Nicktoons Unite! (PS2) Review

 Nicktoons Unite! (PS2) 5/10

Hello everyone. Today, I’ll be revisiting an old PS2 classic. Nicktoons Unite! was released on March 3, 2005 for the PS2 and GameCube. The game was developed by Blue Tongue Entertainment and Climax Studios and published by THQ. Now, this game is something else. This is my first time playing this, but I have played the sequel games before. Haven’t played those games in a while, so my memory is basically blank. Anyway, let’s just jump into this.

Our story follows Jimmy Neutron, Spongebob Squarepants, Timmy Turner, and Danny Phantom as they try to save their worlds from the evil Syndicate, which is made up of Vlad, Plankton, Crocker, and Professor Calamitous. To do this, our heroes will need to team up and destroy the energy sources to the doomsday device in each world and eventually have a final confrontation with the Syndicate.

Story is decent, but I’m not going to dive into the tiniest of details because this story only exists so that these characters can interact with each other. I do like all the interactions with the characters and it was cool to see some of my favorite childhood cartoon characters in a game together. I do wish we got to see the Syndicate interact with each other. The characters are all the same as how they were in their respective shows, which is great to see. We even got small cameos from Danny’s parents, Sam, Tucker, Patrick, Sandy, Mr. Krabs, Jorgen, and Cindy. There’s even small easter eggs to certain episodes from each series (Jack Fenton beating Vlad, Jellyfish being imprisoned, several others from Spongebob, Fairy courthouse, and even the Jimmy/Timmy Power Hour special.

Graphically, the game looks kinda bad. Jak and Daxter look better than this, and that was released 4 years before this. Everyone looks kinda cursed with their weird character models (yes even Jimmy, who is already a 3D model). Surprisingly, the only character that looks “fine” is Timmy, but that’s probably because I’m used to how he looks in 3D thanks to his games.

I do like how each world tries to look reminiscent of the shows they are from. I love the looks of the Ghost Prison, Vlad’s Castle, Fairly World, Jellyfish Fields, and the inside of Goddard. The devs seriously did their homework with how these worlds look, which is great. I’ve always loved the look of Fairy World and it was great to go back here.

Audio design is kinda ass. Thankfully they got the original voice actors for the characters, but the audio quality could’ve been better. And the music is bad too. The only “good” song on here would be for Inside Goddard. I don’t know why, but I got Shantae vibes from the track. Everything else tries to sound reminiscent of the shows they are from, but fail miserably, especially Bikini Bottom’s.

Nicktoons Unite is a four player beat em up, similar to other Nickelodeon games and even the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games. There’s only four playable characters: Jimmy, Timmy, Danny, and Spongebob. You’ll be needing every one of them to complete the game. Each character will have special abilities that you'll be using to progress through the game (Spongebob’s absorbency, Danny’s intangibility, Timmy’s Cleft outfit and other wishes, and Jimmy’s several inventions, plus other abilities for the characters). Sadly, the game isn’t too creative with utilizing these powers and tools, but that’s okay as this game is suppose to be for little children, so I’ll give that a pass. As you progress through the levels, you’ll be collecting NRG tokens. These tokens are used to upgrade the characters’ abilities. Now, I upgraded their basic attacks and a few special ones here and there. Gotta say, full powered Timmy is not to be fucked with lol. When I maxed out his basic attack, I was one-shotting enemies. Even maxed out Danny and Spongebob couldn’t do that much damage.

Here’s one thing I found really stupid. So in the game, there’s sections with large gaps in the floor. The game wants you to clear a puzzle before continuing. What I don’t get is why doesn’t Danny use his flying abilities to get over, carrying Spongebob, and Jimmy can use the jetpack in his backpack and carry Timmy? Danny can’t even double jump, which is really dumb. Idk, I feel like the game unnecessarily restricted Danny and Jimmy so that Timmy and Spongebob can be on their level. Timmy is restricted because of plot reasons with Crocker.

The level design is very basic. Progress through the dungeon with puzzles thrown in every now and then. The main thing with the game is that it’s a beat 'em up, so you’ll be fighting through hordes of enemies that will be standing in your way. Thankfully, there’s a decent amount of enemy variety, so it won’t be too mind numbing. I would’ve appreciated more enemy types though.

The bosses are a mixed bag. It was fun trying to figure out how to defeat these guys, but once you did, they were a cake walk. Probably the hardest bosses were Walker, Plankton, Metal Flea, and the final battle with the Syndicate. Walker was only difficult because he’s the first boss and I was still trying to figure out the controls. Plankton probably had the best impression for me because it took me a little bit to figure out his fight and I almost had my first death with the fight. By the way, I did not die once while doing the run. I had like two close calls, but that’s about it.

Overall, the game is average at best. If you can find this for a very low price and got nothing better to play, go check it out. The game is a solid 7(?) hours (it probably felt longer for me because I was messing around with it). Sadly, there is no 100% completion bonus or anything like that (as opposed to the Fairly Oddparents games). There’s no clips of the shows or full episodes, which is a shame. Honestly, I’m kinda excited to eventually getting around to Battle for Volcano Island.

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

This is Zorgak, signing off.