Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom: Rehydrated launched unfinished and unpolished

[Noog]

I thought about posting this in the OT, but I believe this warrants its own thread both to warn potential consumers about the game, and to have a discussion about glitches and the things we can do to avoid them.

I made it through about 75% of the game when I had a sudden crash. Upon rebooting the game, my save file data was corrupted and unplayable. Chalking it up to one-time occurrence, I restarted the game from the beginning. 60% in, the game crashed, and once again, my save file data was corrupted and unplayable.

The game certainly feels glitchy. There's weird collision, texture pop-in, and animations failing to play out, but I chalked those up to the inevitabilities of a PS2 era remake.

What is not excusable is the fact that I'm not even able to beat this game. I can't get past the later levels without my game crashing and the save file corrupting.


Straight up, don't buy this game. Don't buy it until THQ Nordic patches it and makes it actually playable and completable. Spend your money on platformers that you can actually complete like Mario Odyssey, Ratchet and Clank, A Hat in Time, or even Yooka-Laylee. All of which are actually playable.


What's insane is when I tried to send THQ Nordic support an email, it won't let me saying CAPTCHA validation had an error. On two devices.


I'm playing on PS4, but from what I've heard the Switch version is even worse. This is a children's game. They shouldn't have to be worried about their save file being corrupted.

There's no excuse for the state this game is in. Also, if anyone has a direct email to THQ Nordic support, please let me know.

 

[Deleted member 10737]

that sucks, very disappointing. i hope they get around to fixing it but for a platformer and a remaster of an old game, it should be fully polished and playable day 1.

 

[Deleted member 6235]

Yikes. That's really bad. I'm playing on the PC and it's been fine and quite fun, too, but the console side seems like a trainwreck.

 

[Deleted member 11637]

Yikes. This game is #2 on the NA eShop right now.

 

[Clive]

That sucks to hear. Feels like THQ Nordic is becoming well known for these terrible earlier-gen ports. I only had the misfortune of playing their Darksiders II port on Xbox One and it was a mess in terms of visuals, framerate and IIRC it still has an unobtainable achievement.

 

[Belthazar90]

Well, me and a couple of friends were able to get the platinum on base ps4 without a single issue and the game looked and ran very well for us.

 

[sredgrin]

Seems pretty solid on PC right now but I'm also still early in on it.

 

[RockmanBN]

Played on PS4 Pro and didn't really have any issues other than the water flickering at Goo Lagoon when it was rising.

 

[NeoGold123]

Haven't played personally, but I did watch a streamer doing some speed running and every once in a while the game would crash and it wouldn't detect collisions properly. Seemed to be annoying him.

 

[AntiMacro]

Played it on Xbox One X. Didn't have a ton of fun with some of the 2003-era design decisions, and the new multiplayer mode is garbage, but the game ran fine.

 

[Noog]

Well, me and a couple of friends were able to get the platinum on base ps4 without a single issue and the game looked and ran very well for us.

Click to shrink...

I'm super jealous. I was going for the platinum, so both of my runs were super thorough. A lot of wasted time if they don't fix the corrupted data

 

[GJ]

Played it for review on PS4 Pro without any patches and I didn't have this happen to me.

Btw check your cloud saves (if you have PS+). It might not have uploaded the corrupted one yet so you can download your older save.

 

[Mugsy]

The original has a surprisingly large community for speedruns so they have been pretty active on Rehydrated. The current world record for Rehydrated is just over 2 minutes long.

 

[Komo]

The amount of speedrunning glitches for this game is staggering.

 

[criteriondog]

I wonder how Nickelodeon feels about the low reviews and glitches? I mean, I know it'd not a super incredible AAA game, but some reviews were really surprisingly low.

 

[Belthazar90]

I'm super jealous. I was going for the platinum, so both of my runs were super thorough. A lot of wasted time if they don't fix the corrupted data

Click to shrink...

They said they were working on on a second patch, so maybe it's better to wait for that. The game is really good and it's a shame that something like this happened to you

 

[Noog]

They said they were working on on a second patch, so maybe it's better to wait for that. The game is really good and it's a shame that something like this happened to you

Click to shrink...

I definitely enjoyed what I played. Enough to play through the early levels twice. Not doing that a third time though

 

[SNRUB]

I knew something was fishy when they barely showed any new footage until two months prior to the release.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

I personally didn't encounter issues. Game is not a masterpiece but it's definitely polished and enjoyable.

 

[sredgrin]

It just got a patch on PC, so I guess they're working on it, though obviously it's a lot easier to patch on PC.

 

[Smash-It Stan]

I knew something was fishy when they barely showed any new footage until two months prior to the release.

Click to shrink...

God of War did the same thing though...

I have heard very little in terms of bugs and glitches, OP's experience is absolutely unlucky and out of the ordinary. The Low reviews is reviewers complaining about a prettied up 2003 kids game.

 

[Elfgore]

The game is death from a thousand cuts. Missing animations, I've heard you can't fight bosses again, physics are wonky, etc. It really is not impressing me much.

