Spongebob Squigglepants Review (Wii UDraw)

Everyone loves Spongebob Squarepants, right? He’s an adorable little sponge who lives underwater in Bikini Bottom (yes, that’s really what it’s called). Every day he gets up to hilarious shenanigans with his little neighbourhood friends, Patrick Star, Mr. Krabs, Squidward Tentacles, Sandy Cheeks and Sheldon Jared Plankton, Jr.

No. I hate Spongebob Squarepants and everything his hyperactive, maniacal, overly loud, attention-deficit-disorder television show stands for. Every scene I have ever watched involves one or another of Spongebob’s friends doing something utterly banal and laughing hysterically as if it’s the funniest thing on Earth. What’s worse, they’ll then do it again. And again. And again. Oh god, my brain. It hurts.

At the risk of sounding like a decrepit old fart, I’m just going to say this: I miss classic cartoons like Tom and Jerry. Sure, it was about a cat and a mouse who would routinely overturn all the hard work of their tireless housekeeper in their endless quest to destroy each other. Sure, they hit each other over the head with frying pans and blew themselves up with dynamite. The one thing you could count on was that their films always made you feel good.

In contrast to that, watching Spongebob Squarepants makes me feel exhausted. Here’s the good news for all you Spongebob fans: the UDraw game Spongebob Squigglepants is exactly the same. It’s insanely fast-paced with plenty of Wario Ware-like mini games to keep you or the kids busy for hours. You do need the UDraw peripheral to play it; a child-proof tablet that allows you to draw with a stylus as well use the traditional tilt and acceleration controls of the normal Wiimote.

When it comes to controls, Spongebob Squigglepants is very simple. Every mini-game is actually a series of challenges. You need to successfully complete 20 in order to win and, as per usual, winning will unlock another set of challenges. Thankfully, you don’t need to pass 20 in a row. You get 5 lives and, unless you have the reflexes of a cat and the skills to match, you will need those lives.

Each challenge is prefaced by an icon of the action you need to perform which will be one of the following:

• Draw a quick directional flick
• Draw lines to link up icons
• Frantically draw circles
• Erase something
• Tilt the tablet
• Stab the UDraw with the stylus like a giant plankton is about to crawl out of it and eat you alive

Pay attention because the challenge screen itself will last about 5 seconds.

For someone like me who really doesn’t like failure, it gets pretty stressful when I’m down to only one life. Even more so because I know it’s a kids game and therefore I should be good at it, right?

Nah, Spongebob Squigglepants is not that kind of game and I think that’s probably the genius of it. Whip the kids into a frenzy of excitement and tease them with just enough failure that they want to try harder. Each set of challenges has a different theme, ranging from 8-bit pixel-style to old-school Bela Lugosi horror (cartoon version, of course). This is a brilliant trick that keeps the recycled mechanics feeling fresh and gives kids an alternative if one section proves too difficult. Mildly entertaining to adults for… about an hour.

Let’s not even talk about the pirate. *twitch, shudder*

In Summary

Kids will love Spongebob Squigglepants. The controls are simple enough for them to grasp quickly and the pace will keep them transfixed. It is a good laugh and a nice, if exhausting, way to spend an evening together. I’m not convinced that Spongebob (£17.99) and the UDraw Studio that comes with the tablet (£54.99) are quite enough to justify an outlay of almost £73 but then, the cost-benefit machinations of parenthood are well beyond me. I leave that to your discretion. Certainly seems a good purchase if you already have the tablet.

Are you child-free? Stay away. There’s nothing here for you.

Spongebob Squigglepants is available now for the Wii and requires the Wii UDraw Tablet.

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