gathers dust on the shelf.

It’s a 5/10

• Full of fan service, even for older fans
• Fully voiced by the original cast
• Swapping between Spongebob and Patrick is F.U.N
• Very light on content even for the price point
• A fair chunk of content is locked behind a season pass
• Uninspired platforming
• Switch 2 performance issues that are hard to ignore