All Your Data Are Belong To ME!: “Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots” For Wii
Developer: Blue Tongue Entertainment Pty, Ltd.
Publisher: THQ Inc.
Genre: Action, Platformer
Release Date: Late 2007
After “Nicktoons Unite!”, Professor Calamitous and the other Syndicate members were no-shows in “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island”. However, with “Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots”, the professor again shows up as the big bad, technically making him the most recurring villain of the Nicktoons Unite series (though, again, this is by a technicality; I don’t believe he is the main villain of “SpongeBob SquarePants featuring Nicktoons: Globs of Doom”, so he is only the main villain in two of the four).
This game also has what I believe to be the first instance of my getting softlocked in one of the Nicktoons Unite games, happening toward the end of the first zone. There are these pipes to areas which only certain characters are allowed in, and I jumped toward the pipe as a non-allowed character and got stuck on the rim of the pipe. I could still move around the rim but couldn’t actually escape the pipe’s suction or enter it. Luckily, when I quit and re-entered the level, it had autosaved pretty close by, so not much progress was lost. Still pretty funny, though.
Story
Professor Calamitous enlists in a show called “The Biggest Genius” in hopes of being crowned, well, the Biggest Genius. In the episode of the show that week, in order to be the Biggest Genius, they have to use “three theme ingredients”. To try and fit this theme, Professor Calamitous discovers that, when fairies eat too many Krabby Patties, they produce magical gas. Calamitous then uses this magical gas in order to create evil toys, which he then powers up using ghost energy. In addition to the run-of-the-mill toys that he creates in his EvilToyCo factory, such as teddy bears and toy trucks, he also has his robot minions kidnap various people, who are then scanned in order to create Master Models (that is, toy versions of those he scanned). Most of the kidnapped people are then sent back home, although some stragglers still remain...
Of course, for this evil plan, Calamitous needs a lot of Krabby Patties, and so he orders from the Krusty Krab. SpongeBob and Patrick arrive with loads of Krabby Patties, but instead of payment, the robot that greets them instead sucks up all the Krabby Patties—and also Patrick! SpongeBob disguises as a robot, breaks into the factory and rescues Patrick. Before they can leave, Tak shows up and introduces himself before explaining that he and various other heroes have been kidnapped and are trapped in the factory. With that, the two set off in order to rescue more heroes and put a stop to Professor Calamitous. In addition to this, a robot employee of Calamitous’ called Chadbot (no, I’m not making that up) eventually offers to help the heroes in exchange for more Master Models to add to his collection.
At the end, the Biggest Genius is revealed to be Chadbot, as he combined the three theme ingredients—Krabby Patties, fairies and ghost energy—thanks to enlisting the help of SpongeBob, Timmy and Danny, while also having them make him the biggest collection of action figures in the world. As a prize, Chadbot receives a glow-in-the-dark sash and is allowed to shave off Professor Calamitous’ mustache.
Thoughts
I admit that the ending falls a bit flat for me with Chadbot just happening to be crowned the Biggest Genius. Weirdly enough, I think the ending would have worked better had Chadbot revealed to have only helped the heroes just to attain the title (and also get action figures), making him sort of an anti-hero. I guess you could argue that he already is since Chadbot specifically said he would help the heroes provided that they got him the Master Models, but he still calls the heroes “friends” at the end.
Also, in the very beginning cutscene where “The Biggest Genius” show is introduced, one of the contestants is apparently the Mawgu from “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island”. I know it’s just supposed to be a gag and a nudge-nudge-wink-wink “Remember that guy?” moment, but I spent three games sealing him away. Put him back.
Gameplay
In comparison to “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island” and especially “Nicktoons Unite!”, this game is much more of a platformer. There are three platforming zones to the factory that you must progress through, each of which contain six parts to them. While playing through a zone, you are not explicitly told that you are going to the next part; you just continue on after a loading screen. It is only after you complete a zone that you are sent back to the level select screen. In addition to the factory, you also have four areas outside of the factory: Bikini Bottom, Amity Park, Fairy World and Professor’s Lair. Bikini Bottom functions like a tutorial level and Fairy World serves as the final platforming level before the actual final level of the game. Amity Park and Professor’s Lair are not traditional platforming levels but are instead schmup areas where you control a mech suit through the area while dodging shots and shooting enemies.
