Archer Maclean's Mercury

The re-release of PSP game Archie Maclean's Mercury is now available on the Playstation Network for under a fiver.

You guide your blob of mercury about a circuit using the joystick to gently tilt the environment. All well and good and there are many similarities to old classic Marble Madness to be had. Mercury adds a new dimension to this because your mercury can be split, drip off edges, be imbued with colour, mixed to form new colours and eaten by mercury eating monsters, what else?

Levels are colourful and the camera can be moved effectively to keep sight of your little blob of joy. They take five forms. At the basic level we have 'Timed races'. Then we have 'Percentage', where a certain percentage of your mercury must arrive at the finish point. 'Task' requires you to trigger one to six beacons on your way to the end and then there are combinations of the above three and boss fights. These are obviously the toughest and if you're getting exasperated it may be worth going back to level select to try an earlier level or realise this is the final level so you're doing better than expected.

A tutorial takes you through one "world" and this needs to be completed before you can unlock another. Given that it deals with a whole world you'd expect it to cover almost everything you may encounter in the game but strangely it doesn't. There are no tips about using the camera or what some later objects do. Although you don't want to be mollycoddled it would be nice to know what type of threat some things in the game world are before you encounter them in a real level.

This is always a potential problem with downloadable content though. The original PSP handbook possibly contained this information. Although you can't complain about the clarity of Mercury's menu system and tutorial, it would be nice if they considered that a readable copy of the instruction manual might also be useful when downloading a game. This is a more general complaint though and can't be considered a failing of the game itself.

In fact if there is a major failing to this game it's the fact that if you get stuck there's just no other way to progress. You have to complete a level to unlock another one and some of them can be devilish and the learning curve, although seemingly well balanced at first seems to be thrown out of the window by the end of the tutorial. A good control system helps a lot here and Mercury should be applauded for getting the PSP sensitivity and game physics just right even though there is sometimes, however rarely, a judder in the camera usually rectified by changing the view.

Another thing is to remember to save your game. There is no auto save feature here and nothing to remind you that it doesn't exist either so without saving you will lose all your progress. This can be infuriating, as most players will be more than a little used to this function always being on, and to lose progress past a particularly tricky level is almost tear-jerkingly bad.

One final criticism is that the game should know every circumstance when you can't complete a level. For example in a level with a red gate and a red and blue blob of mercury the trick is to get the red past the blue. It's hard but possible as if they touch they become purple. At this point the level can't be completed so it would be nice if the game told you so rather than spending time seeing if there's a trick you missed. Especially as it's happy to tell you when you don't have enough mercury or time to complete a level.

For all these foibles though Mercury represents, attractive, stylish and satisfying value for money for gamers with a steady hand and who enjoy active puzzle games. They'll also need to show a reasonable amount of dedication to get past the trickier levels to progress but it can be done and usually brings a satisfying smile when done - which will quickly fade when you realise you've wrecked the rest of the room in anguish.