As a kid who played a lot of Battle of Bikni Bottom growing up, I was excited to see a spiritual sequel to the game with Cosmic Shake. Still it was one of those games that was lower on my wishlist. Luckily I did wait on buying this as it’s one of the free PS Plus games for the month.

This game was made by the same developers who remastered BFBB, but Cosmic Shake doesn’t share as many similarities as I expected. The biggest carryover is the design of the tiki crates. There was no change to them. The focus on platforming and simple combat is still intact, but where BFBB was geared like a collect-a-thon, Cosmic Shake is much more linear. Each level is comprised of small, semi-explorable areas that you run through, but can’t go back to without spawning at a checkpoint. I know it’s not entirely fair to only rate this game based on how much it’s like its predecessor, but I do find the level design to be a step down. A lot of the levels have those annoying “find 3 {blank}” quests that just feels like busy work. If I was younger, I probably wouldn’t mind as much.

Like BFBB, you have extra collectibles that you can’t reach until you unlock powers later in the game. I didn’t mind this in BFBB because the level you go back to is a big open world you can easily explore, Cosmic Shake has each world broken down into levels, so I have to remember if that locked door was in the first part of the world or towards the end of the world. You also have a limited set of abilities. The ground slam makes it over, but the uppercut, bowling, and missile attacks don’t return. You do get a fishing line allowing Spongebob to do what Sandy did in the BFBB. There’s a bubble attack with a lock-on ability, but I found it wasn’t super reliable at hitting enemies. There isn’t the wide variety of enemies either. Each level usually introduces a new enemy type. There were some superfluous robots in BFBB, but it helped the game stay fresh.

On the technical level, this game felt a bit unstable. There were several occasions where dialogue would skip randomly and every time the game saved it froze up a little bit, like older PS2 games. In one occasion, I had to hard restart the game when it glitched out during a boss fight transition. I don’t know if the developers were rushed, but this game felt like the guiding design principle was “It’s a kid’s game, let’s not try to hard”. When I remember back to the Rehydrated version of BFBB this developer made, I do remember it being more of a bare bones remake.

This game sees Spongebob traveling through time to undo a mistake he caused. I got a lot of Crash Bandicoot vibes from Cosmic Shake. There’s the time travel angle from Warped and you end up in prehistoric jungles and medieval castles that reminded me of levels like Slippery Climb. Crash is a good series to imitate when you’re creating a platformer game, so I did have fun with the platforming challenges. There’s also little mini games that usually boil down to mashing square to do something. The music is okay, each world has a relevant tune. There’s guitars for the Old West, accordions in the pirate world. It’s one track per level that can get a bit repetitive and doesn’t have the same catchy vibe as BFBB.

The story is a simple one. Spongebob makes wishes with a magic bubble wand that throws Bikini Bottom into chaos as jelly monsters attack. You are tasked with going around these wish worlds to save your friends. To help on your journey Kassandra, the totally not evil, mermaid gypsy, crafts costumes. This game seems to want to cater to older Spongebob fans as much as kids. There’s a good 25 costumes and they are all references to outfits from the show, like the KuddlyKrab outfit or the clown wig. I'm surprised there wasn't a Frankendoodle costume for Sponebob. Characters reference many past adventures & there’s plenty of throwback characters like the CHOCOLATE! Guy. Most of the pictures are photos from the show. There are a few modern Spongebob references, like the cutaway to overly detailed, grotesque character closeups. I did get a good chuckle out of trying to spot all the references.

All in all, I find Battle for Bikini Bottom to be the better Spongebob game, but that could also be 75% influenced by nostalgia. For free, this game was worth it, but even if you’re a old school Spongebob fan, I’d say you could skip this game without fretting too much. If anything, I could see this being a fine game to play with your kids.