SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake certainly has its standout moments, as well as some elements I genuinely love. But for the most part, it is unfortunately, a disappointment.

Like with many people, I presume, I was expecting The Cosmic Shake to be a sequel, follow up, or at least spiritual successor to Battle For Bikini Bottom. But, it isn't. It tries to be, but it just isn't.
Instead of being a decently open collectathon, who's progress is entirely determined by the player's eagerness to collect, like in BFBB, The Cosmic Shake is a painfully linear platformer that wears a deflated BFBB skin.
Sure, it has a hub world, but it doesn't really contribute to anything and offers little in the way of exploration.
Sure, it had "collectables". But they don't serve any purpose other than unlocking the plethora of costumes. (Which btw, the system for this is so strange. You have to collect a certain number of gold doubloons to unlock a costume tier, and then you use the cosmic jelly to unlock the four costumes. Why are there two walls to this? Why not just give the player all the costumes when they get the doubloons, or just let the player purchase the costumes with jelly specifically? That would have made collecting jelly at least feel worthwhile in the slightest...) They really serve no purpose other than this and can be entirely ignored.
And sure, there's plenty of enemies who reminded me of enemies from BFBB. But every single one was done better in that game! And the ones that aren't just trying to make you think of BFBB are just so... annoying. Almost all of them require you to wait around for a specific moment to attack them, or you have to deal with getting stun locked, or some other annoying time waster that stops you in your tracks. They just aren't fun to fight.
My point is, I think this game wants to be BFBB's successor, but something just went completely wrong somewhere along the way, The very foundations that made BFBB work just aren't here, and all that's left is a mostly empty shell that kind of looks like it at a glance.

But honestly, I can deal with all of these elements to some degree. I'm not a fan of them, but I can deal with them. What I can't deal with, and what really frustrated me throughout my entire playthrough, was how painfully handholdy this game is.

The game literally doesn't let you press the attack button at the beginning of the game, not until a giant prompt comes up that says: "Press X!" Then, you can attack all you want, but up to that point, you can do nothing but jump.
And this goes on through most of the game.

There are so many moments where you just can't do something, and then the game just says: "Okay, you're good" and then SpongeBob just gets a new ability for no reason. He doesn't unlock it in a cutscene, learn it from a mentor, or even pick up a random thing floating in the air that lets him do it. He, and by extension the player, are just given the ability when the game decides to, and I got so fed up with this almost immediately. It doesn't help that, aside from the flying kick, most abilities are mostly forgettable or useless anyway.

I think my favorite example of this baffling decision can be seen in the rock bottom level, where the game introduces you to a new spooky jelly that you have to sneak past. The game gives you a little MGS style object to hide inside and everything. You can't attack them, so you have to sneak past them (or just run past them like I did lol).

Well, actually, you can attack them, once the game arbitrarily lets you.
You're suddenly given the ability to instantly kill these previous impervious enemies, simply by going up from behind them and pressing the attack button. That's it. Why keep it hidden from the player? Why not let me figure it out myself through experimentation? What is the point? It's just bad game design, and left me feeling like I was being directed by someone else instead of going on my own adventure. The best game I think I can compare it to is Metroid Other M, in regard to how Samus' abilities are unlocked when the guy watching over her just sort of tells her she can use them, instead of unlocking them herself. It was bad design then and its bad design now.

I know I'm ranting about the handholding in a kids' game, and I probably seem ridiculous, but I just was not a fan of this aspect of the game in the slightest. I kept having to tell myself: "Well, this is a game for kids, so I'd probably like it more if I was still a kid." And that's probably true, but the fact I had to justify my time playing it like that is not a good sign in my book at all.

Now, with all of my grievances laid out, with all of that being said, it's important to not that this game isn't some poorly made, corporate controlled, cash grab made by people who were just trying to get paid. It was made, very clearly, by passionate people. People who love SpongeBob.
This is evident by the story, voice acting, and especially the cutscenes. While I didn't really enjoy playing through the game, I always had a smile on my face during the cutscenes. The characters are always so expressive, bouncy, and silly that I just couldn't help but enjoy myself. (They do overuse that one joke where they zoom in on something, but whatever, I can deal with that). If this were a SpongeBob movie or special, it would instantly become a classic. There's so much love here that I honestly feel kind of bad giving the game such a low score. The developers' love for SpongeBob, and its fans is clearly evident throughout the entire experience.

