SpongeBob SquarePants is popping up everywhere. Be it merchandise, games, or the TV show itself, he's looking at you from a rather large number of store shelves. In fact, he is so many different places that it's hard to know if he's really popular or if it's just Nickelodeon that are trying to make him so. Still, the fact remains: most Europeans know who he is. So, changing the title of the US game from Nicktoons: Unite to the much longer SpongeBob SquarePants and Friends: Unite! seems like a reasonable thing to do. But since there is no main character, it doesn't really seem fair. Anyway, no matter the name, this game provides exactly the same as in the American version, which is the ability to control four of the stars of Nickelodeon's cartoon shows, namely SpongeBob SquarePants, Timmy Turner, Jimmy Neutron and Danny Phantom, from four cartoon shows of varying quality, all of them shown on Nickelodeon TV. And the muddle of a game they've been put in is spat onto the market as yet another Nickelodeon product of varying quality.

When developing this game, THQ sat down with a checklist including plot, characters and abilities. Judging from the final product, they had all the boxes checked in around half an hour. The story is easily explained and starts out like this: Jimmy Neutron (The Boy Genius, should anyone be in doubt) has made a machine enabling him to visit other worlds, which is the label each cartoon show's universe has received. But alas, the evil Professor Calamitous snatched the plans and has now built the machine on his own, gathering villains from four worlds to form a Syndicate, the aim of which is to take control of the entire universe (original, isn't it?). So Jimmy fixes another machine up in a jiffy and gathers every villain's nemesis: the heroes! Now it's up to Jimmy and the others to work together against the evil Syndicate, which they're trying to bring down by hitting a great number of enemies over the head.

So, having covered a reason for a lot of fighting, THQ hastened on to develop a unique and deep fighting system - only to fail miserably. This game encourages co-op play so much that you're not even given a choice; either you connect some friends to joysticks and make a day of it or you play with a team of lousy excuses for AI. Seriously, jumping to their deaths from flying bridges and throwing themselves mindlessly at an army of deadly robots, they never come close to the real thing. But on the other hand, the entire game is laughably easy with the AI, so with an entire team of the real thing you won't be facing any kind of challenge at all, except for the level design and saddening controls.

Console controllers have always used a very basic formula; they're nothing special but they're easy to use and very functional. With that as foundation, few console games have ever succeeded in making the controls interesting. Unite! doesn't change that tradition at all; you steer with the left analog stick and use the buttons for a number of different things, among them changing weapons and characters, yet you never even get to use the right analog stick, as you've got no control over the camera - it's stuck at one angle and you might not always like it!

Most of the features are pretty well placed, so you won't be too confused, but one thing that is reason for quite a lot of stress is changing your character. You won't be bothered with this in the slightest if you've managed to fill out all of the controller ports, but you can't count on always having your friends there when you're playing. You change your character with the directional pad, but it's certainly easier said than done. There's no logic in how you change your character, you don't press up to get the one above you or anything; you just press the buttons at random until you've taken control of the hero you were aiming for. Having no way of making sure you'll get the right character in the heat of battle, you 're not likely to take advantage of their special abilities, which is really sad. At other times you will need to use their special abilities to move on, as every little puzzle this game contains depends on you using a specific character's abilities.

Playing through the game, you'll notice a severe amount of mindlessly beating up enemies. Now, the whole new approach to this is the fact that you can either do it with a gun or with a melee weapon; two of the four characters are equipped with melee weapons, the others with ranged ones. So, playing co-op, it allows for showing off a minimum of tactical skills, but playing alone, everyone is just thrown into a giant, violent muddle. And since the ranged weapons don't reach a lot further than the other ones, they aren't that effective. You'll need to use the characters' special abilities, which are often imaginative ways of smashing stuff. SpongeBob can lay small bombs, Danny Phantom can turn himself into a ghost and Timmy Turner can change into his alter ego, The Boy Chin Wonder, giving him superpowers. Or rather, giving him a metallic arm, which can be used for lifting objects.

Scattered aimlessly about each level are a few easily solved puzzles, all of them relying on your special abilities. They're never real nutcrackers, though, and the most frustrating factor in solving them is the locked camera, which sometimes fails to show important info. A few of the enemies require the usage of special abilities as well, but mostly you'll get along fine with just a bubble-inspired shield that absorbs all damage. On your way through each level, you'll notice an awful lot of orange coins. The deal with these is that you collect them and then spend them on upgrades for the characters. Which ability you want to upgrade is up to you, but since it won't matter until they're fully upgraded, it's a good idea to stick with one ability at a time. You can upgrade your characters every time Jimmy Neutron's dog, Goddard, makes an appearance on screen. It struck me as a little odd that he could squeeze himself into following the heroes on a journey through the poor dog's stomach, but the game obviously doesn't depend much on realism.

After having knocked enemies unconscious in an entire level, you're faced with an end of level boss. It's usually one of the four villains, or an evil machine of some sort. No matter what it is though, it won't take you too long to figure out its weakness, especially not when you're aided by the info you can collect, which practically tells you what to do! None of the bosses are a struggle to defeat and will probably be sobbing for mercy within a couple of minutes. Should it happen that you're defeated, worry not! All you have to do is start all over again, as there's no loading a game saved halfway through a level. But after you've been through it once, it'll only take a couple of minutes to get through it again.

An unfortunate aspect of the game is just how much it's borrowing from other games. Every enemy respawns exactly like in Fable and, playing the game through, I saw a large portion of games like Ratchet & Clank and Jak & Daxter in it. This game is a clone, consisting of bits of other games and brought to life by the inventors at THQ, and it should probably be known only as "The Monster". Just as Frankenstein's monster was kept alive by electricity, this game is kept alive by its humour.

Speaking of which, both the graphics and sound parts are a bit of a joke. They're cel-shaded, and even though that can be done extraordinarily well, it hasn't been done very well here. The characters have all received a streak of realism that doesn't really fit with the rest of the environment, which also fails to impress. There's a very limited area for you to explore and while the rest of the level can be seen, should you try to walk there you'll be stopped by an invisible wall. I, in all my naiveté, believed that console gaming had moved on from this stage, but evidently, evolution doesn't dawn on all of us at the same time.

There's not much to say about the sound either - once you've played through the first level, you've heard everything. The same noises are used again and again, and some of them are so annoying there's a danger of going mad; I personally feel a little less sane after the experience. Fortunately, the music is a steady point of security if you're afraid you might lost the plot; slowly playing through the same tracks again and again, it isn't much and it isn't always there, but when it is it's quite good accompaniment - and in this game, that really counts for something!

At least it doesn't load that much. But when it takes a really long time every time it does, it doesn't really matter. And why, oh why, must it come up with a "loading complete" screen that takes as long to show as the loading itself? You can't just skip those annoying details as in most games - you'll have to sit nicely and wait until they're over. This does annoy quite a lot and the fact that you can't skip dialogue either really makes every non-fighting sequence frustrating.

Once you've reached the rushed ending of SpongeBob SquarePants and Friends: Unite!, you're left with very mixed feelings. Even though a lot of the features aren't put together properly and the sound and graphics are all outdated, it does manage to entertain you along the way - especially if you can play this through with someone else, particularly a child. In that case then it's worth the money, if it's at discount price. However, the game never manages to pull itself properly out of the dirt and has been left half-buried in mediocrity on the store shelves. Controls and level design really drags it down as well, but if you're really into Nickelodeon's shows or are about six years old, it's worth a look; just don't expect to find something designed by a boy genius!

Reviewed by Niels Jakob Kyhl Jørgensen for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).