The Crackdown 2 multiplayer demo at PAX East continually commanded an hour-long line, with gamers itching to get time with the game's Team Deathmatch and Rocket Tag modes.

My favorite was Rocket Tag, in which up to 16 players spew rockets at each other while trying to control a single orb. Once you've collected the orb, you gain points for every 20 seconds you stay alive. Few people in the match I played stayed “it” even that long. It was pure chaos, and I lapped up every moment of it.

To try to gain the upper hand in future Rocket Tag matches, I asked Creative Director Billy Thomson of Ruffian Games to share a few tips for staying alive while tagged -- and for blasting opposing players into cell-shaded smithereens.

When “it”:

Head for higher ground.

“High ground I would say is better. Low ground, if anybody's got the tactic right, they'll jump in the air and fire down at you. So you don't want to be on the ground. You want to be in the air as much as possible. It's so much harder to hit somebody when they're in the air.”

Find the launch pads.

“Once you've got the orb, the best thing you can do is try to cut corners as often as possible. Get something solid behind your back as often as you can. But the whole key to it is the launch pads within the arenas. If you can find the route from launch pad to launch pad, you're far harder to hit.”

Alter your trajectory.

“[The launch pad] tactic can be dangerous as well because you know where people are going to land. So everybody will be firing rockets where you'll land. But what you can do is you can ground strike [B button] out of the path of a launch pad, or you wing suit [Y button] when you're on your downward arc.”

Go ultraviolet.

“You've got the UV shotgun as well. That's for the guy that has the rocket tag. Every now and again, if there's a group of guys right nearby, you're better off just running right towards them. You get within range then hit the UV shotgun, which creates this massive force that will knock them from 20 or 30 meters away. And that rag dolls them as well, giving you another 5 seconds or so to get away.

“So every now and again, you're better off running at the enemy rather than running away.”

When not:

Aim for the ground.

“These things are not homing rockets, so they just fire straight. And unless you hit the guy head on -- which never happens because the guys are moving around constantly -- what you want to do is jump in the air and fire down. That'll miss them, but it'll hit the ground right underneath their feet. You get the splash damage and are far more likely to get the kill.”

Be patient.

“The explosions on the rockets are large. And what happens is the orb will have been dropped by somebody, somebody's been killed, it's on the ground, everybody's jumping down on it, and as they're jumping down these other guys come running and they'll just rain rockets down. And what they tend to do is end up blowing themselves up when they get to the bottom.

“So the best thing you can do in that situation is to press and hold the B button, which puts you in a ground strike. When you hit the ground, you just smash into the ground. Everybody else is rag-dolled and you get to run off with the orb.”