Chew Bubblegum And Blow: “SpongeBob SquarePants featuring Nicktoons: Globs of Doom” For Wii
Developer: Incinerator Studios LLC
Publisher: THQ Inc.
Genre: Action, Platformer
Release Date: Late 2008
We’re finally here at the very final title in the Nicktoons Unite series. As of writing, there have been no further installments to the series, and while it isn’t entirely out of the picture thanks to Nickelodeon’s frequent use of nostalgia banking, I doubt that there will ever be any further games.
It seems that the series didn’t want to be done with me yet, though, considering my save data got corrupted a fair bit into the game, meaning I had to restart the game from the beginning. While rushing through the game is honestly pretty quick and I was able to remember the locations of the collectables, there is also an upgrade system that requires a lot of coins that I had made decent progress on. Because of that, on my next playthrough, I made the decision to use a cheat code (within the game) that made coin collection easier in order to hasten the process of getting back to where I originally was in terms of upgrades. I hope you all eventually find it in your hearts to forgive this grievous moral failing on my part.
Anyhow, disclaimer out of the way, let’s finally save the multiverse for the final time.
Story
Some of this story actually references “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island” a fair amount, so you might be lost at some points if you don’t know anything about that game’s story.
SpongeBob and Squidward are walking to work through Bikini Bottom when orange goo suddenly starts raining from the sky, taking control of the minds of whomever it lands on (including poor Squidward) and turning into various creatures called the Morphoids. SpongeBob runs away and Patrick finds him, with both wondering just what is going on. Suddenly, a portal opens, revealing Jimmy Neutron. The three go back through the portal to Volcano Island, specifically to the Mawgu Lair. Danny and Tak are already there, explaining that all of their worlds are under attack by the goo. However, in addition to the heroes, some villains are also at the lair: Technus (from Danny Phantom), Beautiful Gorgeous (from Jimmy Neutron), Traloc (from Tak and the Power of Juju) and Plankton (from SpongeBob SquarePants). Dib and Zim (from Invader Zim) also suddenly appear, with Zim taking the side of the heroes (he claims that he isn’t evil, just curious) and Dib takes the side of the villains just because it is the side that Zim isn’t on.
Jimmy explains that he invited the villains (whom he calls the Evil Syndicate) because they need all the help that they can get against the goo. After the Wise Old Crab shows up, Jimmy fiddles with the Mawgu technology in the lair, eventually discovering that it can scan a person and give them a weapon custom fit for them. Once equipped with their unique weapons, the heroes and villains set off to first rescue Bikini Bottom.
Throughout the adventure, orange goo repeatedly falls on SpongeBob, and yet he doesn’t mutate. However, the force behind all the orange goo, Globulous Maximus, is able to occasionally talk through SpongeBob, saying how he intends to take control over every world. At this news, the Wise Old Crab reveals an ancient mech called the Vessel of Portentia that could help defeat the Morphoids and Globulous Maximus; however, it is missing four pieces which are scattered throughout the remaining four worlds: Zim’s Town, Amity Park, Retroville and Pupununu. With that, everyone goes to find the four pieces, all while racing Globulous Maximus’ arrival to the planet of Volcano Island.
Once all the pieces have been gathered, Globulous reveals while speaking through SpongeBob that he has grown tired of himself since his creation at the beginning of time and now wishes to instead be like SpongeBob, as he likes SpongeBob for how good, happy and wholesome he is (I am suddenly reminded of that one Steven Universe song...). SpongeBob doesn’t want that, though, so using the now complete Vessel of Portentia, everyone travels to space to fight Globulous Maximus head on.
After defeating Globulous, the villains decide to kick all the heroes out of the Vessel so they can potentially use Globulous for evil. After the villains make their escape, the heroes talk with Globulous, who reveals that he was created at the beginning of the universe by the Big Sneeze and is therefore a booger, and he is upset because of that. SpongeBob tells him to be proud of whom he is, and with that pep talk, Globulous takes on the form of SpongeBob (along with the name SpongeGlob) and goes to beat up the villains. Once the villains are defeated, SpongeGlob returns the heroes to Volcano Island and promises to make amends for all of his wrongdoings of the past.
