While all this is going on you might also have to fend off bad guys who are trying to enter your tank to sabotage it. So sometimes you'll have to stop firing to take care of these bad guys - and you'll have to do it quickly -- so you can also defend your ship from getting lambasted by objects being fired at you in your absence.

Later on in the game this gets easier because there's a way to give your ship a crew that will help you with all of these things. Luckily players can also engage in some sabotage themselves on enemy ships. This works better if you have a crew because they'll handle defending and firing from your tank while your next door destroying the enemy's..

Once a tank's hit points reach zero there is one additional thing you or the enemy needs to do: destroy its heart. Access to the engine (or heart) is available at that point so players need to rush over and break through to destroy it quickly. Likewise, if you reach zero and can manage to defend your ship the enemy won't win. When the engine is destroyed on either side it's over and someone gets to claim victory.

Tank battles are a lot of fun, and later on in the game when you have a crew you can adjust their AI depending on their skills. You can choose from one of two skills per crew member - for example, one character might have the ability to fire the upper or lower cannon or to defend against invading baddies. You set these skills and can change them at any time by hitting the start button, which allows you to change what the crew does to suit the situation you are in. Tank battles are very appealing and many of them can be replayed over and over if that's your thing.

While Rocket Slime makes great use of both screens on the DS, it doesn't have much touch screen support. There's only one mini-game that fully uses it to it's potential. Despite that, the game works fine without it so it ultimately doesn't matter. Speaking of mini-games there are two that you can share with friends including a cool tank battle game for up to 4 players and a coin collecting game. While the coin collecting game isn't all that complex the tank battles could potentially be a lot of fun. These mini-games can be played on one card with Wi-Fi or using mutliple cards. Honestly we were not able to fully test this part of the game, but the concept is promising..

Our final thoughts on the game? It's just plain awesome! Rocket Slime brings together some great gameplay elements to create something that is truly a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to the final product when it ships in mid-September and delving more deeply into the Wi-Fi aspects of gameplay. Honestly the gameplay is so unique and so fun that I'd be hard pressed not to recommend buying it when it hits stores. It really is that good. - James Fudge.