The platforming in this game actually has some difficulty to it. There are several sections that require precise jumping and timing that I reckon a small kid would have some trouble with. Lots of obstacles are one-hit kills that send you back to a checkpoint, although the checkpoints are typically very generous. You also have a double jump which makes platforming a bit more manageable. While “Battle for Volcano Island” has some platforming difficulty, that was mostly concentrated toward the very final levels of the game, whereas with this game, there is plenty of platforming difficulty to be found throughout (though of course it gets more difficult toward the end of the game). Still, I wouldn’t call this a hard game, and I found most of the platforming to be fun.
Interspersed with the platforming are toy enemies that must be smacked around. Fighting in this game unfortunately takes after “Battle for Volcano Island” with its spongy enemies and button-mashing melee combat. At the very least, the ranged attack you have in this game (in the form of green goo) is more plentiful in ammo, and that helps with at least some of the tedium.
There are eleven playable characters in this game, with seven of them either initially given to you or unlocked through story progression (and thus are involved in the story) and four which are unlockable playable characters who aren’t mentioned in the story (though they still do have lines of dialogue they occasionally say while playing through a level, so that’s cool). The non-optional characters are SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick Star, Tak, Timmy Turner, Jimmy Neutron, Danny Phantom and Sam Manson. The optional characters are Stimpy, Jenny Wakeman, GIR and Rocko. None of the characters are different in combat or platforming. You bring in two characters to each platforming level and can freely switch between them.
Throughout the platforming levels, though, there are side areas that can only be accessed by certain characters (as described in my preamble). These side areas have a platforming challenge of sorts that then leads you to the chamber room where a Master Model is located, with four of these side areas also containing an unlockable character. After defeating the enemies in the room, you get the Master Model and/or rescue the character before returning back to the main level. Strangely, the chamber rooms are clearly Irken in origin, which makes it appear that some Irken aliens are helping Calamitous in his goal. It isn’t explained why they are helping him, though; perhaps they assume it will help them conquer more planets in the future?
Most of the characters’ levels are in line with the rest of the game, excluding SpongeBob, Tak and Danny, who each get special cutscenes before entering the platforming challenge. SpongeBob goes through a sliding level, using his tongue as a board; Tak enhances his jumping height and speed through the power of Juju before tackling a strictly two-dimensional platforming section; and Danny goes ghost in a shooting section where he has to destroy... what I guess is the power supply to doors in order to progress.
Unlike the rest of the game, which has no motion and pointing controls and only uses the upright Wii Remote and attached Nunchuk, the mech sections have you point at the screen in order to direct a continuous stream of goo shots; you still use the Nunchuk to move the mech around. There isn’t much to these sections—you shoot goo at robots and dodge what seems to be water balloons. You can’t even play as every character in these mech levels—just SpongeBob, Danny, Timmy, Tak, Jimmy, Sam and Patrick.
Combat
Typically, in order to down an enemy, you have to finish a five-hit combo on them which ends with a strong attack. Some enemies require multiple of these combos in order to down them, with the most egregious example being the Blokk enemies (a bunch of letter blocks) that need to have three of these combos done on them (so fifteen hits in total). Thankfully, you can usually run past any enemies and just continue on with your platforming, but there are times where you get ambushed and have to defeat the enemies before continuing on.
Another annoyance with combat is how you can only hit one enemy at a time, and so if there is a crowd of enemies, you will likely get hit trying to deal with one at a time. There are ground pounds (or “slam jumps” as the game calls it) where you can jump in the air and slam back down to the ground in order to damage multiple at once, but this is a pretty ineffective way to deal with enemies as, again, most enemies require five hits minimum in order to be defeated. A crowd of enemies also leaves you open to getting stunlocked, where they attack you one after the other with very little chance to get away (granted, this doesn’t happen too often).
It would help if the partner character that is brought with you through levels helped, but they rarely do. The partner character is prone to just standing around and staring at an enemy, potentially attacking only when the enemy hits them first. Not only that, but the melee attack’s auto-aim, for whatever reason, will also target your partner. While the auto-aim was usually good about targetting enemies instead, I did end up attacking my partner occasionally when I wanted to instead hit an enemy.
I say all that, but I also have to acknowledge that combat ultimately doesn’t matter. You don’t typically die to low health in this game—I only ever had such a death when I was trying to speed through a section and got caught right underneath a crusher. You only really die by falling off of platforms, and this includes during combat—enemies will toss you into the air, sometimes leading you to fall off. And when you do fall off, you instantly respawn back with full health and with the enemies in the same state as before. There are some sections with enemy ambushes where if you die, the enemy ambush starts again, but most of the time that doesn’t seem to be the case. Combat barely has any consequences.