(There is also apparently a bad ending if SpongeGlob loses to the villains where he is shown trapped in a glass tube while the villains scheme around a table. I didn’t get this ending and just happened to learn it was a thing while looking through the Encyclopedia SpongeBobia article of this game. So that’s interesting.)
Thoughts
If you are confused by the story, then trust me, so am I. All the information about the Mawgu technology and the heroes and villains teaming up happens very quickly and doesn’t allow much time to process everything. It also doesn’t help how weirdly done the references to “Battle for Volcano Island” and “Nicktoons Unite!” are.
It is neat that they try to use previous lore from past entries, but it kind of falls flat since it isn’t done in a meaningful manner. We never really saw any sign of this Mawgu technology or Vessel of Portentia in “Battle for Volcano Island”; the Wise Old Crab doesn’t have much impact to the story, and his role could have easily been fulfilled by say, Jimmy Neutron; and the only villain who was actually part of the Syndicate (of Evil) is Plankton and none of the rest of the villains, yet Jimmy calls them all the Evil Syndicate regardless.
Gameplay
There are five worlds in total, with each world having two regular levels and one boss level (excluding Pupununu, which only has the two regular levels). Before each level is an unexplained sliding section where you slide and collect coins until you reach the portal leading you to your actual destination. Each regular level has two optional trophy collectibles that you can find. Upon finding all four trophies in a world, you are given a cheat code that makes the gameplay easier in some fashion (such as the coin magnetism one that I used). Each level also has coin collectibles that are scattered throughout the world and also dropped upon defeating enemies and breaking certain objects within the environment. After completing a level, you return back to the Mawgu Lair, which functions as a hub area where you can access all the currently available levels and also purchase upgrades.
Most levels end with you rescuing a character who is trapped in some goo. Upon rescuing them and returning to the Mawgu Lair, you can actually find them hanging out in the lair. They don’t actually have much or any presence in the story, but it is nice to see the lair gradually seem more lively as you rescue more people. Interestingly, there seem to be optional people that you can rescue, such as Squidward. I don’t know if these optional rescues are counted in one-hundred-percent or not, since there is nothing tracking them unlike the trophies.
Unlike the previous game, “Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots”, this game is much more combat-focused. In fact, it seems to be a bit of a return to form, having more similarities to “Nicktoons Unite!” than “Attack of the Toybots”. Each character has a slam jump where they jump and slam onto the ground and also a melee attack combo that they perform as you mash the button. However, unlike previous installments, there are several facets which help the game not feel as tedious in combat.
First, you have enemies which go down in one hit. Second, as you defeat enemies, you gain purple pickups which fill a purple power bar (called the Mawgu bar) underneath your green health bar. With the press of a button and some of that Mawgu power, you can instantly hinder an enemy and make them a one-hit knockout. Third, defeated enemies can also drop light blue pickups which gradually fill up a third light blue bar (the Gadget bar) which, when full, allows you to do a screen nuke team attack, killing all enemies currently on the screen. Then fourth, you have an upgrade system where you can use coins to increase several stats, including your attack damage. The Mawgu power especially helps with making combat not feel as tedious as previous games did, as I can just instantly take down an enemy if I have the power available.
Now, is the combat perfect? No. It can still feel button-mashy at times with the amount of enemies which require multiple hits to defeat, especially since later stages have enemies with armor which you have to knock off first. Enemies are also very much capable of stunlocking you, which doesn’t feel great. The auto-aiming on the melee attacks is also not great as it can steer you away from your actual intended target. Still, this combat feels better than the combat of “Battle for Volcano Island” and “Attack of the Toybots”.
