Archer Maclean's Mercury

"Little ball of goo means lots of fun for you"

Chances are if you're here, you're on the fence about whether or not to purchase Archer Maclean's Mercury. If you only have 40 bucks and you want a puzzle game, and you have to decide between Mercury and Lumines, I'll tell you right now that you should go with Lumines. But if you already have Lumines and you're just wondering whether or not to give Mercury a try, read my review and you should be a little more certain about your decision.

For some reason, when the PSP was first announced, this game was one of the first titles to be announced and supply screens to the media. It's not exactly PSP's killer ap, so who knows why this was the case. In any event, it was one of the first games I heard about for the PSP, and it looked interesting. So in the months prior to the PSP's release, I was constantly checking up on screens and videos for this game. The day it was released, I strolled into an EB Games and asked if they had got it in. The clerk opened a package that had a few copies in it and said he'd have to check if they were all for people who reserved it. Apparently not many people reserved it, so I left with one. Here's the rundown after my experience...

Graphics - 9

Ooooh... purdy. There's obviously not a huge variety of things to look at in the game, but what is there sure looks nice. For being a floating board game basically, the levels themselves are pretty spiffy looking. The mercury itself looks excellent. There's a beautiful glare on it, and when it moves you'll swear you're looking at a real blob of mercuric goo. There's also some barely-visible scenery in the bottomless pit you're floating above, along with some unlockable videos that are kind of pointless but look nice none-the-less. All in all, great graphics.

Concept - 8

In case you don't know by now, which you should, Mercury is a puzzle game about a blob of Mercury. Now, when I say puzzle game, don't think Tetris or Lumines. There's no dropping blocks in this game. You're not stuck on one screen. This is more of a strategy platformer type mix. Despite what you might assume, you don't actually control the mercury. You can't really tell from watching trailers or videos, but you actually control the level itself by tilting it. The mercury then rolls accordingly. At first this sounds easy, but when you realize that at some points you have more than one mercury glob on the board, you realize that tilting the level makes both of them move, even when you don't want them to. So there's definitely some strategy involved. Dunno where on earth the idea of mercury came from, but it's original and it works, so the concept works.

Controls - 7

The board is controlled by using the analog nub. For a 3d game like this, the analog nub is a necessary tool considering the d pad only has 4 directions. Many-a-time will you be carefully guiding your mercury blob down a very narrow path with lots of twists and turns. It's pretty sensetive, so don't go too fast or you'll completely fall off the level every time. A few tries with it and you'll get used to it and be able to figure out what a reasonable amount of pressure should be. The triangle circle square and x buttons are used to change the camera angle. And boy will you need them. You can pretty much do anything with the camera. Spin it left and right, go from side view to top view, zoom in and zoom out.... and at some point you'll need to use each and every one of those to see what you're doing.

Sound - 6

Aside from the barely noticeable background music you'll be too busy to focus on, the sounds in the game consist of... not much. There's a slurping noise when you get sucked into the transport tubes. There's a long whistling sound when some of your goo falls off the level into the abyss. Switches and doors make little computer noises. The sounds aren't bad, but there aren't many, and they're not really a big part of the game.

Gameplay - 9

As I mentioned before, the objective is to guide a ball of mercury around a floating puzzle in order to do any assortment of the following three things:
a) get to the finish in a short amount of time
b) set off colored switches
c) get a certain percentage of your blob to the end
Some levels focus on one of these objectives, and some mix 2 or 3 of them. The result of this is good level variety. The levels start off easy and progressively become more difficult. However, despite some goals requiring many tries and maybe even pushing you to a state of wanting to throw your PSP across the room, as long as you keep at it, the game can be completely fairly easily. That leads up to our next point...

Replay Value - 7

Unfortunately, there's only 6 worlds in the game, each with only a few levels each. And the first world is basically a tutorial, and most of the stages in it are about 3 seconds long and consist of simply showing that you can move your blob. So really there's only about 5 worlds. You can unlock one more world of levels if you go back through the 6 worlds and get high scores. This is basically where the game's replay value comes from. Although most of the levels are interesting and a challange at first, once you figure them out, you won't really want to play them again. So they added the incentive of unlocking a new world if you get all the high scores. Revisiting the levels you've beaten should be still semi-fun and tolerable enough to warrent the hidden world. Once you beat the hidden world though, you're done. And unless you put the game away for a while and totally forget how to beat each level , I doubt you'll be playing it too much more from then on. It will be fun while it lasts though.

Overall - 8

The replay value may not be very high, but your initial run through the game will be a fun experience. Everyone should play this game at some point, as it is something you don't usually see and it holds its own out there along-side games that sell because they are a popular franchise. I'd say rent it if you can because it's so short. If you're really a fan of the genre or the game just sounds really neat to you, then go ahead and buy it and you'll probably get good use out of it despite its length. It's no Lumines, but it's a great game and I had fun with it. Hope this helps.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/09/05