Recent reviews by The23rdGamer

I do recommend this game, but there are a surprising number of bugs even a few years after release...
- Some Steam achievements don't align with in-game progress (for example, I received the 50 spatula achievement when I got my 47th spatula).
- If SpongeBob does a bubble bounce onto a bouncy surface and attempts to do a bubble bowl as soon as he lands, he'll get stuck bowling forever unless he takes damage while in this state.
- Bungee jumping sometimes has tikis warping all over the place instead of moving smoothly.
- Some tikis (besides the floating tiki) incorrectly spawn suspended in midair.
- Some tikis do not fall to the ground when tikis beneath them are broken.
- There are a few places where your camera can freak out (for example, where the stone tikis spawn at to the left of the Chum Bucket).
- In Goo Lagoon at the bus stop outside of the "King of the Castle" mission, if you position yourself perfectly your character can be swapped before they get into their proper position. Once your character swap is complete, you won't have control of your character until they figure out how to get to where they wanted to be for the character swap to happen.
- In Goo Lagoon, the lifeguard towers will make a loud noise every time you re-load the area.
- Some enemies have really weird hitboxes (G-Love is immune to regular attacks and the bubble bowl move, for some reason; if trying to bubble bash Monsoon, you have to be fairly precise or else you'll clip through his umbrella but not damage him)
- There's still a spot in the Mermalair where you can softlock yourself if you accidentally sequence break (the area beneath the "Shut Down the Security System" mission, which you can accidentally warp to if you fall off the map during the "The Funnel Machines" mission). To be fair, this was present in the original game as well.
- In SpongeBob's dream, if you collect the golden spatula near Patrick's rock it will give you the Steam achievement for collecting all of the golden spatulas in SpongeBob's dream, despite not necessarily having done so (for example, I received the achievement before doing any of Sandy's dream).

Overall, there's fairly minor game play changes (characters move a bit slower, Sandy's lasso grapple ability gives WAY more momentum than in the original game) and the graphics have been changed to a new style.

I am genuinely pretty mixed on whether or not to recommend this game. It has some great things going for it, but it is also held back by several drawbacks.

I hesitantly recommend this game, but there are some notable caveats:


Performance Issues:

• There is noticeable input lag on some titles (thankfully Pac-Man isn't the most input-intensive title, but it's still an annoying way to lose)
  
• Several games dip in frame rate from time to time.
  
• Audio can be bad. The random frame rate drops make songs sound distorted for a brief moment, and eating a pellet occasionally won't result in a sound being played.
  
• Pac-Man Arrangement: Console Version strangely has very harsh, raspy sounding noises when you collect pellets.

Decorating the Arcade

• Decorating your arcade is a cool concept, but it feels very lackluster. Almost nothing can actually be interacted with, save for the arcade cabinets themselves and a jukebox.
  
• Furniture options are very limited and some items are earned from a gacha machine. Thankfully this game is very generous on coins, but the whole process feels unnecessary given the minimal amount of interesting content to collect.
  
• I anticipated an "over the shoulder" camera to make it easier to appreciate the arcade from something resembling a person's point of view. The aerial angle makes it hard to read what the cabinets are.
  
• Anything you could interact with can also be done faster and easier from the pause menu, further making the arcade feel trivial.

• The price of the game is very fair at $20. Several of the titles bundled in this game retailed close to the price of the whole bundle!
  
• The game selection is rather good! There are a lot of classic favorites in here, but about a third of the titles are relatively obscure.
  
• I enjoy the pieces of art for the arcade cabinetry. They're charming, even if they're a pretty minor detail.
  
• The idea behind the game is great. I love supporting classic arcade titles, especially ones made with a lot of love!

If you love Pac-Man and appreciate picking up a bundle of classic arcade titles for cheap, this title is for you. It would be significantly easier to recommend with the performance issues fixed, so if that ever happens I'll try to update my review.

Waka-waka, friends!

The game is pretty clumsy in its current state. The menu is slow to load and several options (such as adjusting the volume of the rather loud music that starts as soon as you open the game) doesn't work unless you first rebind some controls in the options menu. There seems to be only two tracks in the game and they'll repeat on loop forever. It almost feels like a mobile game you'd see ads for on your phone.

As far as the gameplay itself, this is a pretty basic beat-em-up button masher. The game tells you to look for combos to pull off, but I wasn't able to find many. Most enemies can be cheesed by jumping into the air and then mashing your attack buttons (as attacking pauses your fall, allowing you to stay midair for a very long time). There are powerups in this game too, but I couldn't figure out what most of them did.

Aesthetically, the game is quite bright with simple graphics. Almost all non-terrain parts of the environment can be destroyed by hitting or touching them, but their destruction isn't satisfying. Buildings will slide a few feet over, completely intact, after being slammed by a gigantic dinosaur before disappearing.

On the positive side, there are multiple skins for the T-Rex you play as, and those are pretty cute! There also seems to be some sort of multiplayer support, but I haven't tried it. These qualities aren't enough to justify the regular price tag on this game, but perhaps this game could offer an hour of fun for a small group of friends if it was on sale.