Archer Maclean's Mercury

The PSP's answer to MonkeyBall?

Archer Maclean is of a very rare breed in videogames in that he has his name attached to many of his games. You never hear of Shiguru Miyamoto's Zelda or Peter Molyneux's Overly Ambitious God Game 2 but for Archer he seems to want it all. And when the guy owns a Ferrari he does seem to have it all.

In fairness he's got a right to boast about his skills as a videogame creator, though. As a child I remember Dropzone with great fondness as well as International Karate and if you've ever played a pool game the chances are you've played one of Archer's many different efforts - all of high-production quality.

In recent years Archer and his development team, Awesome Studios, have quietly gone about the business of refining their pool games, but with the birth of the PSP comes something truly exciting. As I mentioned in the Tiger Woods PGA Golf review, for the PSP I was hoping for an original masterpiece to get my hands on, in Archer Maclean's Mercury I believe I might have found it.

The premise is simple: as a blob of mercury - carrying the same thick, sloppy, sticky properties as you might expect from a blob of mercury - you must guide yourself around various obstacles, enemies and puzzles to reach the end of each level. Completion conditions are always set by a fairly strict time limit and are often accompanied by a set amount of mercury that you must have left when you get to the end of level - you can lose it by letting bits of your mercury fall off the edges of platforms, by electrocution and literally by being eaten.

The control system is very similar to Super Monkey Ball in that you tilt the level rather than move your mercury directly. This gives that wonderfully unnerving feel that your never fully in control of things and must anticipate problems well in advance of meeting them. In fact, Mercury is so similar to Super Monkey Ball it could be accused of plagiarism. There are the same drops, the same moving platforms, the same thin corridors of floor that require a deft slight of thumb on the analogue stick. But, fortunately, it does more than just follow a tilt-your-way-passed-holes-to-victory route. Unlike Super Monkey Ball, the mercury isn't a fixed state of blobness. Snag it against a corner or get caught on a conveyor belt and your mercury could split into many different pieces, meaning you're having to keep an eye on and control more than one piece of mercury. Some levels actually encourage this multi-mercury chaos by having you start with several pieces of mercury located in different parts of the level. By moving one bit onto a sensor it may open a door for a second piece of mercury to advance through to another part of the level.

And the complexities of this game don't even end there. Your mercury has the ability to change colour which is vital for activating coloured sensors. It's not uncommon to find yourself purposely splitting your mercury on a sharp edge, changing one part of your mercury to blue, the other to yellow and then combining the two to get a purple blob of mercury heavy enough to activate the level-ending sensor. Complicated as all this may sound, Mercury's 72 levels are well paced with a natural learning curve. The first few levels may dull you into a false sense of security being as they are tutorials, but things get pretty vicious as soon as you know how to play the game.

Like Tetris, Columns, Kuru Kuru Kururin and Zoo Keeper, Mercury is the perfect introduction to hand-held gaming. The simplicity of the game (although not entirely original in this case) is fresh, compelling and challenging. It is a short, sharp burst of a gaming genre perfect for the handheld market. And once you complete Mercury, which is a challenge in itself, there is the irresistible magnet of the high score board to beat.

It's tempting to praise Mercury unanimously and be done with it, but there are a few niggles that just prevent it from being an A class puzzle game. The graphics, while impressive when it comes to the movement and reflections of the mercury blob itself, are a little cold, grey and ever so slightly blocky - not too much of a concern in a puzzle game but whereas as you admire Super Monkey Ball's vibrancy and energy you shrug at Mercury's blandness. Sometimes the camera controls can be unwieldy and imprecise as you can only rotate the camera in 90 degree turns and when your mercury splits the camera automatically zooms out to the follow the multiple blobs leaving you to squint just a little. The phonics are fine but the music, although in no way a nuisance, isn't memorable in the same way as a Tetris or Bust-A-Move (Puzzle Bobble) melody. And while playing Mercury is fun and a real test of your mental abilities and thumb control it's just not as addictive as it should be. Maybe it's because it's an evolution of an already well exploited puzzle idea (born in Spindizzy and Marble Madness, revolutionised in Super Monkey Ball) but Mercury just lacks that special quality that will make us remember Mercury in a year's time.

And one final thing: no level editor option! This lack of sensibility riles me so much, especially when we're talking about a system capable of connecting to the internet to download extra content and an almost unlimited memory capacity to store these levels if you have a large memory stick. I was bitterly disappointed when Kuru Kuru Kururin failed to include a level editor/creator and I'm bitterly disappointed again by Mercury's lack of such an obvious concept that would increase its longevity no end. I agree that it may have been a long and tiring process to try and create a decent level via the PSP but if we were to be offered a PC application to create Mercury levels then that really would be something.

However, let's not take away all the goodness that is Mercury. It may not quite be the masterpiece I wanted but if you're looking for an excellent puzzle game which you can jump in and out of at will then Mercury's definitely a PSP launch title to take a butchers at.

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By Rob Wilson