Mercury Preview

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PlayStation.com

6/27/2006 12:00:00 AM - Archer MacLean's Mercury was one of those unique puzzlers that tested both your manual dexterity and your mental problem solving skills. While the concept of moving a blob of mercury from a starting point to a goal might seem simple, controlling multiple orbs at the same time while not falling from a large table or getting eaten by a malevolent little creature does complicate the game significantly. The first title, while fun, had some issues with respect to its multiplayer, its level design and its lack of autosaving. Fortunately, Mercury Meltdown appears to address every single problem the original title had while expanding the scope of the game itself. For the most part, the concept of getting as much mercury as possible to a goal remains in Mercury Meltdown. However, the artistic style of the game, which is much more artistically animated and cartoonish features prominently within the game design, particularly with some of the gauges, which themselves have a new focus on point distribution. Your Mercury gauge remains to let you know how much of your initial bubble of mercury exists, with a line that indicates how much mercury you'll need to keep "alive" to be able to trigger pressure plates or other switches. The countdown timer returns as well, giving you an indication as to what the par time for navigating around and through the course is. By reaching the finish line in time, you'll receive a happy face in the countdown timer; by contrast, you get a sad face for missing the par time and an angry face for losing all of your mercury altogether.


Once a level has been completed, you receive an updated point tally based on how you did: each percentage point of mercury nets you 500 points, while every second on the countdown clock under the par time is worth 1000 points. Collecting scattered bonus icons around each stage is worth 2000 points each. However, you'll need to do some fancy maneuvering around a number of obstacles and level features to reach your goal. New to this game are status gates: Heaters will speed up your blob, making the bubble move faster and split apart easier. Coolers, on the other hand, slow down the mercury, making it harder to break. There are also solid ball gates that turn the mercury into a solid orb which can be easily launched off ramps or roll around rails on a stage. Players will also have a couple of new objects to interact with on each level. One such object is a friendly blob suspended in a gelatin square known as Stan, who rolls around in an arbitrary fashion. By maneuvering in front of him, you can direct his movement towards switches or other objects. There is also the Huebrick, which is a colored block that you'll need to collide with to push around. You'll also discover that the kind of surfaces that you travel over will affect the movement of the mercury, such as sticky floors that slow down blobs or slippery floors that speed it up. Even the paint system has been redone, with a new color wheel to help you figure out what colors you'll need to mix to get through colored gates and three-way paint dispensers to cover bubbles.


The single player demo that we received focused on a certain number of laboratories that your mercurial blob will explore, such as Chem or Bio labs. While the number of labs appeared to be locked down, there should be more than 160 levels in the final game, which is easily twice the amount found in the original game. That isn't including a number of additional multiplayer and wireless modes that will be included in the final game as well. Mercury Meltdown will also feature game sharing and downloadable content (most likely in the form of skins for your blob), as well as unlockable party games like races, paintable levels and more. We're looking forward to playing more of the game, as well as exploring the multiplayer and party games before it ships in late August, but what we've seen so far looks like a great adjustment on the original puzzle game.
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Sweet finally the first game I found extremely entertaining on the PSP gets a sequel, can't wait.

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