At a glance...

Mercury Hg review

Ah, the tilting platform puzzle game. It's a puzzle mechanic that has been around for many years and you're sure to be familiar with one variant or another, such as the Super Monkey Ball franchise or Marble Madness. When I got Mercury Hg for review, I hadn't heard of the series before, but Mercury is no stranger to the genre having spawned two PSP games, as well as PS2 and Wii games in between 2005 and 2007. Their latest entry in the franchise is a downloadable title appearing on both Xbox Live and PSN.

Mercury Hg has a great theme surrounding it. As the title suggests the periodic table features quite heavily in the design of the game and it stylistically features in almost all of the menus such as grouping the game's puzzles into blocks. The UI is nicely minimalist and is aided by a pulsing soundtrack with a good mix of chillout/ambient beats to more upbeat techno tracks. Each is a perfect fit for the game's 60+ levels and the levels' platforms pulsate to the beats of the music, acting as a sort of visual synthesiser. If you happen to disagree with the developers' musical tastes then you're more than welcome to add your own music to the playlist by importing them from the XMB.

Those players who have enjoyed previous Mercury outings will find the same concepts as before, but for those are aren't quite as well versed then I'll explain. Mercury Hg is a platforming puzzle outing where you get to control the tilt of the platform. Resting on top is a blob of mercury that you have to safely navigate across the platforms to the exit. Tilting the level will make the blob of mercury follow gravity and roll down in one direction or another. A number of concepts come into play to make each level challenging. The simplest of which involves the natural state of mercury as a fluid, and whilst it clumps together normally, any time you hit a sharp corner in the floating world, your mercury will split into separate parts, making it more difficult to navigate the level. This also goes for the edges of the platforms too, so if you happen to get too close to the edge then you'll find that your supply of mercury will soon get depleted. Another core concept you'll encounter are colour changers that float above the platforms. Moving your mercury under one of them will change it to the specified colour. Colour changing is key to the more complex levels, getting you to activate coloured switches that enable routes to open. On top of that some platforms can only be moved onto if you are the same colour as it, otherwise it becomes a solid wall blocking your way. This makes for some challenging levels where you have to constantly change colour in order to get through the various gates between you and the exit.

Whilst successfully getting to the end of a level will usually allow you to get to the next one, it doesn't mean that you’ll get a great score. In each level Mercury Hg has four targets for you to try and hit, each of which you need to get if you want to reach the top of the leaderboards. Simply completing the level is the first target to hit, but then there's also a time limit for you to complete the level in. On top of this is a timing target, you also need to ensure you end with 100% of the mercury. A number of bonus orbs are scattered across each level and netting all of those will result in a fourth and final hit. The levels are designed magnificently to make you want to get all of these goals; do you spend a few precious seconds to get that last bonus orb? Hitting these targets results in the game awarding you with atoms, which are used to unlock new levels. This system works really well at getting you to play again for high scores and challenging you to try and hit all four of the targets.

In fact Mercury Hg works so well in fact that it's hard to find fault with it. The only gripe I have is with the leaderboard system. After completing a level, it submits your highscores allowing you to compete with players from all over the world, but if you wish to compare scores with your friends then you need to quit out to the level select screen, breaking any momentum you had, a quizzical design decision.

Mercury Hg is a nice take on the ball-balancing puzzle games that have spawned so many incarnations over the last couple of decades. The core concepts of the Mercury series haven't changed here, but it does find room to grow with a bunch of new features and some addictive targets to get on each level. Whilst I didn't use it much, the game also features Sixaxis control. It doesn't have the cartoonish charm of its previous Wii outing, but instead you find a clean minimalist interface that's ideally suited for chilling out and sinking a few hours into. It's a great downloadable puzzle game.

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