Mister Slime - hands-on

Mister Slime is the most active blob we’ve ever seen. Left alone he is just a motionless, spherical face – much like the good-for-nothing blob living above us who calls himself the landlord. But once he gets moving, he can have up to four arms outstretched at a time, which allows him to make his way through a level as he moves from each little dot on the screen. The mechanics of swinging works a lot like DK King of Swing, but a bit faster.

The game's controlled with only the DS stylus, which you use to pull arms out of him and on to the next point on the screen he can grasp, You go kind of slow if you have all four arms grasping for safety, but we quickly learned how to move through some areas with the speed of Spider-Man. However, go too fast and you may miss grabbing one of the spots and hit the ground, causing damage to Mister Slime, making him look like a doofus.

But the ground isn't Mister Slime's only enemy. Most of the opponents we saw in the first level were bugs floating around where you needed to be. Some were mostly harmless, such as the Tickle Bugs that just make you lose your grip when they come into contact with Mister Slime's many sticky hands. Other, more malevolent adversaries float around aimlessly and hurt you on contact.

Some enemies can be shooed away by waving the stylus around them. Others can be struck by turning Mister Slime into a sling shot when he holds onto three points. Just let go of the center one and you’ll have one dead bug... in theory. We couldn't really pull that off too well, so avoidance seemed to be the better solution.

Since we only played the first areas, we’re betting this game gets a bit tougher as it goes, but Mister Slime will likely remain in the realm of kiddy games in terms of difficulty. Despite being for children, at least it has a unique idea and seems pretty inoffensive. Mister Slime should be squishing his way into stores in late May.

Apr 24, 2008