For instance, only a handful of mini-games (called Auditions) are available from the beginning. To unlock more, players must progress through the Story Mode, and that's where the problems begin.

Thankfully, Story Mode isn't limited to just one player. Up to four players can compete in this mode, which means that progressing through Story Mode isn't all that much different from the other two gameplay modes. Here's how it breaks down: Story Mode has the player(s) playing mini-games in a set order with more unlocked as they progress. Tournament lets players play up to five unlocked mini-games in any order, while Single Audition just lets players play any unlocked mini-game.

The problem with Story Mode is that additional players cannot join or exit a game in progress. Upon receiving Pants!, my girlfriend and I played through Story Mode for a few hours. A few days later, when I went back to continue our game on my own, I was unable to do so as the game wouldn't proceed without two controllers attached. After attaching the second controller, I was able to make it through a few games before encountering one that required all players to finish a race. At this point, I was forced to either restart the whole Story Mode with only one player or complete these “all players must finish” mini-games myself and then do them again with the second controller. Either way, I'm left retracing the steps in my effort to unlock mini-games because the developers lacked the foresight that there might be a varying amount of players in a multiplayer game.

It’s really stupid that Story Mode is set up like this. As most of the game’s fun comes from playing with friends, I’m baffled that the main gameplay mode won’t allow players to switch up the amount of player-controlled characters without completely starting the entire mode over again.

Playing through the games multiple times highlights the other main problem with Pants!, being that some of the games just take too long. Given that Pants! has thirty mini-games, it's just common sense that they're not all going to be wildly entertaining. But even when the games are fun, and even when playing with friends, most of them still manage to get tedious and boring before they conclude. Maybe it's just the Wario Ware fan in me, but an average of three minutes per mini-game is just a bit too much for the simplistic gameplay. It's even worse when the games aren't any fun, but thankfully, the custom playlist of Tournament helps to address this complaint by letting players avoid the stinkers.

Those who adore SpongeBob SquarePants will love SpongeBob SquarePants: Lights, Camera, Pants!, especially the young fans that the game is geared towards. The above problems, however, mean that the game doesn't have much to offer anyone outside the SpongeBob SquarePants fanbase. Yes it's fun at times, but it's also severely flawed, relying more upon the appeal of its franchise, instead of the gameplay itself, to warrant a purchase.