SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide

Genre: 3D Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Following in the footsteps of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated and SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake, fans of the porous, absorbent hero who lives in a pineapple under the sea have gotten another 3D Platformer in 2025’s SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide, which released on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2.

The story this time around kicks off with a confrontation between King Neptune and The Flying Dutchman in Krusty Krab that results in Dutchman throwing a tantrum resulting in numerous residents of Bikini Bottom (including SpongeBob himself) turned into glowing green ghosts, other green ghosties menacing the populace, and Krusty Krab becoming unmoored from the ground with all sorts of destruction in the surrounding area. Upon discovering that they can swap ghostly and material forms using their best friend rings, SpongeBob and Patrick head out to try to set things right (and also, at Mr. Krab’s urging, collect plenty of gold).

It’s as sensible a premise as you’re likely to get for a SpongeBob adventure, giving us hordes of ghostly goons to fight on the adventure, gold to pick up in traditional collect-a-thon style, and this game’s central character-swapping gameplay gimmick, which lets players at any time swap between playing SpongeBob and Patrick, with each character bringing unique abilities to the table.

As 3D Platformers go, Titans of the Tide is solid but isn’t breaking any molds or treading especially new ground. In this way, it’s much like Battle for Bikini Bottom and The Cosmic Shake. There’s some interesting level design here, decent combat, and generally good platforming, but nothing truly exceptional. However, at the same time like its two predecessors I think this game is generally well-crafted in a way that sets it apart from countless other licensed games released as a quick cash grab.

At first, this seems to extend to the graphics as well, which take the colorful 3D visuals of prior games and bring them onto a new generation of hardware with more detailed environments with more characters on-screen at a time, all while keeping the same overall presentation (if a bit darker due to this game’s “spooky” theme). However, this time around on Nintendo Switch 2 there’s some nasty slowdown that pops up on occasion that shatters the otherwise excellent presentation. The game includes both graphics and performance modes, but the slowdown still exists at times even in performance mode.

At the very least the sound remains excellent here, with the TV show’s actors fully voicing the game’s characters with the same level of silly enthusiasm, backed by a solid soundtrack that once again includes plenty of ukelele and surf rock influences.

For the most part I think SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide is an excellent continuation of a consistently solid series of 3D Platformers, but the Nintendo Switch 2 release comes with some performance issues that damper the experience. I still think SpongeBob fans whose platform of choice is Nintendo’s new hybrid handheld will enjoy this game, but this isn’t doing anything truly extraordinary with its formula, and the framerate issues are disappointing

tl;dr – SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide is a 3D Platformer that follows in the footsteps of Battle for Bikini Bottom and The Cosmic Shake to be yet another solid, if unambitious, entry in the genre. However, on Nintendo Switch 2 this is marred somewhat by some nasty framerate issues. Despite this, Titans of the Tide remains an entertaining game that series fans will be sure to enjoy.

Grade: B-

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