I feel the Cosmic Shake is the type of game that either makes you absolutely happy beyond belief or think is aggressively average, and judging by my rating, I think you can figure out my feelings. I wouldn’t call Cosmic Shake a bad game, but it’s the type of game where i go, “Yeah, i played it”

Which is a shame, because the concept of this game has never been better, I love the idea of multiversal stories, especially ones of pre established properties, taking characters we know and love and putting them into weird and wonderful worlds due to the nature of the dimensions, I love it when Sonic did it (though has a lot of missed potential), I loved it when Ratchet & Clank does it, I loved it when Crash 4 did it and had some of the craziest level ideas/tropes ever in a platformer so, along with Purple Lamp’s experience of remaking BFBB and understanding it’s mechanics, this should have been a slam dunk for me,

This ain’t fully it

While not bad per say, The Cosmic shake is the definition of missed potential, the idea of this game is fresh and could lead itself to so many crazy ideas in terms of gameplay, story and its world and sad to say it feels like that they indeed had ideas and, they had ideas! The story is marginal fine, Spongebob and Patty Star fuck shit up thanks to a Hot Mermiad (who’s the Twist Viallin by the way), dimensions (Or Wish Worlds) galore! I feel like in terms of the comedy, it was marginally forgettable in my opinion, not as quotable or as funny as BFBB or even the Modern Episodes. This is mainly due to the over reliance on references. I'm not gonna go over it here since there’s actually too many, but the references either feel well intended neat little nods or (most of the time) aggressively reminding you of the good ol days instead of standing on its own two legs.

But i will say in terms of graphical fidelity (barring the performance issues and slightly long load times i had on the Switch Version) is really strong, the artstyle feels a lot more refined than Rehydrated, it feels bright and colourful and in terms of the Voice Acting, barring the caveat that these actors are well past their prime/Golden Age due to getting older, do a fantastic job, though i feel the issue of reused voice lines prop up even more than the original game.

In terms of core gameplay and mechanics, The Cosmic Shake is just like BFBB, the game controls a lot better than Rehydrated, the turning feels a lot smoother and acceleration feels more natural but in terms of mechanical improvements, that’s it. The Cosmic shake doesn’t add any new characters, or even has any playable characters, Spongebob is a lone wolf in this adventure with the exception of a Balloon Patrick who is pretty useless essentially.

I’m split on this, on one hand, expanding Spongebob’s Moveset, giving him abilities such as Gliding in the air and additional Bubble Abilities/Combat manoeuvres but on the other hand, a lot of the abilities here are just from Sandy and Patrick from BFBB and the Playable characters were such an integral part of BFBB’s identity in terms of being a great game, it allowed for additional ways to approach a level and were great ways to add variety to the game, I would have loved to see the other playable characters and even maybe 2 news ones (probably Squidward and Mr Krabs i had to choose) have the treatment that Spongebob has had in this game, hell even the Movie game did this with Patrick.

Speaking of the characters, With the Multiverse premise, it should have led to some of the craziest, wildest and most out of the box worlds and characters ever put in a licensed game, it sorta did! There’s only 7 Levels here which is a bit small, but the quality is what matters (which i mean it doesn't but i’ll get into that in a bit), half the levels are literal settings straight from BFBB (such as Jellyfish Fields, Goo Lagoon, Downtown Bikini Bottom, Kelp Forest and Rock Bottom) with 2 new stage ideas, Sulfur Fields and finally, Glove World, which was previously cut in BFBB.

Again, I’m split on this, on one hand, the whole idea of “Because Multiverse” works well here since they’re using the tried and true tropes of Pirates, Wild West, Medieval and Caveman times along with just fresh ideas in general such as a Movie set or… Halloween? In all seriousness the Multiverse setting allows for some slightly out of the box character interactions and ideas. Despite this however, I don't feel like it feels like a reuse of assets or stages because they do actually feel fresh in terms of Level Design (though it isn’t very good but more on that later). On the other hand, they really couldn’t have thought of some unique ideas for stages that use the multiverse setting as well? Why not adapt newer areas introduced in the series or stuff from the movies? Using a lot of the same worlds makes this feels more like an Encore Mode of BFBB and rather than a sequel.

Still, in terms of level designs and core mechanics, I feel this is where The Cosmic Shake breaks. The level design just isn't very good, It feels inherently more linear and restricting than BFBB’s level design but also wants to be a big collectathon game like BFBB so it’s this weird mishmash of level ideas, so it doesn’t feel like you’re overcoming a tough linear obstacle course or exploring a giant world and raiding it of all it’s collectibles.

The mechanics themselves just don’t feel baked, which also goes for the gimmicks in this game, such as the various vehicle/minigame sections with Mystery and the Unicycle, they just don’t have the flow or momentum like the slide sections from the original game, despite the control fixes done to Spongebob, the vehicles still feel like they’re lacking flow.

They’ve also decided to have more Combat here than Base BFBB, I stress “Base” because the over reliance on Combat isn’t too far off from the multiplayer mode added to Rehydrated. Cutting it short, the combat with bosses and especially the enemies is not fun. BFBB also had combat but this game has so many areas that force combat onto the player, the enemies and bosses themselves despite having some great designs are not fun to fight in the slightest, they feel like (ironically) karate sponge enemies to defeat yet it feels so inherently simple.

The biggest issue however is that exploration doesn’t feel rewarding, Unlike BFBB where the collectibles were like the Stars in Super Mario 64 unlocking stages, The Cosmic shake has a linear structure where there’s main missions that progress the story while the collectibles (like Cosmic Jelly, Specific Collectibles or Golden Doubloons) are completely optional. Now this might be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that this feels like a collectathon still, it also doesn’t help that only 2 of these Collectibles give you something, which are just Costumes that don’t have any special attributes. I really feel like this game would have really benefited from having the same structure as BFBB since it would really make these stages worth exploring which, despite the linear structure, are still bigger than say your average Crash 4 or 3D World/Galaxy stages.

To tell you how backwards this is, this like if Super Mario Odyssey still had Moons to collect but all the main moons with the longer fanfare weren’t moons instead and were just Mission Markers. The Moons and Purple Coins were still in the game, but instead of the Moons unlocking new stages, They also unlocked Costumes but they unlocked the costumes themselves and the purple coins were still used to buy the costumes.

It’s such a shame that I feel so lukewarm about the Cosmic Shake, I hesitate to call it a bad game, far from it! When you get down to it, It’s still slightly fun jumping around and playing it but the core mechanics feel undercooked and backwards. Of course without saying, BFBB is the far superior experience, but even The Movie Game, Truth or Square Console or DS, Atlantis Squarepantis DS or even Creature from the Krusty Krab (Purely for the weird factor) will give you your more fulfilled Spongebob Platforming fix.