It’s really about time I had the pleasure of playing a DS game that wasn’t made unbearably annoying by heavy reliance on the touch screen. Yeah, it’s totally neat that I can touch the screen and stuff actually happens on the screen! I got it! No, really, I understand. This game actually barely relies on the touch screen at all. The only time you will need to poke around with your stylus is if you want to draw pictures on the big canvas in the slime throne room.
The game does still makes use of both screens, though. The menu, which contains the map of the area you are in and lists the items and such you have collected, is displayed there. You can switch at any time between controlling the action of the game, on the bottom screen, to navigating the menu on the top screen. Easy stuff. During tank battles, the two tanks are seen in their full glory on the top screen while you roam around in them on the bottom screen.
That reminds me: There are tank battles in this game! In addition to regular boss battles and the normal battles of the game, in which you fight enemies by stretching your slime across the screen and letting go to send him blasting into your foes (done by holding down on and letting go of a button, not stylus fondling! Wooo!), you sometimes fight enemy tanks with your own tank. While inside the tank, you throw all kinds of objects at your opponents, from pompoms to swords to mirrors to empty boxes to your own crew members.
Speaking of crew members, you can get them to help you out in your tanks. A bunch of slimes from the town will help you, and you can also recruit all of the normal enemies you encounter throughout the game. Each has different abilities. Some steal ammo from your enemy, some fire ammo, some attack your enemies or try to sabotage the enemy tank, and some even jump in the cannons and fire themselves at the enemy. It’s a blast! Get it? Cause of the cannons! They blast things out of them!
There are so many puns and references in this game it will almost make your head explode. Pretty much every slimes name is some kind of slimification of another name. For example, there is a cyborg slime named Roboglop, a ninja slime named Goosashi, and a slime abbot named Flabbot Flancisco. As far as references go, there is another ninja slime that uses ninja turtle-esque catch phrases like cowabunga, and at one point says “Heroes in a half-gel, slime power!” There is another slime named the Crystal Chronicler, a reference to Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. Definitely one of the best references is with the main baddie of the game, the Plobfather Don Clawleone. Suffice it to say, if you don’t like corny puns or references galore, you probably should stay away from this game.
On the other hand, if you are looking a game where mostly all that you do is bounce around as a slime, bouncing into everything you possibly can in order to solve puzzles and defeat bosses, you should…stay near from this game…. The game is very short, about 10-20 hours depending on the sidequests you do, so it also would be a good choice for people who don’t enjoy spending tons of time on portable gaming. Definitely very easy to pick up and play whenever. You can’t possibly get lost as to what to do, since there are slimes all over who are more than happy to refresh your memory. Right on the area select menu, in fact, is always someone telling you what to do next.
In the end, though, the best part of this game is still the fact that it doesn’t make me do ridiculous amounts of annoying and generally non-fun things just to make use of all of the possible aspects of the DS.
