So, the basic aim of each maze is for you to drag your mercury blob from the start to the chequered finish square at the end point of the level. In order to do this, as mentioned above, you will need to transform your blob into different colours to pass through colour-coded gates blocking your progress.
You’ll need to learn to split your blob into two smaller blobs and regularly check the handy colour wheel at the top of the screen in order to know which of the primary colours you need to make each mini-blob into in order to achieve the desired colour upon recombining and mixing the blobs back into one another.
In addition to the colour-based gate puzzles, you will also have to watch out for and navigate thin ledges, steep sloping angles, mini see-saws and make use of teleportation devices to get to the chequered square as quickly as you can, while collecting stars on the way. Beat the clock and get your blob through the level unscathed to pick up bonuses and unlock some cool mini-games (such as mercury ‘curling’ and a cool
F-Zero-style mercury racer!). As long as you manage to get a little driblet of mercury onto the chequered finish square you will make it through to the next maze.
I would go so far as to say that
Mercury Meltdown Revolution is going to be one of the surprise hits of this summer 2007 when it finally launches this June in the UK. The game is also strangely relaxing, as it requires some fairly intense concentration for you to make it through each level, particularly if you’re gunning for a high score to show off to your mates on the online leaderboard.
It's certainly not to be pigeon holed as a mere 'post-Pub' bit of fun, if for no other reason than you need your wits about you to direct your blob of molten poisonous metal around the increasingly difficult, wonderfully bright and colourful, 3D mazes whilst trying to figure out the blob-dividing, colour-based puzzles. As the difficulty level increases, you will also have to figure out when and where to heat up or cool down the mercury to increase (or decrease) it's 'liquidity' to progress through the stage. And you certainly aren't going to be able to do that after a few too many shandies, I assure you.
SPOnG Score – 90%
Mercury Meltdown Revolution is, by a country mile, the most accomplished and hugely enjoyable version of this deceptively simple little puzzler yet developed. In addition to WarioWare Smooth Moves, MMR is going to be the game that you use to demonstrate the utter unique genius of the Wii's motion-control.
