SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake PC port report — Squeaky clean

I know you weren’t expecting a SpongeBob game to be insanely demanding, but the PC port for SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is truly easy to run. The recommended Nvidia GPU is just a 1050 Ti. If you have modern hardware, you’ll be able to run this game at rock-solid high framerates with ease. I played the game at 120 fps with an RTX 3090 and it was smooth sailing the whole way through. I don’t recall any frame dips at all, but I did have at least one crash. The game autosaves constantly, though, and with three rotating autosaves, losing any significant progress is unlikely.

If you played the remake of the early 00s game before, you likely know exactly what to expect, as this game isn’t technologically all that different. The install size is also quite small, coming in at only 8.59 GB. But that’s enough about all that. Let’s take a look at the display, graphics, and control menus.

No, this is Patrick

Remember when I said we’d look at the graphics menu in the last paragraph? I’m sure you do. You just read it. Well, I lied – there isn’t one.  From what I can see, you can’t change any actual graphical settings whatsoever. No textures, anti-aliasing, or draw-distance. You can choose between fullscreen, windowed, or borderless, turn on vsync and pick your resolution when fullscreen is enabled. And that’s it. The framerate depends on what your screen’s refresh rate is. It’s completely barebones but I guess the game’s visuals are simple enough that the developer didn’t think anything was necessary. But that’s still pretty weird.

In another bizarre twist, there doesn’t appear to be any way to rebind any of the controls, even for mouse and keyboard. You can view what they are, but clicking them doesn’t do anything. Maybe this will get patched if enough people complain, as this was another very odd choice.

And there you have it. SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake has a PC port that’s insanely easy to run but it’s also as barebones as possible. Without being able to change any of the graphical presets or set your own controls, there’s very little customization available. I played with a controller and was perfectly fine with the default configs. But if you’re not, then things may get a little aggravating. As for graphics, you might be able to make some of your own improvements with the Unreal unlocker, but the game at least looks decent enough for what it is.