Review: Mercury Meltdown (PSP)

Back when the PSP launched, Archer Maclean's Mercury was much talked about. From the previews, it seemed to suit the format well: it looked original and stylish and the promised tilt controller was an interesting idea for the console. When it was released, with the tilt control gone and forgotten, it remained an interesting game but very flawed.

It's fair to say that it wasn't a game that seemed to be really asking for a sequel. It did its thing, and it seemed to sell an average amount at best; but someone clearly thought a sequel was worthwhile, as here it is. Archer MacLean's name has been completely removed, without even a 'concept created by' line in the manual. Most of his ideas aren't removed, though, and there are some genuinely good ones.

The main core of the gameplay is similar to that of Marble Madness or Monkey Ball; carefully balance around a map avoiding hazards and get to the finish. Mercury added a puzzle twist, involving pressing switches, dodging machines of death and, more interestingly, colour-based puzzles. Your blob of Mercury can split into smaller globules and those all move when the level is tilted. Splitting Mercury is as easy as pushing it onto a spike; then you look for walls to prevent them rejoining. You can also then change the colour of the blobs, so mixing Red and Blue creates Magenta, Red and Green makes Yellow and Green and Blue makes Cyan.

Puzzles involving carefully separating and mixing colours while navigating a complicated landscape are Mercury at its very best. Some of the levels take both skill and careful thinking to get to the goal. Sadly, lots of the levels don't focus on this; they focus on the various other gadgets that get strewn around the levels which seriously complicates the fun. These include the new Mercury Meltdown option of changing the state of the mercury - heating it up making it separate easier and move faster, cooling it down makes it into a solid ball that can move around pinball table-like rails. Solid also makes the mercury much easier to control, although that seems to be an illogical side effect rather than something planned. Neither state adds much to the game.

The list of annoying extras like that is vast, taking up more than two pages of the manual with simple one sentence explanations. Other devices include weapons designed to destroy some of your mercury - bonus points are given for completing the stage with 100% of it intact - but some seem quite random. Similar, but even worse, are the moving enemies that are also designed to damage your mercury which don't seem to fit the game at all. Special mention must be given to the gravity bender that fires you into the air leaving you desperately trying to land on a small platform. It's a shame, but playing most of the levels just feels like work.

The graphics are a strange one, too. Considering they were the part of the first game that grabbed so many people's attention, you'd think that they would have just put a slightly polished version here and created a load of new levels. Oddly they actually have chosen to change the graphics, giving them an entirely new, almost cel-shaded, look to them. It's "almost" cel-shaded as they seemed to remember to put black outlines around some parts and forgot on other objects. They've also chosen to colour everything brightly, which isn't normally a problem, but none of the colours work together; they're just a horrible bright garish mismatch. Bright videogames are generally better than brown videogames to look at, but that isn't the case here. It makes the game look amateurish, like cheap shareware. Compared to the stylish predecessor, it's a terrible decision.

On the plus side, if you do take to it, there is a lot of game here: many levels, unlockable party games and even the promise that levels will keep being made available for download. Most of the unlockable games are not that impressive, but one is a fully fledged puzzle game that takes a good while to get into but is far from terrible. Mercury Meltdown just has too many odd things that prevent it from being worth recommending. Giving the option to replay level is good, but requiring you to go back and complete levels more thoroughly before allowing you to move on isn't a good way of adding longevity. It’s good that the camera is easy to move around, but you shouldn't constantly feel you need to move it to work out what is going wrong. The loading times are infuriating too, especially the pathetic advice they offer on them: "this enemy can do this attack; you can tell which is which by the colour" to paraphrase - it wouldn't have been a bad idea to include a picture of the enemy in question would it, really? But above and beyond all those niggles is the feeling that it just isn't very much fun at all. There is no thrill to completing some levels beyond being happy to see the back of them.

If you liked Mercury (or slightly dull games in general), you can cope with garish colours and you want a game that will last you a long time, then this isn't that bad an option. If you get infuriated by annoyances and would rather be constantly entertained, just leave it on the shelf.

Rating: 6 / 10

Words by Andrew Revell