Mercury Meltdown Revolution Wii Review

Once upon a time a famous game designer known as Archer Mclean and his team at Awesome Studios (a studio that obviously liked to blow its own trumpet as they thought they were awesome and everything!) dreamed up the game concept of tilting a blob of mercury around lab-themed environments. To do the job Sony’s PSP was to have some sort of additional tilt mechanism that would have obviously done the game a great service; alas it just wasn’t to be. Thanks to the motion sensing capabilities of the Wii, we can now play the game in a manner similar to how it was originally intended to be played.

Firstly lets talk control options as Mercury doesn’t restrict you to motion control if you’d rather play in a standard manner, you know like with one of those oh so dated controllers? Indeed, the Wii classic controller is supported for those who have somehow missed the point of the Wii, although it’s the motion control that is going to make a lot of us sit up and take notice. The game was meant to be played in this manner, and fortunately the Wii version does live up to what could have been the games’ alternative past. Holding the remote like a standard controller, it now actually feels like you are tilting the environment to move your glob of poisonous mercury around the lab environments, what’s even better is that it feels completely natural to do so, and there are few games that are actually much simpler to play.

For those who have already played Meltdown on one of the Sony systems, this Wii version is definitely still worthy of your time, particularly as the controls are so precise. In fact we have no qualms about calling this the best version to own, such is the natural feel of those tilt controls.

For those unaware of the Mercury format, the objective is to tilt your mass of liquid metal through varied lab stages, as you attempt to hit the finish line under par time to earn yourself a nice amount of extra points, whilst striving to not lose too much mercury from your blob. Those who like taking risks will be also aiming to collect the bonus icons, which add points to your score and are often found in areas that will challenge your tilt control.

Needless to say, the levels aren’t entirely straightforward, as many obstacles hinder your attempts at not only meeting the finishing line under par time, but reaching the end of the stage at all. There are colour-mixing puzzles that must be completed to progress, moving pendulums and platforms that challenge your timing, and narrow ledges that must be passed through. Mercoid’s and other enemies meanwhile provide your mercury with some organic obstacles to contend with.

Flaws are few and small, but existing nonetheless. Multiplayer modes are absent, although this isn’t a problem as such, as taking it in turns to attempt to beat another players score, in either the single player or party game modes, should suffice for many of us. More blatant is the axing of a number of levels featured in other versions, although we were told that this was done with good reason, and as there are over 150 of them featured, we’re not going to complain too much anyway!

Like Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz, Mercury Meltdown Revolution is finally the game that showcases the most suitable manner in which to play the game, ultimately making this the version to own. It’s certainly the best way to be exposed to Mercury without getting poisoned!