 

[DarkVaber32]

It just got a patch on PC, so I guess they're working on it, though obviously it's a lot easier to patch on PC.

Click to shrink...

Apparently this update was some back end stuff for helping with crashes and issues (crash reporting system within UE4). But THQ Nordic also confirmed that the devs already started working on the next patch.

 

[JigglesBunny]

I've played about three hours on the PS4 Pro and haven't ran into any issues but I've seen countless complaints come up, mostly from Switch players, about bugs.

 

[DeoGame]

I played the Xbox version pre patch for work and barring the agonizingly long load times had no problems. Idk. May be a PS4/Switch problem.

Still, the heads up is important, just wanted to give my 2 cents.

 

[Atheerios]

 

[Deleted member 7148]

I'm seriously considering picking the game up since I'm a hardcore platformer fan and I never did play this game back in 2003. I didn't even know it had a cult status to be honest. Just figured it was typical licensed trash.

These reports of bugs and glitches are concerning, though.

 

[totofogo]

I wonder how Nickelodeon feels about the low reviews and glitches? I mean, I know it'd not a super incredible AAA game, but some reviews were really surprisingly low.

Click to shrink...

I mean, Nickelodeon Kart Racers got a sequel greenlit from them lol.

 

[Electric Sheep]

I wrote in the OT about my own issues (Switch version), namely Spongebob freezing and becoming uncontrollable after picking up a golden spatula, the game spawning me under the floor after death, a spatula failing to spawn after a challenge is completed making it unwinnable, and Spongebob tiptoeing when you try to run. Game is a mess on Switch.

 

[SNRUB]

God of War did the same thing though...

I have heard very little in terms of bugs and glitches, OP's experience is absolutely unlucky and out of the ordinary. The Low reviews is reviewers complaining about a prettied up 2003 kids game.

Click to shrink...

Is there really a point in comparing the two when this game obviously didn't get the time and money? It's literal apples and oranges.

 

[TameLucas]

I'm playing on Xbox One X and the game is pretty solid so far. No glitches or anything.

Level design is a little weird sometimes but I'm having a lot of fun.

Sad to hear it's so broken in other platforms :/

 

[VariantX]

Shit like this is why games based on licenses died out hard last gen. Just lack of funding, time and care in combination with oversaturation.

 

[ShotyMcFat]

I just 100%ed the game On Xbox yesterday and didn't run into a single problem at all.

 

[Soul Skater]

Took a risk with this as my second counter pick in my gaming fantasy league and happy it didn't backfire

 

[SchuckyDucky]

On the plus side, speed runners have found a glitch that allows the game to be beat in less than 3 minutes!

 

[arlu]

That's really unfortunate... The developers, Purple Lamb Studio, are a relative small team of around 40 people, in Vienna. They sell themselves as "veterans" in the industry, but they are starting up; only three games shipped so far (including Re-hydrated). Hope they can over come this and learn more as they go. 😔

 

[Noog]

Shit like this is why games based on licenses died out hard last gen. Just lack of funding, time and care in combination with oversaturation.

Click to shrink...

It's too bad too because I think the core game that's here is at least a 7. Some of the levels like Rock Bottom and Kelp Forest aren't particularly fun to explore, but levels like Goo Lagoon, the Flying Dutchman one, and Jellyfish Fields (which is beautiful and clearly got the most attention during development) are really interesting and fun.

I had a few minor issues. Golden spatulas not spawning when they're supposed to. But at least a restart would fix that. My corrupted save files just makes me so sad because I feel like I wasted 15 hours on my 2 incomplete and now corrupted playthroughs.

Apparently the game only had 10 months of development, and it shows frankly. I thought the low review scores were ridiculous, but In the state the game is in now, it deserves a low score

 

[ADS]

There's no excuse for the state this game is in. Also, if anyone has a direct email to THQ Nordic support, please let me know.

Click to shrink...

My understanding is that the pandemic severely impacted their development and they weren't given additional time in the schedule. Sure, it's an excuse, but considering the conditions I'm impressed it's as good as it is.

 

[Camjo-Z]

I can't speak to other platforms but I bought the Switch version and it would have been an instant refund if I didn't have a high tolerance for crappy ports. The game itself still holds up all these years later and the remastering can look great at times, but there are so many graphical glitches and framerate issues that it's obvious the devs didn't have quite enough time to get it where it needed to be. Hopefully it gets some serious updates in the future to bring it to an acceptable level.

 

[bixente]

Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom Dehydrated?

 

[Is_that_my_horse]

Yikes. Good to know. Thanks.

 

[Kibou]

I finished the Switch version earlier. It definitely needed more time in development: graphics look bad, loading times are slow and frame rate dips every now and then but I never ran into glitches or anything like that... It's playable, in my experience.

 

[Arta]

Did this ever get patched?

 

[BaconHat]

Did this ever get patched?

Click to shrink...

It got a patch on pc and consoles at some point, yes.