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Mr. Slime (DS) Review

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What starts off as a good first impression quickly turns into a bland and repetitive process.

Mr. Slime is a DS exclusive that relies heavily on touch screen mechanics.  The player assumes the role of a four armed booger caught in the begins of a battle against arch enemies that pops up every few decades.  The story sounds like the game will be action packed, but this is definitely not the case.

The basis of Mister Slime is simple:  use four limbs to grab and pull yourself across each level.  Each stage revolves around the typical start at point A and get to point B gameplay mechanic.  Movement is solely performed by clicking and dragging Mister Slime’s limbs to attach to pegs.  While the novelty of this major gameplay factor starts off entertaining, it quickly becomes a tedious, time consuming, and non-fluid way to travel by the end of the third level.

This game reminds me of Donkey Kong’s King of Swing where the player controls DK’s movement by using the shoulder buttons to swing from peg to peg.  Whereas Donkey Kong was always in motion, Mister Slime is just the opposite.  Mister Slime’s stop-and-go form of movement is cumbersome and tedious.  Tapping a peg causes Mr. Slime to grab hold, and tapping a connected hand releases the grip.  The pace of the game slows to a crawl because of this.  Perhaps this stop-and-go movement system wouldn’t have been so bad if it was possible to swing from one location to another, but Bionic Commando this is not.  Statically grabbing and disconnecting from one peg to another is simply boring.

Also adding to the boredom is the level and character design.  Each NPC and enemy is nothing more than a blip on screen.  Mr. Slime himself has the face only a mother could love.  Mix these weak and ugly character designs with lame level design and bland dialog and you have a game with lacking presentation values.   Later levels in the game will have the player blowing into the mic to create wind gusts to reach new heights and act as oxygen support for underwater levels, but this is hardly enough to save the gameplay.

Power ups and having the ability to attack enemies by sling-shotting is a weak attempt to bring a little excitement to the gameplay.  Gameplay is broken is several spots too.  For example, there are times when Mr. Slime needs to “punch” a door to get it to open.  This is performed by stabbing the touch screen, then dragging Slimey’s fist into the door.  Even after doing this more than a dozen times, the door still didn’t open.  The only way to get this door to open is if you hit it in just the right pixel.  The same goes for a time when a power-up/health restoring item was hidden under some spider-web looking material.  The game’s pop-up tutorial told me to rub Slimey’s hand over this white spot to reveal a hidden goodie.  After five minutes of being unsuccessful, I was completely upset that I wasted my time and determined that the game was broken.

While I give this game respect for being original and offering something a little different, I cannot look through this game’s negative aspects.  The game’s slow pacing is this title’s biggest flaw but the lacking character design and buggy sections of gameplay really give this game its negative rating.  There are some multi-pak multiplayer game modes, but there is no point even exploring these options.   Mister Slime is one giant bowl of weak sauce; you are better off without it.

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