Characters
For each level you enter, you bring in two characters: one hero and one villain. Like “Battle for Volcano Island”, you do not get to choose which characters go in which level. Everyone seems to get to appear in at least two levels, but you definitely have some who show up more often. (I’ll let you guess which character shows up the most in “SpongeBob SquarePants featuring Nicktoons: Globs of Doom”.) At the very least, everyone shows up more than Timmy Turner who gets a whopping amount of zero mentions anywhere in this game. Maybe he was in the middle of school or something.
The characters function essentially the same in all aspects excluding their Mawgu power, though most of them don’t differ too much. SpongeBob, Dib, Technus, Jimmy, Beautiful Gorgeous and Traloc all have a ranged Mawgu attack which instantly incapacitates the enemy. Plankton’s Mawgu power requires him to be up close in order to hit an enemy with his hammer, thus dazing them. Zim uses his plunger in order to daze an enemy and also drag them right up to him. Danny summons a clone of himself who will fight enemies alongside him. Tak uses the power of Juju in order to change the enemy into either a helpless sheep or occasionally a monster who can knock you away but is still able to be killed in one shot.
(Jimmy also has an inconsequential difference compared to the other characters, and that is how he has three different jumping animations. When jumping from a stand still, he does a backflip; however, when he jumps while moving, his first jump will just have him vertical, but his double jump will have him do a horizontal pose which is the exact same jumping animation that he has in “Attack of the Toybots” According to The Cutting Room Floor, this game was built on the engine of “Attack of the Toybots”, so that makes sense.)
Compared to “Volcano Island” where Danny is front and center alongside SpongeBob, he has actually taken quite the downstep in terms of presence. He does have some dialogue, but the likes of Jimmy and even Dib seem to speak more. Danny’s Mawgu power also places him at the bottom of the character tier list. Unfortunate.
Bosses
The bosses in this game are fairly varied.
The first boss is a gooped up Bubble Bass. He is the easiest out of all the bosses as you just have to prep Krabby Patties at a grill by holding a button and then toss them at him once they are ready (also with the hold of a button). Bubble Bass does spawn enemies to try and stop you, but your partner is pretty good at distracting them so you can get into the grilling grindset mindset.
A gooped up GIR is a significantly more complex second boss. First, you have to make your way to Zim’s base while dodging lasers from the garden gnomes and missiles from the Roboparents. After flipping a lever and making a ladder appear, you climb up into the raised house. GIR summons several enemies and, once those are defeated, will plunge his robotic tentacle arms into the floor and launch them back up through the tiles of the floor with them, chasing you around. Once he tires, you can go up to him and give him a beating. After sustaining enough damage, he grabs both you and your partner and tosses you back outside of the house. You then repeat the process another two times in order to defeat him.
A gooey Cujo or Ghost Dog is the third boss. Cujo runs after you in an arena, trying to ram into you in order to hurt you. However, you can bait him into running into four different pillars with buttons atop them, making them sink into the ground so you can slam-jump the buttons. Once all four buttons are slam-jumped, four electric arcs pop up into the arena that you want to guide Cujo into in order to hurt him. It is a bit of a tedious process, especially since there are also regular enemies within the arena, but at the very least you only have to do two cycles in order to defeat Cujo.
The fourth boss is a mutated version of Jimmy’s Girl-Eating Plant. In order to defeat this plant, you have to make your way inside the plant and hit at its leafy core within before getting tossed back out for a total of three cycles. You might think that Beautiful Gorgeous, the only female playable character in this game, would be involved in this boss fight in some fashion. Well, she isn’t, because you instead play as SpongeBob and Technus in this fight, who get the plant to eat them by entering clothing stores and wearing dresses. I’ll be real: I don’t know how to feel about this boss fight.
