Game Review: Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime

As a human who has been gaming for a long time, I've inevitably become loyal to certain franchises. After a long dry spell here in North America, I can again count Dragon Quest among those franchises. The terrific, old-school roleplaying goodness was brought back to American gamers in a big way last year with Dragon Quest VIII. This year, we're treated to a new game in the series sort of. Rocket Slime is a Dragon Quest game the way Paper Mario or Superstar Saga is a Mario game.

Sickeningly cute.

Rocket Slime puts the player into the role of a blue slime, the cute little weenie mascot of the Dragon Quest series. A group of nasties called The Plob has attacked the protagonist's town of Boingburg, capital of Slimenia and kidnapped all the residents there except for one. That one, of course, is our hero (a slime named Bungle in my game.) Your job is to locate and rescue all 100 missing residents of the town. The game plays much like old school Zelda, what the kids call action-RPG. Bungle fights by stretching himself out like a rubber band, then snapping himself into enemies. This bounces them up in the air, and if you can position yourself below, they will land on you and they can be carried on your head. This is also true for empty chests, plants, friendly slimes and various other debris.

So you're bouncing around with all of this shit on your head. What to do with it? The first logical answer (if you're an Alright Guy) would be to throw the shit at other shit, but there's a better way. There is a supply train (The Trans-Slimenian Railway) that continuously has carts going back to town, and anything you throw on the carts is sent back to town. This is great for friendly slimes, but what about enemies and garbage cans and banana peels and shit? I'm glad I asked! If you capture enough of a type of enemy, that enemy will be able to fight for you in your Schleiman Tank. TANK.

MY TANK IS FIGHT.

That's right, you get a tank. So far the game is just a cutesy, family friendly, well made little Zelda-esque action game. The tank battles are what really sets the game apart. Each area in the game features several tank battles, pitting your tank against an enemy tank (with names such as Chrono Twigger and Fort Knight) in a savage battle to the death. Each tank is crewed by a commander and three crew member (chosen from your rescued slimes and captured enemies,each with unique abilities.) Each tank has 2 cannons and 6 chutes. This where the shit comes in. The shit you sent back to town on the railway (empty chests, spare weapons and whatnot) comes down the chutes and is fired from the cannons at the enemy tank by you and your crew. Remember the scene in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie where they're shooting silverware and crates and rubber chickens at the Black Pearl? It's like that. There are strategic elements to these battles, as when your tank fire hits the enemie's tank fire in midair, they cancel each other out. This means that the order in which you load the cannons becomes as important as what you load into them.

Hardcore gamers will thumb their nose at this game for being cutesy and full of stupid puns about slimes, but I think "hardcore gamer" is just another way of saying "fucking asshole and proud of it." Fuck these people. Games are meant to be fun, and DQH: Rocket Slime is all about fun. So far, Nintendo's ability to make nuts games for the DS has outpaced my ability to buy nuts games, but like I said, I'm a Dragon Quest fan. Buy this game for your kids then take it away and play it yourself. It's a nuts little distraction.

Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime earns 3 blue slimes out of 4.