100%
In order to one-hundred-percent this game, you have to collect all Master Models, all costumes, all mech upgrades and all fairies. Technically, it seems that the game doesn’t require getting all awards in order to get one-hundred-percent, but I went for them all anyhow.
While you do need a certain amount of Master Models in order to beat the game, you don’t need all of them. I couldn’t tell you what the minimum needed is as I went for all the Master Models anyhow.
All levels have these collectable currency spread throughout them in the form of circuits, which are blue techy cubes. These are in abundance throughout the game and can be used to buy costumes for all the characters and mech upgrades for a select few. Costumes are just for aesthetics, but they are a nice addition to the game. Mech upgrades are only available for SpongeBob, Danny, Timmy and Tak (yes, Jimmy the brainiac is for some reason not given the option to upgrade his mech). Just from playing a little bit with the upgraded versus non-upgraded mech, it seems that the upgrade increases damage.
Scattered throughout the levels, including the side areas, fairies can be seen trapped in glass tubes. You can break these glass tubes using either your melee attack or your goo and rescue the fairies (I believe there are always five in each tube). Upon first reaching one hundred fairies saved, you get a cutscene that shows Jorgen von Strangle explaining that five hundred fairies in total need to be saved, and that if you do save them all, he will reward you. A new cutscene plays after every hundred more saved which reiterates this. After rescuing all five hundred fairies, it turns out that the reward is being made an honorary second-class fairy. Hooray.
The awards are achievements that you get by accomplishing certain things in the game. Some are just got by playing as certain characters (such as the Power Hour Player achievement given for playing as Jimmy and Timmy, which is a reference to The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour trilogy, or the Eediot! award given for playing as Stimpy). Two awards are given for finding all Master Models and all fairies. A good chunk of the awards, however, are given for defeating a certain amount of a specific enemy, such as the Blokk Buster award given for defeating more than twenty Blokks. Most of these were fine to get, excluding two which were slightly annoying. These two annoying awards required defeating a certain amount of enemies which only appear in two locations in the entire game, and so it took a bit to determine where those locations were.
Tutorials
We continue the trend of Nicktoons Unite games not being the best at tutorials. For one, there is a whole grab attack that you can do (where you grab an enemy and then can toss them) that is just never explained to you; the only indication that it exists is looking at the Control Options, which aren’t actually options but just show you the controls. Granted, it is never necessary to use the grab attack, but that just makes me question why it is in the game in the first place.
Related to that, there is a section involving UFOs that need to be shot down, along with a machine that you can interact with. How exactly you interact with the machine isn’t told to you, however; I went through a bunch of the buttons that I was used to using for the game before finally figuring out that in order to use the machine, I had to use a button that hadn’t been used until then and in fact would never be used again. This again was illuminated through the Control Options, which explained that the button was the “interact” button. Again, why?
Goo was also never really fully explained. I would just sometimes have goo and sometimes not, and it took me a while to realize that these canisters that sometimes drop from enemies refill your goo or, if you don’t have any goo, will give you it. The really bad detection on picking up a goo canister also didn’t help figuring this out, as I would think that I had touched it only for nothing to happen. Your partner can also pick up the goo canister and effectively take it away from you, as goo is per character. There is a visual indication that a character has goo, in that they have the goo canister on their back, but there is no sound indication like there is for, say, picking up a circuit. There are also apparently three different types of goo, although I only ever saw the rare second one which seemed to be a stronger variant. I can only assume that certain enemies will just sometimes drop the other goo types, but again, I don’t know.
A game doesn’t have to explain everything to the player, of course—discovery is par for the course when it comes to roguelikes, for instance—but at least explain how you can refill your ammo since using the ammo is required by the game at times.
Conclusion
Ultimately, I think this game should have just been a pure platformer with the combat just cut out completely (like “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island” on Game Boy Advance), or at the very least, combat needed to be way more streamlined. This post probably comes across as a lot of complaining, but I do think the platforming was good—not the best, certainly not, but good. The unlockable characters are also nice additions to the game, especially since they have their own dialogue during gameplay, with GIR even referencing the old meme you see in the title of this post—it was a pleasant surprise.