Final Boss
The final boss has two portions to it: the fight with Globulous Maximus and then the fight with SpongeGlob. In the fight with Globulous, you zoom around space in the Vessel of Portentia, which has a melee attack and an infinite ranged attack (the infinite ranged attack isn’t clear at first since you still have a Mawgu bar that just never fills up, so I didn’t think to use the ranged attack in the first place). Globulous sets up three barriers that are each powered by four stationary enemies that will constantly shoot missiles at you if you are close. In addition to that, Globulous will also send out the occasional enemy that will chase you and also shoot missiles at you (though not as fast as the stationary one). Once the four stationary enemies of a barrier are defeated, that barrier goes down. Once all barriers are down, you can hit Globulous directly until he pushes you back and sets back up his barriers (three barriers for the first cycle, two barriers for the second cycle and one barrier for the third cycle).
It is absolutely not worth it to use the melee attack for any of the enemies in this boss fight—you will just die because of the constant missiles. Instead, I just held down the button for the ranged attack (which has pretty generous auto-aim) and kept moving around to avoid the missiles. It honestly made for a bit of an anticlimactic fight, but it was either that or just die.
After knocking Globulous into red health and having the heart-to-heart with him, he transforms into SpongeGlob and goes to fight the Vessel of Portentia with the villains piloting it. This fight is also anticlimactic in that you are just spamming the attack button (or holding down the ranged attack button to do your ranged attack, which seems to summon orange meteors down onto your enemy, but I only remembered to do this on the literal final hit). There is also a regenerating shield powerup that makes you invulnerable to damage that also just contributes to the “button-mash and nothing else” feeling. Apparently, if you’re playing multiplayer, the second player can take control of the Vessel and beat SpongeGlob, thus getting the bad ending.
Aesthetics
So in the past with the handhelds, I didn’t really bring up the questionable talk sprites of those games because they were only really present in cutscenes while the rest of the game looked fine in terms of sprites. However, with this game, it is hard not to mention the art and aesthetics since I have to look at them during cutscenes and also during regular gameplay as art of the current character is placed alongside your health bar. During cutscenes, the characters are weirdly glossy and have shading that does them absolutely no favors. Jimmy’s hair and eyebrows also have some realistic texture to it that was very off-putting at first.
The best example that I can give of this is the health art for Dib. Just look at him when he is in green health:
Again, the harsh shadows and glossiness just don’t go well together. However, during regular gameplay, the character models aren’t as glossy and look fine. I also like how cartoon-y some of the animations for the characters can be. Plankton, for instance, has a bobbing motion to him as he runs with his hammer held above his head (which you can see in this video which has the music turned off, for some reason). Further in that same video, you can also see Jimmy’s slam jump animation which has a delightful cartoon-y bounce to it. Honestly, I kind of wish they made more of the animations cartoon-y; they have a charm to them. I also like the environments that you traverse through as you progress through the game.
There was a lot of new stuff tried in terms of the aesthetics compared to previous installments, and while I think some of it looks nice, it sure does fall flat in other areas. It’s quite the mixed bag.
Save Data Corruption
Why am I bringing this up again? Well, apparently, save data corruption is a common issue for this game. A look over at GameFAQs shows someone who says that their save data always corrupts after a certain level. Another one on GameFAQs claims that this is an issue regardless of playing the Wii or PlayStation 2 version for almost everyone. Even the article on this game over on The Cutting Room Floor mentions the save data corruption issue in the very first paragraph.
Now, thankfully, I only had my save data corrupt once in my initial playthrough, but this means that I could have easily had it happen to me again which would have definitely soured my opinion on the game. The one time, it’s kind of funny and no big deal since it isn’t a long game anyhow. The second time would have just been frustrating. It doesn’t matter how good a game is if I can’t rely on it to keep my progress.
Conclusion
If we don’t take the save data issue into consideration, then I would probably maybe place this game somewhere between “Unite!” and “Battle for Volcano Island”—I think the gameplay is solid enough in comparison, and I do like some of the aesthetics and levels. However, it would feel wrong to just ignore the save data corruption issue, especially since it did happen to me. I think I ultimately still prefer this game over “Attack of the Toybots”, but if I were to choose between another playthrough of “Unite!”, “Volcano Island” or “Globs of Doom”, well, I’ll just say that I have never had my save data for “Volcano Island” get corrupted.