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Platform: PlayStation 2
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Publisher: THQ
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Developer: Bluetongue
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Medium: DVD-ROM
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Players: 1 - 4
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Online: No
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Also on: (n/a)
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You will believe a sponge can karate chop.
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Throughout the years, Nickelodeon’s cartoon lineup has changed. From the era of the gleeful vileness offered through Ren and Stimpy and Rocko’s Modern Life, leading into the time when the family friendly lineup of Hey, Arnold! and Rugrats dominated…up to the present, where the biggest stars are heroic, fun-loving, and just a bit dumb. As the network’s offerings progressed, so did game technology—and it shows. Most of the NickToons games up until recently have been pretty shoddy. Cut to the present, and the team of THQ and Nickelodeon are pushing out solid console titles that provide decent gameplay and an atmosphere that captures the feeling of the series.
Nicktoons Unite! starts off with your basic plot—bad guys are looking to take over the world, the heroes have to stop them, and well, that’s about it. The hook here is the crossover factor: four universes have to work together to stop the unified villain front. Your team consists of Spongebob Squarepants, who provides much of the muscle, Danny Phantom swings around with a bit of kung fu and stealth, Jimmy Neutron provides some scientific solutions with limited offensive capabilities, and Timmy Turner carries a wand that has some great long-rage attacks. It’s a pretty solid team that can be managed individually by pressing a directional button on the fly, but there’s some problems in the ranks. Ally AI is somewhat stupid, usually standing still when the action heats up, and infrequently making an attempt to attack enemies. Much of the time you’ll find yourself fighting alone against the numerous hordes of identical enemies, making it a bit annoying to progress through the game. Multiplayer reduces that agony a bit, but it's still a glaring oversight to have such dumb AI.
On the upside, the world keeps faithful to the source material without retreading it. Bikini Bottom, my favorite locale, is large and beautiful. Every single square inch of the game feels like it could be from the cartoons they come from, which should make fans very happy. Even though the game presents itself well on an artistic level, the camera is infuriating at best. Nicktoons Unite! features a bizarre camera that neither knows whether to be near or far, with a majority of the time either standing at a distance that gives ten feet of visibility around the character…or about a hundred feet away, making your characters miniscule and tough to manage.
Nicktoons Unite! helps motivate the player to persevere with a couple of nice features. Characters have specific powers they earn when needed, and can apply experience points from a pooled amount to up their attacking abilities. Past that, the game rewards brand loyalty by providing unlocks to people who have select recent Nickelodeon branded games. Concept art, extra player models, and cheats can be unlocked—it’s not much, but it’s great that the concept of brand loyalty isn’t completely lost these days.
Nicktoons Unite! is a sad misstep in the Nickelodeon stable. The console-based superhero dungeon crawler genre, brought up by X-Men Legends, is a little above what much of the fanbase for these characters will want to play. At the same time, the gameplay is simplistic enough and difficulty low enough to cater to that audience, which excludes those who would follow the genre. In the end, all I feel is that a manual camera (or at least one that would stay static), a lineup that would include more Nicktoons, and a difficulty select would greatly improve the game. If a sequel comes out with those features, it could be great. Right now, it’s just above average.
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