Marble Madness pioneered a new genre of gaming back in 1984 on the Atari. Combining platforming, puzzle solving and incredible patience it was your job to navigate your marble from one end of the level to another. The game inspired numerous titles like Super Monkey Ball, Marble Blast Ultra and Mercury Meltdown. The latter was a launch title on the PSP and received fairly positive reviews and now Ignition Entertainment brings a sequel to the Nintendo’s Wii called Mercury Meltdown Revolution. I guess they didn’t get the memo it’s now called the Wii.
The basic premise of Mercury Meltdown is simple. Navigate your blob of mercury through various levels to reach an end goal as fast as possible. It sounds very straight forward, but there are plenty of curves in this game which add some strategy and puzzle solving elements.
The first of these elements is color. Scattered throughout the levels are various doors and switches which require your blob to be a certain color to activate. To change the color of your blob simply roll through a red, green or blue color sprayer. The strategy comes in when you need to create colors like yellow, purple, or sky blue to reach a goal. How do you create these colors? You’ll need to split your mercury blob by running into a corner and take each piece into one of the color painters. Roll your mercury pieces back together and voila! A new color. Color isn’t the only way to change your mercury. You can heat it up with steam to go faster, or slow it down by chilling it. Overall these elements all get combined in some way shape or form to create some interesting puzzles in the levels.
Speaking of levels, the game contains almost 150 of them spread across a handful of themed labs. There’s plenty of content here to keep you busy, though if you’ve played the original I’ve heard that all the content isn’t unique to this version.
The controls are top notch with the Wii-Mote. While holding the controller classic style you simply tilt and rotate it to tilt and rotate the board and move your mercury blob. It works well, it feels natural and it seems like exactly the kind of game the Wii-mote was designed for.
Graphically the game is simple, but it looks decent enough with a sort of pseudo-cell shaded look. There are some nice effects, and the game does support 480p 16:9.
For $19.99 you get a very full valued package. Above and beyond the single player there are multiplayer party games like a paint territory game, races and even some puzzles. The game allows you to save ghosts and replays of your best runs and features local leaderboards. Honestly I really can’t find a fault in this game, perhaps it gets a little repetitive during long play sessions, but other than that I’m really enjoying the title. In the age of $60 games a $20 title like this is a steal. It’s a game that anyone can enjoy, and one that truly uses the Wii-mote well.
Score:4.5 out of 5
