The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie - Episode 8: Between a Rock Slide and a Hard Arena

In today's episode of the "SpongeBob Movie" playthrough, we collect the remaining Goofy Goober tokens in "Rock Slide" and complete the combat arena challenge in "Now That We're Men..." You know how the standard time trial mission in "Rock Slide" gives you five-and-a-half minutes to complete the mission? Well, apparently, the developers thought that was way too lenient because even though it takes around five minutes to reach the end of the slides normally without any deaths, you're only given four minutes and ten seconds for the macho time trial. As such, if you want that Goofy Goober token (though if you're not looking to 100% this game, then I would highly suggest skipping it), you're going to need to learn at least three of speedrun skips present in the stage. The first skip is found right at the start and can be performed by jumping on the center segment of the yellow monster that's swimming through the lava, thereby allowing you to use the resulting knockback from taking damage to bounce to the next section of the slide. From my experience, the hardest part about this skip is not choking up while making the leap of faith since it's easy to think that the distance is too far. But after a bit of practice, this becomes arguably the easiest skip in the level. Unfortunately, at least for me, the second skip can be very difficult to pull off, regardless of how much you practice it. You see, after using the spring pad upon exiting the first stomach cave and reaching the upper section of that portion of the slide, you'll need to jump off the slide right when you reach the green plant that's to the left of the light and land on the track below. Now you'd think that the hard part of this would be landing on the lower section since you'll need to point the camera downwards while battling the poor turning when you're moving at a certain speed, and while that aspect can be a bit of a challenge, you can adjust to it with enough practice. However, what you can't adjust to are the invisible death barriers that can be triggered if you so much as double-jump at the wrong time. And mind you, one death is enough to kill your run, so if you fall victim to a death barrier, you'll need to start the run over from the beginning. Thankfully, while the next skip is similar to the previous one, it's much more manageable. After exiting the first standard cave, which you enter by taking the upper path right after executing the previous skip, jump off the slide upon reaching the two anemones to your right and jump over to the section below. If you managed to pull off all three of these skips, as well as use the one spring pad that's found shortly after the first skip, then you can complete the macho time challenge by just finishing the slide normally. However, if you're feeling bold, there's one more skip. To pull off this last skip, jump off the slide upon reaching the plant to your left, which is right before you encounter the blue monster, and jumping down to the final portion of the slide. Personally, I have never attempted to pull off that skip because in my opinion, it's not worth the risk of having to redo the previous three skips. And while on the topic of difficult challenges, this part of the game doesn't cut you any slack because the next level, "Now That We're Men..." throws one of the game's hardest combat challenges at you pretty much right at the start of the level. Seriously, between the hordes of surprisingly fast belchers that take two hits to defeat and the multiple projectile enemies (one of which is a new type that you can't beat without the Sonic Wave Guitar or the upgraded Karate Spin), you can't beat this challenge with brute force alone. Instead, you're going to need to strategize and take advantage of the game mechanics, which involves you running away from the belchers along the arena's perimeter while gradually defeating the projectile enemies be reflecting their attacks back at them. Then, once the projectile enemies have all been defeated, use your upgraded Spongebowl attack to finish off the belchers. Sure, this strategy may be as slow as it is cheap and cowardly, but darn it, it works.