Review: Mercury Meltdown Revolution (Wii)

The Wii has been in desperate need of games to support its revolutionary controller since launch last December. With so many ports falling flat due to clumsy control schemes crow barred in to make a quick buck, the disappointing list of titles is rapidly building. With only Nintendo and a couple of third party developers successfully exploiting the machine’s unique capabilities, the Wii seems little more than a gimmick at the moment. Gamestyle has prayed for another decent title to give the console substance. Praise be, then, for Mercury Meltdown Revolution.

The original PSP game was a highly anticipated title, no doubt due to Ignition’s plans to include a motion sensitive UMD, allowing for a natural control scheme. Obviously, this never did happen, and both Mercury titles never really managed to reach the dizzying heights of the sublime Super Monkey Ball or infuriatingly addictive Marble Madness. Fortunately, the Wii is a perfect fit for the game, giving the player a satisfying control system. This benefits the hardware and the software, almost giving the feeling Mercury Meltdown hasn’t appeared on any other machine before.

Guiding the blob (or blobs) of liquid metal through increasingly intricate mazes feels right, as if you were tilting a tray of the stuff around. Delicate movements allow the player control over tight corners on the playfield, and the pressure of trying to beat a par time can lead to erratic movements making you lose all focus - and your mercury. It’s a real blend of joy and contempt which has worked so well in the past for other titles. Gamestyle found expletives rolling off its tongue on certain levels, yet came back for more.

Moving around labyrinths would be quite dull without goals or obstacles, and a large part of Mercury is its colour mixing puzzles. Activating certain switches can only be achieved by changing the colour of your mercury. Quite a simple task when met with a red, blue or green button, but purple, turquoise and yellow switches appear too, requiring two colours to be mixed by splitting your mercury into two or more pieces and painting each piece a different colour, then recombining them. This is where the annoyance factor can get to players. Having, say, three blobs sliding around on opposite ends of the board, and having to blend the pieces into one can be a tricky affair. The game is as much about thought as control, and can become quite engrossing.

Temperature plays an important role, even though it doesn‘t feature quite as prominently as we‘d like. Coolers turn the blob into a solid ball, allowing certain gaps to be crossed, while heaters make your quicksilver less stable and more likely to break up, but much faster. Both effects only make appearances on specific levels, yet give the player a chance to experiment with the mercury’s new state, offering a new way to shave precious seconds off a run.

As is expected with such a release, the single player game is accompanied with a selection of party modes. While nice little diversions, these draw attention to the lack of a solid multiplayer mode in the main game. Gamestyle thinks a frantic race to be the first to complete a level would make for a hectic and entertaining experience, yet this smacks of a missed opportunity on Ignition’s part. Also, online leader boards would have been a fine inclusion, given the title’s addictive quest for perfecting level times. A chance to gloat at the world would give Mercury Meltdown more playtime in a way many 360 titles do.

Such quibbles do little to dampen what is a very neat little package. A solid control scheme, addictive gameplay and clever level design all make for a title worth picking up, should you be of a patient disposition. If the Wii remote control doesn’t tempt you, the Classic controller can be used (although we can’t see why you’d want to). Gamestyle looks forward to a sequel, hopefully adding the features mentioned above (and perhaps a few more), but for now, Mercury Meltdown Revolution is one of the better examples of how to utilise Nintendo’s hardware. Other developers take note.

Rating: 8 / 10

Words by Dan Gill