How would you like to play as a little blue slime and create pure bedlam? That’s what happens in Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime. Two different demos were available on the show floor. I started out with a multiplayer match against Bloodworth.

In multiplayer each person first selects which tank they want to control. Do yourself a favor and check out some screenshots so you can get the right picture in your mind. These aren’t your standard army tanks. The best way to imagine them is to think about the castle in Howl’s Moving Castle. The inside is like a little home base.

Once tanks are selected, players take control of a slime of a particular color inside their own tank. They will also notice several teammates who, at least in this demo, are computer controlled. As play begins, the crazy fun starts. Each player has two canons that they can load with all sorts of things, including themselves. One canon fires a high arching shot toward the opponent and the other shoots a line drive. Throughout the castle there are little shoots that will dispense ammo of various types.

Some ammo examples are:

• Sword - Directly flies towards your enemy and deals damage.
• Boomerang - Travels in a screwy pattern but eventually hits your enemy.
• Shield - Blocks any projectiles that may hit it while it flies.
• Mirror - Reflects projectiles that may hit it back at the sender.

Now these projectiles fly very slowly. If two projectiles happen to hit each other, they will fall out of the air. This makes boomerangs very efficient as a means of defense. They fly everywhere until they hit something. The slowness also allows for a certain level of strategy. You can easily look at the sky and decide if sending a mirror or shield out is worthwhile or if you should just attack. At any moment you can launch yourself or your teammates as well. If you don’t get knocked out of the air, you end up in your opponent’s base, where you can try and distract him/her.

Now, don’t think that this is a laid back game because the projectiles fly slowly. At any time there could be upwards of 20 things in the air. It can be quite chaotic and how you handle the chaos will determine if you win.

Winning isn’t a simple task either. Each tank has a number of hit points that must be reduced, but getting them to zero is not the only task. Once at zero, the defenses are weakened. You must then raid the enemy’s base with your slime. Once inside you have to battle your way to the mechanical heart to fully destroy the tank. When playing, the silly slime combat was some of the most fun I had. At one point I picked up Bloodworth and used him as a projectile to destroy his defenses. He also spent a lot of time picking me up and trying to throw me outside. When the game finally ended, both of our tanks were reduced to zero hit points and it all came down to who got to the heart first.

The other demo on hand was an example of the single player adventure mode. This was a snooze-fest through a forest in which you had to rescue your friends. Rescuing involves the same pick up mechanic uses to attack your opponent in multiplayer. Pick someone up. Carry them back to town. Repeat. I did this for a while and then played some more multiplayer.

From what I can tell, this game has an incredibly fun multiplayer mode and an incredibly dull single player mode. I am definitely interested in it though. The multiplayer is a novel enough concept that it could be released without the other mode entirely.