Nicktoons: Attack of the Toy Bots (PS2) Review

 Nicktoons: Attack of the Toy Bots (PS2) 6.5/10

Hello everyone. Do I have a surprise for you. Today, I’ll be reviewing Nicktoons: Attack of the Toy Bots, Attack of the Toy Bots was released on October 23, 2007, a year after Battle For Volcano Island, for the PS2 and Wii. The game was developed by Blue Tongue Entertainment and published by THQ. This game was a very nice surprise for me as I was expecting it to be dogshit like the previous game. Thankfully, that is not the case. Let’s begin.

Our story follows Spongebob, Timmy, Danny, Jimmy, and a new addition to the main cast Tak as they work together to stop Professor Calamitous’ new evil scheme to rule all the different worlds. As part of a game show called Greatest Genius, Calamitous is tasked with combining Krabby Patties, Fairies, and Ghost Zone Energy and use them to take over the world. He’ll be using these to help fuel and create his latest invention; evil toys. Now it’s up to our heroes to rescue more friends and take down Calamitous’ toy factory.

I actually like this story. It’s as stupid as the first game, but it works and it makes sense to bring all of these characters together for such a large scale invasion, unlike the previous game. Anyway, the story isn’t deep or anything of the like, but I do like seeing all of these characters back together to deal with a huge threat. Sadly, character interactions are almost nonexistent except for cutscenes. I do like as you are playing the game, whoever you are playing as well say a line of dialogue that’s appropriate to the current situation.

One of my favorite things about the game is that it actually feels like this massive crossover event for Nicktoons characters. There’s a reason why all of these characters are coming together unlike the previous game. There’s even more obscure Nicktoon characters joining in such as Tak, Rocko, and Stimpy.

The game looks great. There seems to be a small graphical improvement here compared to Battle For Volcano Island. The character models don’t look THAT hideous, except for Tak, Stimpy, Danny, and Sam. Jimmy still looks weird for some reason even though he is originally a 3D model. Tak looks great though. Seems like they took his character model straight from his games. The levels and designs all look great too.

Sound design is actually great too. Almost all of the character’s voice actors returned for their roles. Let me just say, it was awesome to hear Billy West reprise his role as Stimpy. He has such an iconic voice and is one of my favorite voice actors.

The game’s music is decent too. I will say though, the music tracks for Factory Zone 3 sounds awful. It’s trying to sound cutesy, babyish, and just childish. I get what they were trying to go for with this zone, but it doesn’t work. Everything else sounds great, which is a very nice breath of fresh air. For the mech stages, the music takes a different tone and sounds like industrial metal, which fits very well. Surprisingly, fucking Mick Gordon, composer for the recent Doom games, did the music compositions for the game.

Onto gameplay. This game is also a 3D beat ‘em up, but as opposed to the previous two entries, this game is much more focused on 2.5D platforming. There’s 11 characters to play as: Spongebob, Patrick, Timmy, Jimmy, Danny, Tak, and Sam Manson with some hidden characters for you to unlock: Jenny/XJ9 from My Life as a Teenage Robot, Stimpy from Ren & Stimpy, Rocko from Rocko’s Modern Life, and Gir from Invader Zim. You can only take 2 characters into each level and you can choose who you can play as (if you have unlocked them). I love that you can play as some of the more obscure characters. Once I unlocked Jenny and Stimpy, I mainly played as them. To progress through the game, you’ll need to parkour through all of the levels. There’s 3 factory zones (with a bunch of levels inside each zone), and 4 special levels (Bikini Bottom, Amity Park, Fairy World, and Professor Calamitous’ Lair). Amity Park and Calamitous’ Lair are mech stages. Using your giant mechs, you’ll be blasting through these fairly long levels in what feels like Asteroids (the old retro arcade). Back to the normal stages, you’ll be platforming your way to the end of each level, fighting off evil toys along the way. As you progress through the levels, you’ll encounter certain tubes that require a certain character to go through. Spongebob, Danny, and Tak have special stages to them specifically as opposed to all of the other characters. Spongebob will be sliding down a tube on his tongue, Danny will be going ghost through a maze,  and Tak will be jumping and parkouring through special gymnastic stages. I do wish all of the characters had special stages catered to them, but sadly that’s not the case.

You’ll be needing all of the characters to unlock all of the Master Models. Master Models are Nicktoons characters that weren’t fortunate enough to be playable characters (such as Arnold from Hey Arnold, Otto from Rocket Power, Catdog, Mr. Blik from Catscratch, etc.). These things are like the trophies from Smash Bros. Calamitous’ sidekick Chadbot will ask you to collect them all for him. There’s also 500 Fairies for you to free while inside the factory. After every milestone, Jorgen will update you on progress. I’ll just say this now, all you get for collecting all of the Fairies and Master Models is a badge in the rewards menu. Nothing special, which is a massive shame and puts a damper on the whole experience. Like yeah, it’s cool that the game acknowledged these characters and all of your work, but I wanted something more. Like clips from the shows and stuff like that. But I got to play as Jenny, Stimpy, and Rocko, so that's cool I guess.

The levels themselves are actually a decent challenge. Lots of platforming and a nice mixture of beat em up sections. I will say, certain levels did piss me off a bit as you have to be precise with your jumps. Again, a decent challenge as I had to actually focus instead of mind numbing easy bullshit for the entire game. There’s also a lot of backtracking if you want to get all of the Master Models and Fairies if you missed any. It was tedious, but nothing I couldn’t handle. 

There’s only one boss in the entire game and that’s in the Amity Park mech stage. This is SEVERELY disappointing. You don’t even face off against giant robot bosses or anything or even Calamitous himself. Okay, one giant boss but that’s it. I was expecting more bosses. Bring back Plankton’s crab mech from the first game or make a robot version of Mawgu. Fuck man. They could’ve easily put a boss at the end of each Factory Zone and at the end of each special stage. Missed opportunity to tie this game to the previous games.

There are cheats for the game too. If you input a certain number code, you can unlock 2 characters (two of the toys) or infinite slime ammo. These don’t really break the game as the Mr. Huggles character gave me a decent laugh. I know why cheats aren’t used nowadays, but boy was doing this a nice trip back to the old days.

Overall, this was a surprisingly good game for me. It’s not the best and the devs could’ve easily made it even better. You can tell they put a lot more effort into this game and I have to commend them for this. If you have a PS2 or Wii, I highly recommend checking out Attack of the Toy Bots. It’s a nice breath of fresh air for the Nicktoons series and I might be tempted to pick up the fourth crossover game. One last thing. It’s a fucking sin that My Life as a Teenage Robot never got an actual game. Saddens me actually.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.