SpongeBob SquarePants featuring Nicktoons: Globs of Doom review

This is a tear-inducingly monotonous platform/beat-’em-up hybrid based around the premise that an evil troupe of globules named the Morphoids has infested the NickTooniverse. This creates the opportunity for the NickToons (heroes and villains) to band together to clear their lands of the Calpol-esque menaces.

Before tackling an area, your Toon has to ‘chute his or her way to the appropriate cartoon in a minigame that resembles Mario Galaxy’s Loop De Loop Galaxy, only with the flowing water seemingly replaced with purple-hued Nutella. It really is humiliatingly slow. Yet within six seconds of reaching your destination, you’ll be pining desperately for the Nutellaslide sections, because Lordy is the main game tedious. Almost without exception, enemies will disperse harmlessly after three taps of the B button, and even if they do somehow kill you off (which we suppose is hypothetically possible if your body suffers a random toxic seizure during play) you respawn about three feet back, liberating the game of any suspense whatsoever and making all the upgrades and special moves a complete waste of time.

Globs of Doom is loosely designed for co-op, as is sometimes evident in boss fights and the level design, but why would you want to put two children through this? As some sort of sick measure of love – “The one who plays the longest loves Daddy more”? Do you hate children or something? If the answer is ‘no’, then you’ll leave the NickToons to wallow in their glob-encrusted misery.

Nov 4, 2008