Mercury Meltdown

Mercury is back, and it's better, bouncier, and cartoonier than before. Mercury Meltdown, the sequel to Archer Maclean's Mercury of 2005, is an addictive puzzle game that improves on the gameplay of its predecessor and adds some new puzzle elements.

Mercury Meltdown has a rather more cartoony look than Mercury did, with even the mercury blob being cell-shaded. The menus are particularly cartoon-like, but it's a pleasing look and adds to the whole air of deceptive simplicity of the game -- it looks easy, but is really quite challenging.

There' a lot of bright color, too. The hues tend to be vivid and cheerful, and even the mercury can change color (something you'll have to control as part of the puzzle-solving). Where in the first game, the environments you moved the blob through tended to be dull in comparison to the blob itself with its surprisingly realistic liquid-metal movement, in Mercury Meltdown the addition of all that color has helped to brighten the whole game. The environments still aren't quite as cool as the mercury bob, but they're interesting to look at.

There are lot of visual clues to let you know how you are doing in each level. The countdown timer changes color from green when you have lots of time left, to orange as the time runs out, and so on. Occasionally, the timer will be temporarily replaces by a cartoon face -- smiling if you finished the level, frowning if you failed, sad if you lost mercury over the side, and grimacing if you become unable to make the right color mercury to complete the level. There's a gauge that lets you see exactly how much mercury you have left, and a color mixing chart (which you can turn off in the options) in case you forget how the primary (RGB) colors work.

The soundtrack to Mercury Meltdown isn't especially fabulous. It's certainly not bad, though, either. It has kind of groovy, bouncy feel, if those two adjectives can go together. The music did seem kind of repetitive at times, but mostly it made a suitable background for the cartoon graphics.

The sound effects are effective in that each sound is easily identifiable. You know when some of your mercury has fallen over the side, for example. Otherwise, some of the sounds could get a little annoying from time to time. Or maybe it was just knowing instantly that I was going to miss getting the high score, again, and have to play through the level, again, if I wanted to get all the rewards.

The thing that works best about Mercury Meltdown is that the basic puzzle design is simple, yet there are lots of elements to add variation.

The whole game is based on the idea of tilting a platform to move a blob of mercury from one place to another. Simple enough. Throw in different obstacles -- slopes, tilting bridges, pressure gates -- and it becomes more challenging. Other challenges include sticky blocks, slippery blocks, and blocks that vanish. There are mechanical things that push, break up, or explode the blob; devices that heat, cool, and even solidify the blob; things that will eat the mercury; and gates that will only open if the blob is the right color.

These variations in the levels mean that you'll probably need to make a couple of runs through just to figure out where everything is and how to manipulate the blob in different ways, before you even try to make a real run through the level. It's a puzzle game that requires thought and not just quick reactions.

If the colorful and shiny graphics don't melt your eyes right away (actually, they're not that bright), playing for hours on end will. Mercury Meltdown is addictive, though I had to make myself calmly put down the PSP and walk away sometimes. Some of the levels are just really, really frustrating, and it seemed like a better idea to stop playing rather than fling the PSP across the room in annoyance.

Those occasional frustrating levels aside, Mercury Meltdown is a well-designed puzzle game that'll probably keep you coming back again and again. I, at least, have to keep playing to get all the high scores and all the bonuses, just so I can see the racks of test tubes -- each tube representing a level -- with their tags and their shiny golden corks. Even after that's done, I may very well play just because it's fun. Or maybe Ignition will release another sequel with new and different challenges to maneuver the mercury blob through.