Mercury Meltdown

"Good as a new level pack, but not as great as the first"

Overall: 6/10

Summary: The game is a good add-on to the original, but don't expect anything drastically original. Fun on a surface level, though there are several faults that keep it from living up to the first game.

Gameplay: 7/10

The game is, as far as playing it goes, identical to the original Mercury. While I did not write a review for that game, I would have given it a 7 or 8 overall, and probably a 7 in gameplay as well. Meltdown maintains the same style that made the original fun, essentially just providing more of the same. That's good for a sequel in my book. In addition, there are new obstacles and machines to get in your way and require new innovations to get around, so the game maintains a good balance of new material with the original game's style. There is also the addition of "party games", which are a brief distraction from the main game, but really nothing that will hold your attention.

Music: 8/10

One great feature of the original was the original tracks composed for every single level, despite their massive number and short duration. While I believe I have heard a few repeats between levels in Meltdown, there are still a ton of varied tunes, and they are as well-placed and catchy as Mercury 1's BGMs. One small yet nice feature is that when you fail a level, and choose to retry it, the music picks back up where it left off, rather than restarting, which gives the audio a nice flow.

Graphics: 3/10

Now for the downfalls. The original game looked great. The light and the blobs and their metallic reflectiveness was a delight to look at. Not so in Meltdown. The game has taken on a cartoonish, cel-shaded look, drastically different than the original. Now, I have no problem with cel-shading in games where it fits, (Wind Waker is still my favorite Zelda, after all), but it just looks weird in Mercury. The blobs have black outlines. It just doesn't feel right.

System: 3/10

The technical system in the game is disappointing enough to warrant its own section. This is due to two problems. First, auto-save. I disable auto-save in every game that has it for a few reasons, such as the increased chance of the file being corrupted from saving so often, the wear on the memory card (flash memory really can wear out over time), though both those are not likely to really show up short term, and so are rather small compared to that it's just plain annoying to wait for a save after every level, since in this game, that is every 30 seconds or so. So what's the big deal? It turns itself back on. No matter if you turn off auto-save, the next time you save manually or turn on the game, it's back on. Just annoying.
The second annoyance is the scoring. In the first game, it took mastery of a level to gain the #1 score, yet most levels could be at least completed rather easily. This allowed one to get through the game, yet it took a lot of practice to really complete everything. In Meltdown, the scoring is far too simple. You can #1 levels on your first try. You can #1 levels even if you finish after the allotted time, or lose tons of your blob. It's just too easy. I didn't mark gameplay down for this, since you can still try to do your best, or if you just don't care about score the game is still fun, but there isn't the same feeling of pride in mastering a level as there was in Mercury 1.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/12/07