YMMV / SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab

• Annoying Video Game Helper: The earliest sections of "Starfishman to the Rescue!" are bogged down by Forced Tutorials with the Phone Guy, which are unskippable and break the pacing in an otherwise decent level. What makes it more egregious is that the Phone Guy's tutorials mostly reteach you stuff that you already learned in Diesel Dreaming, since SpongeBob and Patrick's moves (minus the Bluster Puff) are almost the exact same.
  • While not as bad thanks to being in the first stage, Mrs. Puff's tutorials in Diesel Dreaming are also completely unskippable, and thus similarly damage the level's pacing, especially on repeat playthroughs.
• Awesome Art: The loading screens, all of which are designed to look like movie posters.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The ending ends with SpongeBob ambushed and eaten by the Alaskan Bull Worm.
• Bizarro Episode: Thanks to the game being set within the character's dreams, the developers were able to go nuts with how crazy the events could get. Between things like the certain levels having radically different art styles, the character's completely different stories ultimately merging into one, and some downright surreal imagery in places, this is a good contender for the weirdest thing in the SpongeBob franchise.
• Breather Level: Rocket Rodeo. It's a fun and relatively short rail shooter with some of the best visuals and music in the game, with the only trouble being dodging hazards and keeping Patrick's rocket filled with fuel. Story wise, it comes right off of the Marathon Level Alaskan Belly Trouble, and right before the game's climax with giant Plankton.
• Broken Base: Is this game a really fun licensed game, or is it boring and repetitive? It does have some genuinely fun levels and mini-games, but there are also some levels that come off as fairly uninspired, and suffer from an excessive amount of Forced Tutorials that seriously hurt the game's pacing.
• Cult Classic: While not to the extent of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, this game is considered a good game in its own right (aside from the DS version) and has gained a sizable cult following.
• Demonic Spiders: The laser turrets in "Revenge of the Giant Plankton Monster". They're deceptively fast, constantly appear and disappear without warning, can shred through Plankton's health with ease, and take a large amount of punishment before going down. Not helping matters is the only reliable way of taking them out is Plankton's eye laser, which takes time to recharge and doesn't give you any way of aiming it.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: While the gameplay is considered to be less serviceable than the previous SpongeBob games (especially Battle for Bikini Bottom and The Sponge Bob Movie Game), the surreal story and imagery are much more creative and memorable.
• Funny Moments:
  • Spongebob's first lines after he bursts out of his pineapple in Diesel Dreaming:
    "Hot dawg, daddy-o! My bed has transmogrified into a lean, mean racing machine! Time to put the pedal to the metal, the rubber to the road, and the sponge to the STREET!"
  • Pretty much the entirety of Rick and Dale's commentary during the transition cards.
  • Patrick being Patrick, even when he's a superhero. Some of his dialogue is priceless.
  "Rock beats paper—and so does Starfishman."
  "What's he laughing at? What's so funny? I don't get it—tell me the joke again."
  "The people of this street will no longer have to look at your ugly face! Hey! Wait..."
  "No [my plan] was something to do with rope, and jellyfish, and a picture of Squidward. But your way sounds better!"
  "The last time I ran at a wall, Squidward laughed at me. But it'll be different this time!"
  • Plankton lampshading his situation in Super-Sized Patty:
    "Chased by the very patty I sought to catch. Ahh, the sweet, depressing irony..."
  • Occasionally, Plankton will express Flat Joy when bouncing off something to rise higher, since he considers it undignified and a "joy for the simple-minded."
    "Woo-hoo-hoo."
  • In Belly Trouble, Old Man Jenkins says that living in the worm is perfectly safe outside of the acid pools, and the village of people inside are nice enough, the only problem being the smell. Spongebob still objects, though.
    "I can't live here! It's moist and slimy—I absorb moist sliminess. I gotta get outta here!"
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A game where two of the main protagonists (which almost identical movesets to boot) and the series' main Big Bad (with an entirely different playstyle) are all playable, along with said Big Bad becoming gigantic and a section where one of the protagonists is Eaten Alive and has to navigate the inside of another creature? Mario and Luigi would have a similar adventure a few years later. Amusingly enough, the next game in that series also has the main theme of exploring dream worlds!
• Just Here for Godzilla: "Revenge Of The Giant Plankton Monster" is one of, if not, the most popular level in the game, because you get to play as a giant Plankton and destroy Bikini Bottom!
• Memetic Mutation: "Breature From the Krusty Karb" ^ExplanationA hilarious typo mistake on the title from when the game was shown off at Nintendo's E3 2006 press conference as a Wii launch title, which went viral when YouTuber AntDude reviewed the game in 2020. Since then, it's become a Fan Nickname joke among SpongeBob game enthusiasts who love to poke fun at the mistake every now and again.
• Porting Disaster:
  • While it has the best visuals of the three console versions, as well as an exclusive Sponge Band mode, the Nintendo Wii version of this game was hit with accusations of Waggle because of its heavy use of motion controls and making you constantly switch control setups for every situation the game demands. The worst offenders are the flying shoot-em-up levels, which requires you to hold the Wii remote in an awkward and uncomfortable joystick position that makes steering the plane harder than it should be, and it makes Spongebob's Hypnotic Highway almost unplayable due to the unwieldy driving controls and tight time limit. Many players prefer the Nintendo Gamecube and PlayStation 2 versions just so they can avoid the motion controls.
  • The Nintendo DS version falls into the same pitfalls as the Wii version, taking the quite good GBA game and forcing touch-screen controls in every situation, right down to moving your character. The touch controls are downright unresponsive at times and, combined with with no option to use the traditional D-Pad or face buttons, hampers the experience. On top of that the new animated cutscenes take up so much memory that half the soundtrack was cut (including this banger).
  • The Nintendo GameCube version suffers from lots of bugs and issues; this includes bland lighting, poor texture resolution, choppy framerate, missing effects and the final cutscene having no sound whatsoever (many of which are due to the GameCube's limitations). The final cutscene's audio bug was fixed in the PAL release however.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Several songs in the game's soundtrack are similar to background tracks from the show. "Super-Sized Patty" takes heavy inspiration from "Grass Skirt Chase", and the racing/battle theme from Diesel Dreaming sounds nearly identical to "Rocket Sled to Oahu.'' ^note A rarely-used track, most notably used as the title card theme for the episode ''Sandy's Rocket''
  • Starfish Man to the Rescue! in the mobile versions is basically the ‘60s Batman theme.
• That One Level:
  • Alaskan Belly Trouble, in part because of its sheer length. Barring the short freefall section at the beginning, the level is divided into three lengthy sections, which causes the average play times for the level to go over an hour, making it the longest level in the game. It also demands a lot of precise platforming, as the level is filled with platforms and grappling anchors suspended perilously over toxic goo, which is worsened by the game's somewhat-clunky physics sharply increasing the margin for error.
  • Starfishman to the Rescue gets this as well for its insane length, along with the constant unskippable phone tutorials, making the level drag on to the point of absurdity. Not only that, but the enemies in the level never change or get more interesting, and the bright colors of the level can make it hard to look at. Thankfully, Patrick's other two levels are nowhere near as long or exhausting as this one.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Patrick's hot-and-cold ability tells Patrick how close he is to a hidden secret. While this is an interesting gameplay mechanic, it's only used once in "Starfishman to the Rescue!" to find a button hidden among a pile of crates. After that, it's never used again.