At school, we were taught that mercury was the most bad ass of all metals. Too cool to be a solid. So dangerous that merely touching it would cause you to DIE. Mercury was revered by my fellow pupils and I as the king of all of nature’s chemical creations, master and destroyer of all, and that’s why you should never bite a thermometer.
In my old age, I was surprised to learn that mercury is actually quite a pleasant liquid metal, and has but one goal in its simple life: To reach the exit. Alas, it has an enemy, a fiendish man with a diabolical sense of invention: Archer Maclean.
In 2005, Maclean – the game designing mastermind behind such classics as International Karate and Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker - took it upon himself to ruin mercury’s simple lifestyle and placed a series of tricky traps and assault courses inbetween the slippery silver substance and its goal in life, the exit to the level. This adventure was Archer Maclean’s Mercury, one of the first PSP games to hit shelves.
Of course, the overwhelming might of mercury was too much for Maclean’s traps, and the designer/tyrant was overthrown. He fled into the night in shame, and peace fell on the land of Hg (on the Periodic Table). But poor mercury’s plight was not over. A year later, the people of Ignition would resume Maclean’s quest, and offer more twisting, turning challenges than ever before. The name of this living hell? Mercury Meltdown.
Many compare the Mercury games to classic arcade game Marble Madness, as they both involve negotiating a dangerous playground with a ball; avoiding tricks, traps and enemy characters to get to the finish. However, this comparison is wrong, and a little lazy. Marble Madness puts you in direct control of the ball, making its more modern counterparts Super Monkey Ball and Marble Blast Ultra. Mercury Meltdown, however, has more in common with Screwball Scramble than anything else – it is your job, as the player, to tilt the playing area to get the blob of mercury to move. However, if you’re looking to match the difficulty of Marble Madness, this is your game.
Using the PSP’s analog to stick to roll a blob of shiny goo around a basic maze might not sound very challenging, or indeed very interesting, but the sheer wealth of variety and creativity that the levels offer gives every stage a dollop of individuality and turns them all into unique head-scratchers. While the Tutorial levels might blind you with science with the endless stream of tools, enemies and features, all of these factors are used brilliantly throughout the course of the game to create a snazzy, intelligent puzzler.
One of the core gameplay elements is the ability to change colour. Using the sprays and paintshops dotted around the levels, your silver gunk can spray itself blue, red or green, or (with the help of the onscreen colour chart) any combination of the above. Of course, mixing colours means splitting the mercury in half (achieved by using a sharp edge on the playing area), spraying both blobs different colours (using some quick thinking and finger dexterity) and then coercing them back together again. Given the physics involved in controlling the play area rather than the mercury, it’s a tricky situation to deal with. The second main tool at your disposal is temperature. Your mercury can be heated up (which weakens it, but makes it faster) or cooled (slower but stronger), and even turned into a marble-like ball, much like that other game with the marble in it. Not that I’m comparing them at all.
The game provides 168 stages over the course of ten ‘Labs’ (worlds, to the non-scentifically minded), so there’s very little chance of finishing it all in an evening. By the way, that’s 163 more levels than there were in Marble Madness. In each of these Labs (which are called Astro, Bio, Chemical, Electro, Geo, Atom, Aero, Hydro, Micro and V.R, and are obviously based on these themes), the environments are very much out to get you. Different floor textures can speed you up, slow you down or just plain baffle you, while the various enemy creatures (Mercoids, Jerkoids, Spectroids and Schizoids) do what they can to eat you, zap you, or suicide bomb into you. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s a host of magnets, electricital generators and pendulum swings to get all up in your grill. Weren’t there things that ate you in Marble Madness? Not that I’m comparing…
Absolute 100% completion is difficult, even more difficult than just playing the game, which is very difficult, but not as difficult as absolute 100% completion. In order to fill up the test tube that represents your progress on each level, you will need to complete it below par time, without losing any mercury and while picking up the easy-to-see-but-hard-to-reach bonuses. The hard work really is rewarded however, as success brings with it the Party Games – mini-games based on the Mercury formula which can be shared with a friend for multiplayer hi-jinks. These games are Race, Rodeo (prevent your mercury from dropping off the sides), Metrix (a puzzle game), Shove (a game of curling) and Paint (paint the area with your colour before your opponent does).
Mercury Meltdown is an example of how to start with a ingenious yet basic idea and flesh it out into a complete, entrancing experience. The cartoonish graphics make the game accessible, while the ambitious soundtrack – which ranges from jazzy parlour music to dense metal – is a spoonful of sugar for the ears.
Longevity-wise, you’re going to be tied-up for a while, although the daunting difficulty runs the risk of putting off anyone who is any less than hardcore. There is a risk of repetition spoiling the experience too – I found that, while I enjoyed the game when I sat down with it, I didn’t want to sit down with it for too long, as the levels blurred into one after a while and seemed to lose their individuality. Still, this isn’t really fair, as each one has been crafted cleverly and relies on different skills from the player for success. You’ll need to be crafty, clever and creative to handle all of these levels. But you should give it a go, because it’s one crafty, clever and creative game. Much like Marbl… No, that’s enough.
