Reviewed: May 8, 2005
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
Ignition Entertainment
Developer
Awesome Studios
Released: April 6, 2005
Genre: Puzzle
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Everyone
9
8
8
9
8.3
Supported Features
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
No one can deny the PSP has come out of the handheld gate with a vengeance. Even the Nintendo DS with its four-month head start has fallen by the wayside coated in PSP dust, and it’s all due to the simple fact that the PSP has games, lots of games, games that people want to play.
Whether you want to race, fight, play a platform game, or participate in any of nearly a dozen sports titles from Sony and EA, there is something for everyone with the PSP. Even the lucrative puzzle genre was given a nod with Ubisoft’s Lumines, but now another puzzle game has arrived to tease your brain and lull your senses into a new age slumber.
Archer Maclean’s Mercury is one of those concept titles that is so original it nearly defies description, and begs the question, “Why did we have to wait for a handheld system to play a game I would have gladly played on a regular console?”
For those of you who require a basis for comparison, the closest thing to release prior to Mercury would have to be Crave’s budget title, Mojo!, a puzzle-style game that featured multi-colored marbles on a variety of mazes and landscapes.
But Mercury spins that genre with the unique premise of making that marble a glob of viscous metal then tweaking the gameplay to exploit that property. The result is something that is insanely addictive, highly challenging, and a total blast to play for hours on end.
If you have ever played Marble Madness, Super Monkey Ball or the aforementioned Mojo! then you already have an inkling of what Mercury is all about, but once you start to make your way through the hour-long tutorial you will slowly realize just how ingenious this game really is.
Mercury is divided into various challenges spread across a massive amount of creative mazes and boards, usually suspended at dizzying heights and fully under your direct camera control – something imperative for a 3D game of this nature.
The game is structured like a pyramid with Race, Percentage, and Task game modes that must be completed to unlock the next tier of the game as you strive to reach the ultimate Boss Level at the top of the pyramid.
Before we get into those modes we need to clarify the playing piece; basically a blob of mercury, that shiny liquid metal with a cohesive property that allows it to split apart and glob back onto itself. The mercury comes in various colors or can be changed into other colors by passing it through a “paint booth”. You can also combine various colors to form new colors so break out that color wheel from your grade school art class or just consult the handy color-mix guide in the manual.
Back to the game modes. Race mode is quite simple and has you racing from the starting position to the designated finish point in the shortest amount of time. There is no set amount of how much mercury must remain at the finish line and small blobs of mercury travel faster, but you do get bonus points for more mercury.
Percentage mode requires you to get a certain percentage of the starting mercury to the finish line, and much like the first mode, time isn’t a huge issue but you do get bonus points for faster finishes. These levels are usually pretty tricky with plenty of narrow paths and places to spill your mercury over the edge.
Task mode is a combination of the first two modes that require you to get a certain amount of mercury to the finish in a certain time limit, but the path is usually full of colorized puzzles that require you to paint your mercury or even intentionally divide it into two or three blobs, colorize each and perform various actions before recombining them for the finish.
Controlling multiple blobs of three or even four at a time is insane, since all are under the influence of your analog pad. Trying to nudge that red ball onto the red pressure plate will also be moving the green and blue blobs in the same direction. Often you will need to “trap” one blob before moving another then trap that one to free the first.
It’s truly a brilliant concept that comes across with intuitive controls, both for the camera and the blob of mercury. Physics is spot-on accurate with momentum, weight and mass, all being taken into account. You can build up speed and “jump” your blob across gaps or from ledge to ledge creating impromptu shortcuts and shaving valuable seconds from your completion time.
The first few levels are fairly easy to figure out and the challenge there lies in the quest for top ranking. I’m a bit anal when it comes to having the top spot on the high score list, but this is one game where just being on the list (even at the bottom) is satisfying enough for me. The difficulty ramps up quickly and soon you will be fighting just to complete the levels, so stressing over your place on the high score list will only kill you. I have to wonder if some of the scores are really from the designers or just made up to keep people like me playing for eternity.
Mercury offers a token multiplayer race mode for only two people. It’s a nice bonus if you find somebody with a copy of the game but it would have been so much more interesting to see some cooperative gameplay mixed in where two or more people could be controlling their own colored blobs and work together to solve puzzles and such.
My only true complaint with the game is the lack of an auto-save system. I tend to play the same game for extended sessions and use the sleep function of the PSP to save my spot. But even if you are playing and quitting out each session you still have to manually save your progress from the main menu each and every time, or you will lose anything you have done since your last save including new high scores.
The graphics for Mercury are as slick as the substance itself. The various levels range from simple mazes to elaborate multi-tiered structures with moving pieces, all set against dramatic background environments that show through transparent floors or serve as a stunning backdrop for the puzzle action.
The camera works extremely well and you can zoom in and out or swing it down low or raise it high for a top-down view that is most useful. The game will also auto-adjust the camera, which is a blessing and a curse at times. If you split your mercury into multiple blobs the camera will pull out to catch them all in the view. This can be a pain in the levels where you want a small blob to quickly navigate a maze or reach the finish but there is no way to dispose of the larger second blob. Some of the larger and multi-tiered levels are also played from a view that is often further out than you would like. You are generally free to tweak the view, even after the auto-camera has done its thing.
The actual mercury looks and acts just like the real substance with a glossy metallic sheen that reflects the light and offers a standard reflection texture (not real-time). Levels are colorful with high-tech devices like paint booths, teleporters, color-activated pressure plates and gates, and wonderful textured floor panels including some dizzying transparent floors that show the “ground” way down below.
Sound effects are minimal; after all, how much noise does a blob of mercury actually make? But there are other subtle environmental noises when the technology and gadgets of the level permit.
The music in the game is the standard environmental techno and new age jazz that you would expect from a cerebral puzzle game such as this. It never gets boring and really fits the visuals but I doubt you would ever want to listen to it outside the game.
The 72+ levels will keep you busy for months to come. I’ve only completed about 80% of the game and I’ve invested nearly 40 hours into it – of course a lot of that is my incessant need to rank at least in the top three on the high score list for each level. I’ve often spent an hour per level on such a quest.
The difficulty ramps up gradually and doesn’t apologize for being downright impossible near the end. You’ll need some deft finger work and a keen analytical mind to take this game to its ultimate conclusion. The multiplayer game might extend your enjoyment a bit, but the race-only game mode would have been better served as a single-copy download game.
The PSP now has two puzzles games, a knockoff of Tetris and a knockoff of Marble Madness, but I do have to commend Awesome Studios for putting a unique spin on the puzzle genre.
Mercury is some of the most fun you can have with a shiny glob of metal in a high-tech maze. With all of its original game design, multiple game modes, and creative level design, Mercury just oozes with style, and is a must own title for anyone with a PSP who enjoys a game that challenges your mind and your reflexes.