I love the original Battle for Bikini Bottom so much that I make it a tradition to play the amazing licensed based game every year because it always brings me back to being a kid again. In 2019, a new studio called Purple Lamp announced a remake was gonna happen that would be in the same vein of other well known remakes like the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro The Dragon trilogies. I was immediately ecstatic but also slightly worried as I considered the original game to be a near perfect experience. Still, I eagerly anticipated the release of the remake and when I finally got my hands on the game, these were the thoughts that came to my head.
If you played the original game then you probably are already familiar with the story but just in case, The evil plankton is out to steal the Krabby Patty formula once again and this time he has created an army of robots to obey his every command. Unfortunately he forgets to set the switch to obey and the robots start running amuck through bikini bottom without leadership. Meanwhile Spongebob and Patrick are playing with toy robots when they make a wish to have real robots to play with. Spongebob wakes up the next morning and finds that robots are causing mayhem and destruction all over Bikini Bottom. Now it's up to Spongebob, Patrick and Sandy to put an end to this robot mess and save Bikini Bottom in a battle like no other.
The story is basically the same and there are not too many differences with character interactions except for some additional dialogue made specifically for the game. The same great comedy is still in place from the original game and the ripped audio from the original game for the most part is very clear and fluent. One thing that could have been improved is Mr. Krabs and Mermaid Man's voices. As much as I think the original is a near perfect experience, I do admit that changing the voice actors is something Purple Lamp could have taken notice of and yet they decided to keep the original audio for those characters which isn’t a bad thing but there was definitely a missed opportunity to fix that mistake from the original game.
Gameplay has also been made the same as the original game and it's easy to control once you learn the basics. You will mainly play as Spongebob through the majority of the game. He’ll start with a few select powerups and health but he can earn more of those items along the way when he unlocks new areas of Bikini Bottom. Patrick and Sandy are also playable as they themselves have their own set of power ups that are useful at traversing areas of a level where Spongebob can’t get across. However there are some things about this remakes gameplay that seem off to me compared to the original. For one, the controls can feel very stiff and somewhat unresponsive. One of the best examples I have is when you're sliding down slopes or bungee jumping from a hook as they feel rigid and don’t feel very smooth especially if you're trying to find hidden secrets that you need to get to but are hard because the controls are harder to keep steady from time to time. Another thing that bugged me was the loading screen from when you die. It's not the worst, but it seems to take a while for everything to reset when compared to the original which resets everything almost instantly.
There have been many years that have passed so the graphics are sure to bring a much needed update compared to the PS2 look of the original game. What is very surprising is unlike the original where they wanted to completely emulate the style of the show, this game emulates its own unique style that still has elements of the show’s original designs but are also stylised to make it stand out from both the original game and the cartoon’s newer episodes. Character designs for the most part are good even if they can seem a bit off from time to time but the real star of the show is the robots who have much different designs compared to the original. I personally like the first game’s designs more but these new updated designs still capture the creativity and uniqueness of the original games counterparts.
Every location from the game is all here and they have been beautifully updated to modern standards. The colors are great and little details like the floating specks in the water add a sense of three dimensionality never seen in the previous game. Interactions between characters now have exprevise animations which is a nice little update that keeps the game fresh and unique. a tiny detail that I wish could have been kept is the use of the game’s camera during character interactions as it sometimes helped to show off some of the game’s landscape and adding a sense of silliness when doing extreme close ups of a character's face. The one problem I had with the visuals are the games cutscenes as they feel off and lacking in expression. It's the same ripped audio and dialogue but the animations during the main cutscenes don’t convey the right emotions that the previous game managed to accomplish even with its restrictive technology at the time.
This game may not quite have the same amount of level of understanding unlike the Crash and Spyro remakes, but Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated is still a just as charming and fun to play as the original even if it does sacrifice some of the aspects that made the original game a masterpiece of license based video games. I still find this game to be pretty good and definitely worth playing if you love the original like I do. Purple Lamp did an all around good job with recreating the feel and tone of the original game but I would still prefer you play the original game first before diving into the remake.
(Final Grade: A-)