Always the bridesmaid but never the bride, SpongeBob’s sleepy sidekick, Patrick Star, has often been overlooked in favour of his over-the-top neighbour – at least in the world of video games. That hasn’t stopped him from making a home in our hearts, though, so I was riding high when I learned the enigmatic starfish was finally being thrust into the limelight… but then the emotional rollercoaster dipped back down as I discovered SpongeBob SquarePants: The Patrick Star Game is little more than a sea of uninspired minigames and repetitive activities that waste almost all of its obvious potential, outside of a boatload of cute references to the show.Stepping into the flowery shorts of Patrick himself, you embark on a six-hour sandbox platforming expedition through a thoughtfully recreated Bikini Bottom. In addition to having a dedicated burp button, Patrick can pick up items with either hand and fall asleep on command, turning the invertebrate into a possessed bowling ball that you can send hurtling across the sea floor. Due to the underwater setting, gravity is kinder than in most physics-based puzzlers, meaning there’s added time to plot your jumps and fix mistakes when you’re off the ground. This forgiving, familiar control scheme is applied to a mixed bag of activities dotted around the map, like skydiving or smashing up crates in the local Rage Room. Succeeding in these tasks rewards you with precious Sand Dollars that will eventually afford Patrick a slot to compete against his porous bestie in the prestigious Fry Cook Games. It’s an approachable setup buffeted by charming but eventually repetitious conversations with beloved characters like Mr. Krabs, Plankton and Sandy Cheeks.SpongeBob SquarePants: The Patrick Star Game Gameplay ScreenshotsThe surrounding cartoon world is a blend of solid and breakable structures and allowed me to engage my inner chaos merchant as I took out any aggression on glass panes and metal walls alike. It isn’t all down to Patrick’s spiny appendages, though, as you can also take advantage of equippable tools littered around the vibrant underwater wonderland which bolster his platforming abilities. Whether I was sailing across a valley with the help of a paraglider or taking out a false wall with a comically oversized hammer it was easy to get caught in a chaotic feedback loop, bounding around the suburbs and bothering the Bottom-ites. But while it all sounds very freeing on paper, it’s also paper-thin, and I soon saw the limits of this reasonably sized world. When you push the haphazard reactivity too far the mask starts to slip, with clipping issues and unusual NPC behavior that illuminates the frayed technical seams that eventually come apart and leave an otherwise good first impression in tatters. Perhaps the saving grace here is that Bikini Bottom as a whole is such a joy to explore, for the short time the novelty lasts at least. It’s an interactive diorama, decorated with hallowed locations like Mrs Puff’s Boating School and Glove World, and it speaks to the power of SpongeBob SquarePants that I was so enchanted by the referential signage, food items, and flower clouds scattered across the sky. The nostalgia is compounded by Patrick’s unlockable outfits, too – while the promise of entering the Fry Cook Games didn’t prompt much passion, grinding for iconic outfits like The Elastic Waistband and Patrick’s ‘Sweet Victory’ suit certainly did. That magic eventually runs out, though, and a broader shallowness rears its head. While this is felt across The Patrick Star Game as a whole, it’s most apparent in its inconsistent array of minigames, which range from well-meaning imitations of pre-existing ideas to thankless busywork. I most enjoyed the Chum Bucket, an Overcooked clone that had me scrambling to make gooey buckets of eyeballs and bones under a time limit for paying customers. Elsewhere, I found myself clearing out lounging locals from Squidward’s favourite sunbathing spot, which both felt on-point thematically and leveraged the wacky physics to great effect. In these moments, I was reminded of The Simpsons Game’s hilarious and moreish slate of tasks, which similarly combined its show’s unique humour with appropriately comical jobs.Unfortunately, these moments of clarity were soon overshadowed by a glut of laboriousness. That includes seeking out endless golden gloves across a pint-sized amusement park or trawling the dump in search of an ever-increasing number of treasure chests. In the latter, I soon resolved to tear the place apart with an enormous magnet, but that approach only made my search more challenging as fished-up cars and other detritus got caught in the environment, trapping spoiled mattresses in a state of annoying eternal squeaking. Ultimately, I abandoned all hope and moved on, searching for alternate means of earning the Sand Dollars necessary to enter the Fry Cook Games. And, even when I did reach that coveted finale, I was met with more of the same clunky interactions I was already familiar with – it felt fitting that Patrick fell asleep during the closing ceremony.Sarah’s favourite physics gamesIt’s a shame that The Patrick Star Game resorts to simplistic collect-and-clear tasks when there’s such a deep well of SpongeBob lore to pull from. There are shades of this in the Bikini Bottom University segment, where you take on Squidward in an art contest, but its on-rails, oversimplified nature makes it hard to feel too invested. It would have been nice to see a more cohesive story play out instead of dealing with so many disconnected and lacklustre cameos.It’s small consolation, but at least when I did get bored of the repetitive minigames, I could switch gears and tackle a list of more specific Feats, earning Sand Dollars for serving up burnt Krabby Patties or completing my childhood dream: pulling a full-blown 360 on the neighbourhood swing set. The light-hearted requirements of these Feats provided focus when I was losing interest, and the collectable Mayo Jars placed throughout Bikini Bottom broke up the post-game monotony with some proper platforming challenges.
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