Mercury Meltdown Revolution review (Wii)

The eighties were a magical time in the world of video games, it may not have seemed so at the time but looking back at it now it gave rise to many gaming legends, both on screen and behind the scenes.

It was also the time of the bedroom programmer, they didn’t need dozens of programmers or big budgets back then to bring us great games. Archer MacLean was one of them, and like a good few others is till around today, and although he didn’t have a direct hand in bringing us this game he is the man responsible for it.

A classic, evolved

Like the man behind the concept the premise of the game has been around for a long time, this is yet another remaining of the classic eighties coin op ‘Marble Madness’. In recent years there’s been several similar games, Super Monkey ball, Marble Blast, but none of them did much to further the gameplay. But MacLeans Mercury series does more than just add levels and mini games, it takes the gameplay of the original and really expands upon it. The basic structure of the game remains unchanged from it’s predecessors, guide an object through a course to a finishing point, but you’re now no longer controlling a ball or marble, but a blob of mercury.

This is what really adds to the flexibility of the game, for starters it makes the game more forgiving, you can risk getting closer to the open edges of the course without worrying about an immediate game over, a bit of your mercury may dribble over the edge, but you’ve still got a chance to finish the level. As well as making things a bit easier, it also makes things more complicated, as you progress through the levels you’ll find puzzles that either require you to split your mercury in to multiple blobs, and even levels where you start off with multiple blobs that need reuniting. Couple that with the obstacles and items you’ll find on the levels and you’re looking at a truly fiendish puzzle game.

Colour and density

There’s a lot more you can do with your mercury than just split it up though, throughout the games levels you’ll find all sorts of gadgets and gizmos that can alter the properties of your little metallic blobs. First off you’ll find these things that emit a beam of coloured light, roll your mercury under one of those and it changes colour to match the beam. These come in three colours, red green and blue, and by splitting your mercury and changing the parts in to different colours and reuniting them you can change it to a wider variety of colours. This isn’t just a cosmetic change either, colour plays a big part in the game, lots of items in the game are colour coded, switches, gates, even the level goals all come in different colours, and if your mercury isn’t the right colour you can’t use them.

There are other ways of altering your mercury though, other devices heat up or cool your blobs of quicksilver, these either increase or decrease the speed they move at. Then there’s a device that completely freezes your mercury in to a sphere, very handy when you want to travel along some rails without falling through the gaps. There’s plenty more too, magnetic items that either repulse or attract you, transport tubes, catapults, cubes that need to be pushed, cubes that move on their own, bounce pads, guillotines, just too many to mention, some a hindrance, some help. Then there’s those damned mercoids, evil little blobs that’ll chase you around, some just take a bit of your mercury, others fire lightening bolts and some are partial to particular colours of mercury. There’s so much more to this game than others like it, but it’s quality that counts, not quantity.

Designer levels

All these fantastic game mechanics that they’ve created would be for nothing though if they weren’t put together properly, and thankfully they didn’t mess that up. They’ve really put a lot of thought in to the level design, some are nice and simple, and you can zip through them relatively easily, others are infuriatingly complex, controlling four blobs of mercury at the same time is no mean feat. But no matter how hard they get they never feel impossible, if there’s one criticism of the level design it’s how the levels are distributed, you’ll find some really hard ones pretty early on, and some nice and easy ones later in the game.

It’s nice getting some easier levels later on as a respite to the tougher levels, but the inconsistency in difficulty early on can be a little off putting when you haven’t got to grips with all the games nuances. There’s plenty of levels to get through, well over one hundred, and the way they are structured, in sets of sixteen, it is possible to skip some levels and still advance through the game, so at least you won’t find yourself getting stuck too early on. As well as the main game you’ll also find some mini games, that are unlocked by playing the main game, these are a nice distraction, but sadly are single player only. It’s a bit of a shame that there’s no multiplayer modes, the single player is a lot of fun, but it could have been even more enjoyable playing with friends.

Retro or dated?

While there’s very little you can fault in the gameplay itself, things aren’t so clear cut when it comes to the games presentation. The game has a very similar look to it’s arcade ancestor, and while that may have wowed them back in the eighties it doesn’t have such widespread appeal now. It’s not that it looks bad as such, but anybody unfamiliar with the games roots may not appreciate it’s simplicity and overall retro look.

The game's audio retains a similar retro feel, with some very old school arcade style sound effects, but the music is where it really shines. You’ll find over fifty tunes in the game covering a wide range of genres, from some upbeat techno to classical piano, some tunes don’t suit the gameplay as well as others, but luckily those are in the minority. For the most part the music really instills a sense of urgency when you’re playing through the puzzles, you’re only up against a clock for bonus points, but it really feels right for a game like this. Overall the look of the game may put off some people, but chances are they aren’t the kind of people who are in to puzzle games anyway, so it shouldn’t make too much difference.

Why Wii?

The bottom line here is do you like puzzle games, if you do there’s a lot of reasons to buy this game, but there’s one big reason why you may not. For all intents and purposes you can get pretty much the same game on the PSP and PS2 in the form of Mercury Meltdown and Mercury Meltdown Remix. But The big difference between those and the Wii game are the controls, this may not seem like anything major but if you look back to Marble Madness the reason it worked so well in the arcades, and not so well at home was the controls, rolling your marble using a roller ball rather than a D pad just felt so much better.

And the same can be said here, using the Wiimote rather than an analogue stick to tilt the levels is a lot more intuitive, if you’ve already got one of the other versions though this, and some extra levels, probably isn’t enough to warrant a purchase. But if you don’t already have the other versions and you love your puzzle games, especially this type, you really can’t go wrong here.