But I have no idea what went wrong. I don't know if the direction for this game was misguided, or maybe if the studio but off more than they could chew, or maybe if the publisher had a small release window and forced the studio to crunch to meet a deadline. (This last one is probably the actual answer, judging by both the industry as a whole, and how crunch affected Rehydrates specifically). But whatever happened, well, it happened. And as a result, we got The Cosmic Shake, a game I found almost entirely boring, frustrating, and forgetful. And yet, still booming with love. I really wish there were more positive things for me to say, but as it is, I can't really recommend this game unless you have a kid, deeply love any kind of 3D platformers, or just violently love SpongeBob. Otherwise, you should just play Battle for Bikini Bottom, either the original or Rehydrated. Or any other 3D platformer.

I really loved Kassandra though. Easily the greatest woman character to ever exist in SpongeBob. Please bring her back for literally anything. She was perfect.

Whereas Battle For Bikini Bottom was a fun, simple collectathon similar to games like Mario Sunshine, this is nothing but linear. There are some areas that let you go out of your way to get more stuff, but all of it is incredibly easy alongside useless, because getting collectibles only gives you alternative outfits and aren't needed to progress. Furthermore, the gameplay is constantly interrupted by unnecessary tutorials and very easy and boring minigames. I want to try and actually finish it, but I feel very disappointed and personally don't want to bother.

A very basic platformer that's nice for one playthrough, but I don't see myself revisiting. Jokes are hit or miss, some funny, some... honestly disturbing like the random gross out humor. Glitches are present and apparent with pop in textures, stutters during gameplay and audio bugs, story is formulaic and basic, but the game can be fun at times and the scenario SpongeBob and friends warp into give a creative a nice throwback to previous SpongeBob episodes. Fans will love it, platformer fans can tolerate it.

I really wanted to enjoy this game but I encountered a glitch that is making it impossible to move on. I was waiting for a patch to fix this issue and finally, more than a month after the game released, there was a patch. It fixed the glitch that causes the game to get locked but doesn't fix it for any of us who are already stuck. I'm not restarting the game and I'm tired of waiting. I enjoyed what I played up to that point. Hell, I even enjoyed running around getting collectibles over and over again in the parts of the game I had already played. Sponch just controls really well. I just know that this game is plagued with so many more issues than it needed to. Maybe it needed a bit more time in the oven. Maybe I shouldn't just fall out of the world, I'll take blame for that. I just wanted a better experience than what I got. Hopefully in the future I'll actually get to play this game.

It was fun!
The world design was lovely for the most part. The medieval world didn't feel at the level of the rest, kinda quickly made and not unique.
The platforming is AWESOME! probably my favorite part of the game. SpongeBob's move set and the level design were quite enjoyable.
My least favorite part has got to be the Latin American Spanish dub. The actual voices were good, but the localization was TERRIBLE. It felt very disjointed and directionless, as if they didn't give the actors context on what was supposed to be happening on the scenes. It felt as if they just gave them a list of lines to read and to read them as they pleased.

Olha eu não sou tão friccionado em coletaton mas esse jogo foi pura diversão do inicio ao fim, THQ nunca errou e quando errou foi tentando acertar, jogo num preço acessivel (pc) completamente localizado e inclusive com a dublagem original.
O combate nesse jogo na primeira hora faz você se perguntar se ele não está muito fácil, ai no resto fica bem melhor.
O jogo pra você que é um adulto bobão as piadas funcionam muito, afinal é bob esponja né
Direção de arte dispensa comentários, tanto na engine quanto na ambientação, nos vamos ver muitas coisas do desenho, e o jogo é carregado de referencias a serie, é um prato cheio pra criança interior que há em você
Depois de hi-fi rush que também foi uma surpresa maravilhosa, esse jogo foi o melhor jogo que joguei desse ano, recomendo principalmente pra quem gosta desse gênero.

