Mercury Meltdown Revolution
Ages: Everyone

Mercury Meltdown was fun when it came out last year. With the Wii controller it's even more fun. The game requires you to tilt the tray that the mercury is rolling around on to navigate each level. On the previous version, you kept on tilting the PSP itself, to no avail, so it is a perfect game for the Wii and the controls are an excellent match. The remote is held horizontally and tilting it will tilt the tray. Control pad and the "1" and "2" buttons control the camera, plus there is a Free-look Mode that pauses the game and lets you zoom around so that you can anticipate what kind of hazards and bonuses are in the level and plan your strategy accordingly.

The colors are brighter and the new layouts are more cartoon-like. The game is still basically the same and the improvement afforded by the Wii makes it a game you will keep around for a long time – there are over 150 challenging levels. The object is to get your mercury blob to the finish pad. The hazards are clever and the physics used really focuses your mind. They will break your mercury blob apart and crush you in any number of inventive ways, and if you get too close to the edge you will lose some mercury. You still have to color match your blob to get through the ports and to the final finish pad. Coloring your mercury, using the RGB light spectrum is both informative and fun. Depending on the color needed – you might have to split your mercury into three of four balls.

There is a playground section where you can practice up without a game end, and an interesting two person competition mode where one of the games has two mercury blobs tracking their color over the levels. The one who paints the most color wins. See, you can be competitive without killing anyone.

Fun Factor: The Wii and Mercury - a great combination
Player Friendly: Easy to pick up - and a great instruction booklet - in color

Reviewed by: Editor - 10/07