Mercury Meltdown Revolution (Wii) Review

To start off, the game does not particularly look like a true next generation game. The levels are nicely put together with lots of random colours flashing around, but there is nothing that especially jumps out and grabs you. Even the metallic effects on the mercury ball are simply akin to those used on Metal Mario from the Nintendo 64. Well, okay that may be a slight exaggeration, but it just does not ooze the charm that most may have been expecting of it. In fact, the slew of random colours can get quite confusing when playing through the various levels on offer, which is not exactly ideal when you are trying hard to concentrate on what you are doing. Thankfully, though, the soundtrack is very impressive. But hey, this game is more about 'fun' that aesthetics...

And a lot of fun it indeed is! Whilst Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz seemed a little rushed and Kororinpa suffered from dodgy camera angles, Mercury Meltdown Revolution, whilst not 100% perfect, lifts itself above the competition with the greatest of ease. Using the Wii controller to move around the numerous mazes on offer seems so natural, with the action doing what Nintendo hoped developers would do – make the Wii controller a natural extension of your arm. Moving around gently translates perfectly on-screen, making you feel totally in control.

However, rather than making it all too easy, things are mixed up considerably to increase the challenge. For starters your ball is a blob of mercury and is, therefore, fluid in nature, making it difficult to manoeuvre and prone to breaking off into lots of separate other blobs if you hit a sharp edge. You can even lose parts of the ball if some of the mercury gets loose and slips off the edge of a level (you can keep an eye on the percentage remaining via a handy on-screen meter that sits below the general ‘guidance’ timer – in other words, you do not lose if you do not beat the timer!). On top of this, your ball of mercury can be made harder (making it roll quicker), softer (making it slower and more susceptible to splitting up).

The game really does get you thinking as well, with you actually having to split the ball up on purpose at times, roll each separate blob under different colours to change them separately and then re-merge them together to make a new colour (for example, colour one blue and the other red, then join them together to make a purple ball!). It has its frustrating moments, although they are normally due to human error and the high difficulty in most levels. For instance, some stages have grates that not only slow the progress of your ball down, but cause tiny bits of the mercury to drip away if you do not tilt hard enough. The thing is, tilt too much and there could be an ice patch just after and then you will simply skid off at a rapid pace and have to start all over. Frustrating, indeed, but the good sort that keeps you coming back for more.

Thankfully there is the ability to zoom in, out and rotate each stage to get the best perspective (something that was very annoyingly absent from Kororinpa). Also, the tutorial mode at the very beginning of the game is a godsend, walking you through all the things likely to be thrown at you early on. You are also not just thrown in at the deep end as stages are progressive in nature, introducing new features and then gradually building up to include them and much more as you work through. All of these aspects and the wealth of ingenuity found within the stages make this a more 'complete' version of the original PlayStation Portable game, and of course the introduction of Wii-tilt controls works perfectly. Far better than the originally proposed tilt sensor for the PSP edition would have, no doubt...

And if you think you will be able to breeze through MMR with the greatest of ease, then you are certainly mistaken. Although there are no multiplayer or online options (hopefully a sequel will come in the future...), the game has more than 140 stages to play through, different targets to hit and there is even a Ghost Mode so you can aim to beat your own times for each level. There truly is a massive amount of replayability to be found in MMR, even if the six mini-games that are included ('colour a platform' or 'race through a stage', to name two) are well below par...