(Purely speaking about the experience 100%ing the game)

Cosmic Shake is pretty eh to 100% honestly. BFBB and TSSM would at least reward the player for doing so with a small scene to congratulate your efforts, but Cosmic Shake has... nothing. I guess all achievements/a platinum trophy if you want to be pedantic, but the game itself makes absolutely no acknowledgement of the fact that you've finished everything. None anywhere but a little checklist in the pause menu saying you have all 44/44 accolades.

It's disappointing, especially after the small but charming moments in the game this game is based on, but especially due to just how much more stuff there is to collect/complete here when compared to those games. As such, it left a sour taste in my mouth as although the experience of getting the 100% completion was fun, it was a lot of effort for no real reward, and that's a real shame from my perspective.

Spenge game is largely what you'd expect from a sequel to a remaster of a game from 2003. Main design difference is that levels are now designed to tell their specific stories, with the incentive to explore for collectibles being something you do after completing the level, as the game rewards you with some new power after every level that you'll need to do certain things within the level.

Besides that it's pretty and colourful, levels are unique in design and have lots of detail, combat is improved and has been given a greater emphasis, music and sound is a mix of pretty good original stuff and stuff instantly recognizable from the show, and hey they got Clancy this time!

Main thing holding it back is a lack of polish. Shit like the divekick whiffing and the bubble not being thrown properly at its designated target unless its moving are just weird dumb things that happen all too often. Also the Switch version is prone to hanging and stuttering while not running as well as the other ports. Seriously, avoid this version if you can.

It feels too hard trying to be BFBB, while being more similar like TSSM in its linearity. its unique stuff for the most part is really nice albeit some new things they added are kinda lame. And it has a certain charm that RoTFD had which I like, the game is cute.

Sounds and music will just clip in and out of reality, sometimes noises and music will be there and it’s nice, other times it’s just… gone. The final boss fight the music just didn’t play at all.

Speaking of final boss. That l final fight was dog ass 💀. So much build up for a very little award. There’s no main collectibles, no real motive for progression. Whatever obvious copies of BFBB they tried to make in their level design, enemies, and some collectibles, feels way too forced and messy.

Alright some positives let’s go:

Whatever uniqueness this game did have what pretty good, I enjoyed spongebobs moveset in this game, the reef blower, the karate kick, the bubble surfboard, my only gripe is that I wish I could use these things at any time I wanted but when it came to platforming with these abilities, it was very fluid and fun. The music for the most part was really good and I strongly feel like the bikini bottom hub world was majorly better than BFBBs bikini bottom. Also the inclusion of Spot was fucking awesome I love Spot (also I think this is pearls and karens first time in a 3D SpongeBob game so they’re welcome additions also!)

The game feels a step up from the seahorse shit rehydrated was, this game does feel like a real true sequel to BFBB but comparatively it just doesn’t hold. It wishes.

You know, I originally intended to beat this game. But I've gotten busier and it's just too damn boring for me to want to spend my free time on it when I could be playing anything else.

I think the worst thing for me is that I didn't find it particularly funny, which kinda killed it.

Fuck the bathtub enemies, btw.

This game is very much a mixed bag. On the one hand, it has really really good visuals, and a great engine. The world is very colorful, and it looks like straight eye candy. It really feels like a lot of it is ripped straight from the TV series. The controls, and feel of the game are also really good. Everything feels snappy, much like the original game, and the new moves feel like a great fit. The music and sound design is also great too, and enhance the game. Overall the look and feel of this game is actually incredible, and is really surprising for a licensed kids game, but man there's a lot I don't like. The game is a buggy mess. Weird glitches would happen all the time. Most don't effect gameplay, but sometimes it would be a real pain. There was a point where I had to exit the game and open it again because the O button just straight up would not respond, and I needed to ground pound something to progress. A lot of the levels are just straight up not fun. Like it's so repetitive. Lot of the platforming is solid, but fighting the enemies is so monotonous and tedious. I also thought the final boss was really underwhelming, and not a great way to conclude the game. Overall a mixed bag, but still very much above the average licensed kids game. Worth picking up despite it's flaws!