Kotaku
Spongebob Squarepants is not my cup of tea. Not the show, I love the show. I actually get excited when my son points out a new episode has hit TV. No, it's the Wii game I'm not so into.
And rightfully so, the game is meant for children and my son is addicted. I think this is one of the first games that actually had my extraordinarily jaded son talking about it after he finished a play session.
I caught him, yesterday afternoon, sitting at the table during lunch, muttering to himself about SpongeBob and his missing driver's license.
I did give the game a whirl right before I let my son take over. The graphics are actually quite interesting, some parts of it seem to be that bloated, soulless CGI crap that does a fine job of illustrating the character but still manages to miss the concept. While other parts are these chunks of really interesting almost Ren-esque illustrations of horribly contorted versions of SpongeBob and friends.
The plot seems fine, perhaps a little light for my taste and not exactly packed with the hidden adult humor that has me giggling during the television show, but still quirky enough to maintain my son's interest.
But the controls, man I just suck at the controls. The funny thing is, my son doesn't.
In fact, he totally rocks at the game. And I tried several times and several different parts of the game, but I just couldn't wing it.
The driving, I found very unresponsive, but my son zipped SpongeBob around corners with little trouble. Heck, Tristan was even able to jump around in the platform portions of the game without plummeting to his death every few seconds, something he's never been able to do before.
And the winch, the damn winch. So there are these winches, these little wheels that you have to turn to open gates. The ideas very easy. You just hold the remote up in the air and twirl it around like you're in a old Western preparing to rope a phantom doggie.
But no matter how many times I tried, and I tried a whole bunch, I just couldn't do it. I tried going slow. I tried going fast. I tried sitting. I tried standing.
Finally, after like five minutes of my waving the Wiimote around above my head like some deranged imbecile, I finally gave up. Dropping to the couch in exasperation only to have my son plod over, pluck the controller from my hand and whip the damn gate in like five seconds of twirling.
The next time he came to the game I snatched the controller from him and gave it another whirl. No go.
It was like the Wii could sense I was trying to play my son's game.
If you plan to buy this game, a word of warning, don't play it around your son, he'll never let you forget it.
