SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab

SpongeBob's latest adventures take place in the mind, but will it keep your attention?

SpongeBob SquarePants' next under-sea adventure is headed straight for Nintendo's upcoming Wii, and an early hands-on sneak peek revealed that this planned launch title will make varied and intensive use of the system's signature motion-sensing wireless controllers.

"Giant sea Twinkie hungry!"

Into the Blue

Something's causing the residents of Bikini Bottom to have peculiar dreams, and only by thoroughly exploring each of the nine surreal levels can you get to the bottom of the mystery. This contrivance opens up a Pandora's Box of variety, all of which is elaborated upon with outlandish visual style. Certainly you can't expect the same level of cutting edge eye-candy that you might from the other next-generation platforms, but the vivid colors and cartoony high-contrast style still shine through on every frame. It's hard to tell exactly how the final version will look, because even the developers haven't seen final Wii hardware yet, but this early approximation takes the bright undersea theme and runs far with it.

Plankton, owner of the Chum Bucket that competes with the Krusty Krab joint, hops from platform to platform in one of the more traditionally-minded levels, while another finds him grown to Godzilla size, towering over local buildings. The analog stick controls movement, while the Wii-mote is waved about to change the camera angle and lay waste to anything in your path. Wiggling horizontally delivers a barrage of punches to anything in front of you, while hitting an imaginary drum makes the enormous troublemaker deliver an earth-shaking stomp to the ground, shaking anything in range.

Sure, when sponges fly! D'oh!

Sure, when sponges fly! D'oh!

Sometimes power-ups are left amid the debris, giving you the opportunity to twirl the analog stick in a circular motion until Plankton unleashes a whirlwind attack. Though the basic gameplay here, as in the rest of the game's scenarios, is relatively simplistic, the added physical dimension breathes more life into it than you might expect.

Soaking Up the Scenery

The ever-smiling sea sponge himself flies away from the rampaging Plankton in a plane, tears around town in his own hot rod, and gets gobbled up by an enormous Alaskan Bull Worm.

As SpongeBob falls through space, steered around obstacles with your movement of the Wii-mote, he'll strike various nutty poses, as if happy to have you doing all the work--at least until you crack his porous skull on a passing obstacle. His reactions and contortions make him as fun to watch as a spectator as he is to play as a participant. As goofy as all the characters in the Bikini Bottom universe are, it's SpongeBob's pathological refusal to ever be unhappy for more than a moment that makes him the most infectious personality.

You'll also play as SpongeBob's buddy Patrick, the ironically dim-witted but good-natured starfish. He stars in an interstellar dream sequence that uses the Wii-mote as a yoke: pull back to climb, push forward to dive, and fire laser cannons at anything that moves. Like every other part of the adventure, your journey through space is strictly linear, but that just serves to keep the young ones entertained rather than confused. Patrick also gets to son his Starfishman get-up and charge around doing clumsy good deeds wherever he's needed.

"Note to self: don't piss off anyone who shoots eye lasers!"

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