SpongeBob Squarepants!

You can’t even turn when come to a fork!

SpongeBob Squarepants!

If walls are a thing you don’t mind when you hit,

SpongeBob Squarepants!

This game is for you! It’s pile of horse...feed!

SpongeBob Squarepants! SpongeBob Squarepants! SpongeBob, you suck. Haha!

Now that that’s over with, let me read the game description. It says, “SpongeBob may

live at the bottom of the ocean, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have tons of fun

up top!” Which begs the question...on top of what? Because certain things are a lot

of fun up top. Playing a crappy Kinect game is not one of those things, SpongeBob.

Alright, so I’ve been singing and I’ve been lewd. That should give you a pretty fair

idea what I think of SpongeBob’s Surf & Skate Road Trip. It’s one of the worst Kinect

games I’ve played in a long time, not to mention one of the best arguments yet as to

why the analog stick is still more accurate than the all-knowing, all-seeing camera.

Surf & Skate Road Trip is a surfing and skating game that uses the Xbox 360’s motion detecting

camera, the Kinect. Of course, in this application, the whole “detecting” part is debatable.

But more on that later. The game kind of plays like an on-rails racer, of sorts, only without

the racing. Your character automatically moves forward, and you have to steer by moving your

body.

At least, that’s how it works in theory.

The game works by giving you a neutral position. If you stand as you would on a skateboard

or surfboard, that’s supposed to make you go straight. By moving your leading foot to

the left or right, that’s supposed to steer in either direction. You race down the course

with no time restraints, the objective being to rack up points in a

Tony Hawk kind of way and reach the finish line.

I really wanted to like this game. I like SpongeBob. I like the idea of a surfing game

based on the cartoon. What I don’t like is motion controls that don’t work, and

the whole time I was playing Surf & Skate Road Trip, I just kept thinking, “There

is literally an Xbox controller right next to me. Why can’t I just use it? Why am I

being forced to play a game with something that is inherently less **** useful?”

It’s like eating spaghetti with a spoon because someone nailed your fork to the table.

That’s what playing Surf & Skate Road Trip is like. It’s like, interactive video torture.

The game has two modes. There’s a story mode told via slides...slides that see when

you’re not paying attention, and believe me, you won’t. The cut scenes tie together

the races that aren’t races, and that’s when the game’s maddeningly imprecise controls

destroy any semblance of enjoyment you might have had from hearing SpongeBob laugh.

See, this time, he’s laughing at you.

There’s a two-player mode, but you probably won’t care enough to try it. There’s a

negligible amount of extra stuff to unlock, but the core gameplay is so imprecise, you

probably won’t play long enough to see it. Even if your kid is a SpongeBob super fan,

this is a game you should pass on. Find him something else with SpongeBob’s face. There’s

no shortage of licensed merchandise, and unlike Surf & Skate Road Trip, a good deal of it

is actually fun.