Spongebob Heropants (Video Game Review)

Publisher Activision and developer Behaviour Interactive have announced the release of Spongebob Heropants for Xbox 360, PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS.

Are you ready to step into the square pants of Spongebob Heropants? Then come to Bikini Bottom for the adventure of a lifetime! Discover new powers and enhanced abilities for the residents of Bikini Bottom in an entertaining new adventure that goes downhill rather quickly...

Spongebob Heropants starts out with an ordinary day of work that soon turns insane with a special appearance of Bubbles the talking Dolphin. It turns out someone is using a magic page to create chaos in Bikini Bottom and the characters are assigned to find random pages of some book. Spongebob is able to utilize magic pages of the book to allow him and his friends to have unbelievable abilities that make your adventure incredibly fun! For a little while at least.

Gamers can join up to three friends in Spongebob Heropants with the ability to play as Spongebob, Patrick, Sandy, Squidward, Mr.Crabs, and Plankton. Each character has their own unique abilities and skills; for example, Spongebob's ability is to blow super bubbles, Patrick dishes out the pain with ice-cream cones, Mr. Crabs has powerful shooting claws, Squidward kills enemies with his horrible notes, Sandy goes nuts and Plankton hulks out!

The visuals in Spongebob Heropants are extremely colorful and the fun sound effects allows players to feel like they are truly in an episode of Spongebob Squarepants. While the story idea for Spongebob Heropants seems rather clever--it doesn't quite match up with the repetitive gameplay. Fans of the animated series will find that they will spend most of their time collecting coins (almost like a Spongebob-like version of Sonic) until the cha ching sound drives you insane.

Spongebob Heropants is an action-platformer that has gamers avoiding pitfalls and enemies while collecting various items to complete their mission. The game offers up a variety of environments with challenging mechanics that players will enjoy. However, the various levels seem to be painstakingly repetitive (when it comes to basic gameplay) and having to wait for your super energy to fill back up seems to offer only short bursts of fun. Players can increase the replayability of Spongebob Heropants with upgrades at the end of each level that includes increasing health, faster recharging, three hit combos, better weapons, adding different attacks and more. These upgrades cost coins which are gathered throughout each level in Spongebob Heropants.

In the end, Spongebob Heropants is packed full of bugs and glitches alongside some very repetitive gameplay. However, die-hard fans of the Spongebob series and Sponge out of Water movie may find the game entertaining for short bursts of time. Remember being super is only great if someone else knows about your awesome abilities meaning that Spongebob Heropants is best played with friends.

Game Features:

• Online Multiplayer 1-4
• Super New Abilities
• DLC Support
• Trophy/Achievement Support

Game Information:
Developer: Behaviour Interactive
Publisher: Activision
Platforms: PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360 (reviewed) & 3DS
Release Date: February 3, 2015

Score: 5.5 out of 10