SpongeBob Vs. The Big One: Beach Party Cook-Off
Score: 68% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: THQ Developer: Fizz Factor Media: Cartridge/1 Players: 1 - 4 Genre: Simulation/ Family/ Action
Graphics & Sound: This little morsel comes with a real tongue-twister of a title. SpongeBob Vs. The Big One: Beach Party Cook-Off is a spin-off from the series of shows that ran under the SpongeBob Vs. The Big One label. A few of those episodes actually tie into Beach Party Cook-Off, with the whole cooking theme. While the overall quality of the graphics is average, the content is typical SpongeBob hilarity that fans will gobble up. I'll be the first to admit that the show's humor is perfectly tuned to appeal across a wide spectrum; something about the borderline hysteria in SpongeBob's voice just plucks my funny-bone. It's somewhere on the satirical side of things, but only if you're over the age of 18 and can perceive it that way. To the youngsters, it's all just good clean fun. Beach Party Cook-Off has good sound and voice-acting to accompany almost every segment of the game. Each cooking technique has its own unique sound, and the sounds are always on the ridiculous side. There aren't "live" segments from the show featured in the game, but Beach Party Cook-Off does a nice job of bringing the world of SpongeBob alive in its own way.
Gameplay: I have been harboring the suspicion for some time now that the entire cooking-game genre has reached a been-there/done-that point of no return for even its most ardent fans. The DS and Wii have been great catalysts for a genre that really couldn't have raised steam anywhere else. The question at this point is whether innovation and cooking are compatible in the gaming world. SpongeBob Vs. The Big One: Beach Party Cook-Off didn't do much to steer me away from my preconceived notions. It works well enough as a game, at least in terms of how the segments fit together and how the game opens up for solo play. The story revolves around training the Plankton tribe to do some cooking, so they can cater an upcoming party for Jack Kahuna Laguna. The poor little things don't have a clue about cooking at the outset of the game, but if you play your cards right, they'll be culinary masters by the time credits roll. The means for doing this reverts immediately back to the same kind of cooking gameplay we've seen many times before. Imagine Cooking Mama with a big splash of SpongeBob and you can imagine how things fall into place. The menu dynamics of something like Order Up also fit into Beach Party Cook-Off, but not with as much sophistication around fixing dishes to spec for customers. There is way too much repetition in Beach Party Cook-Off, even with attempts to spice up progress through cooking challenges and earned rewards that you can use to enhance your menu or improve the look of your dining room. Multiplayer is nice if you each have copies of the game, and the ability to play with 2-4 players is an unusual but welcome touch. As you play through the game, you'll rack up experience points for the Plankton helpers and add new furniture for the eatery, but nothing happens quickly enough to keep things engaging or encourage replay.
Difficulty: The pace of things may depend somewhat on your level of ability. Some of the cooking mini-games are ridiculously easy, such as pulling bits out of the fryer, while others like stirring a pot are overly difficult. The difficulty isn't well balanced and your progress through each dish is very confusing. At any time, you'll be working on a series of dishes for a group of customers. You'll see an icon to let you know that one of your Plankton chefs needs help, and tapping that icon will take you to a cooking station where you can launch a mini-game. Priority is supposed to be indicated by these icons, so you know which cooks need your help. This system isn't abundantly clear, and younger players will end up losing most of their meals because they simply can't tell where they're needed. The timing on most of your cooking technique is extremely tight. This will be the second area of frustration for younger players, and Beach Party Cook-Off doesn't appear to have any kind of dynamic difficulty that adjusts to your skill. The majority of the problems here relate to poor balance, leaving things too easy for an experienced gamer and too difficult for a novice.
Game Mechanics: With few exceptions, the touch controls are implemented well. Certain games have a right-hand bias, putting the touch control in the right side but leaving some critical information on the left side, where it is obscured by your hand if you happen to be a southpaw. Nothing was especially tight, but only the stirring/mixing games felt downright broken. Trying several ways, these mini-games never seemed to come together with consistency. There are rarely games that require anything other than the stylus for control, which makes for an easy learning curve. Execution in these games is where you'll find Beach Party Cook-Off falter. The level of creativity and diversity is fairly low here. Each mini-game requires exactly one type of control, meaning that you never get the experience of combining types of control or working through an entire recipe. Each process in a recipe is broken up, resulting in lots of relatively boring sawing and cutting sequences you'll do over and over. As you play a while, you realize you are doing this repetition with different ingredients because you are prepping multiple dishes, but the game does a poor job of putting everything into context. As a pure game, SpongeBob Vs. The Big One: Beach Party Cook-Off does a decent job, but nothing great. It will fall into the hands of SpongeBob fans, that we can assume will not care as much about the details, as long as they get to mess around with their favorite characters. It isn't like a huge cast of characters appears in the game, and there certainly aren't controllable characters as we've had in past games. The decision to place this year's gaming entry for the SpongeBob franchise in the Cooking category was unfortunate. As much as we cringe like a dog about to be spanked for making a mess on the carpet when we see a new 3D Platformer spawned by some television or movie franchise, we'd rather take our chances than be stuck in a tedious plodder like Beach Party Cook-Off.
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
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