96
In a stale world of ports and rehashed ideas, Mercury is a breath of fresh air. If you're tired of the same old or simply an innovative puzzle game.
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90
I'll start off by saying that Mercury is an entirely innovative game with many challenges in store for the player. I'll continue by saying that this game has no blood, no guts, no swear words or anything else that might be considered "cool." I'm a fan of those kinds of games as well, but this game is great on its own level.
You control a blob of Mercury and use the analog stick to tilt the blob through over 72 levels of extreme difficulty. With many obstacles and the problem of "spilling yourself over the edge", you're sure to love it.
The graphics are very nice and the visuals are basically the greatest kind of eye-candy you'll ever find. The ambient music playing in the background is never repetitive and lulls you deeper into the game. The gameplay is extremely simple, and the fun factor is waaaay up there. This game is one of the best released for PSP at this time, don't miss your chance to pick it up!
94
Great idea for a game - make the player move the environment around the object (that is also moving). Tough game I thought, excellent playability, though the grapics could be a bit crisper though. Will make you want to throw your PSP in frustration sometimes but will always keep you coming back for more. Definitely one for your collection though.
89
Great game I love it and it's very addictive. Pretty good graphics as well. Great idea and concept. Only downfall is that it plays through pretty fast, but worth every penny. A game to play through many times.
85
If you went to the store hoping to get Lumines, but they ran out of that, you probably may have picked up Mercury. You know it's not going to be as great as Lumines, but you buy it any way.
In Mercury, you tilt a blob of Mercury, that can split in half and change colors, all over a 3D maze. Sometimes, you change colors to open gates to get to goals or light up targets.
To tell you the truth, this game is hard. The presentation quality could be a bit better (the menu screens look like it's from the Game Boy), but, the game is still fun.
92
to anyone who has ever played supermonkey ball on the nintendo gamecube, mercury will be instantly familiar. . . but the fact that you tilt the playing field in order to move an object is the only similarity that these two games have.
mercury is more than just getting your globule of mercury to the goal. often there is no one clear goal area, but two or more areas that you have to rest enough mercury onto to activate.
if you have ever broken a thermometer and played with the mercury you will know exactly what to expect from your on-screen mercury. rolling to the edge of a stage will cause some to separate and fall off the edge, thus lowering the percentage of mercury you have, and thus coming closer to the minimum amount of mercury you need to finish the stage with. loose too much mercury and it's time to restart the stage, or do the stage too slowly, run out of time, and it is time to restart. the time limit they give you is more than enough, and no where close to ruining the game.
if worrying about falling off the edge of the stage was not enough, the developers decided to introduce many obstacles.
• doors that open and close, thus splitting your mercury into more than one globule that you need to join together again
• things that push your mercury towards the edge of the stage
• floating balls that eat your mercury
• pylons that zap away parts of your mercury
and that is what i have seen from playing the first two worlds.
as the title mentions, this game is entertainingly frustrating. frustrating in the fact that you will often find yourself loosing too much mercury or just messing up accidentally and having to restart. but entertaining in the fact that you will often find yourself saying "dammit, ok i'll try this one more time." by the time you realize it, that "one more time," has turned into about eight tries later and you are still on the same stage, but loving the game enough to keep on trying.
and that is the entertainingly frustratingness of mercury, and what makes it an awesome game.
90
I purchased this game this morning, and then played it all of the way from Salt Lake City to San Francisco on the plane.
The tutorial levels start out very simply. Move the blob of mercury from here to there. Simple, right? But by the time I got to 'Combo 2' level in the tutorial world, it was taking me 40-50 tries to solve a level.
The challenges here are many. First, you have to control the blobs by tilting the playing field. And if a blob gets too close to the edge of a precipice, it starts leaking over the edge! (Yes, you can partially lose your blob.) Worse, your blob can split into two or more pieces. (If you get caught under a 'pile driver', it splashes all over the place!) And once your mercury has been split into two or 10 pieces, all of those pieces roll around independently!
Then there are colors. The color of your blob is important, and matching a purple blob to a purple button is sometimes the only way to move through a level. But this might require mixing a blue and a red blob, which you have to manage to combine together while they both roll around the same tilting playing field. Or sometimes you need to split a blob into two pieces and send them off on their separate ways. 'Paint shops' will change your blob's color, too.
Load times are one of the biggest annoyances of the game. Perhaps it's a limitation of the UMD format, but it seems to take quite a while to load a level. 20 seconds might not sound long, but it is when you're wondering what the next challenge might be.
I've heard this game compared to 'Marble Madness'. Mercury definitely is a descendent of that wonderful track-ball based game. Like Marble Madness, Mercury has vacuum tubes that bring you from one place to another, and it has pesky devices that try to push you off track. But Mercury is no simple clone, and brings a lot of new concepts to the gaming table.
It's a simple concept, but beautifully executed. This is a very new and unique puzzler, and I highly recommend it for those who appreciate a well-crafted and pleasantly frustrating challenge.
90
I cannot put this down. I bought this game with the thought I would take my time playing it. You know, make it last. Well, that idea is out the window. It has been 5 days I have had the game, and the first time I really got a chance to play was yesterday. Since then, I am now a 3rd of the way through this game. I love it. the puzzles are difficult, but not impossible. It is hard enough to be a challenge, but still leaves you wanting more. Normally I would not review a game until I have made it all the way through, but this one really has grabbed me. A definite must have!
93
As it does become increase harder the game (which all good game should) the game has gotten a bad rep as a gamer fustrater so the bottom line is as followed. If you ( A ) like lumines ( b ) have steady fingers ( C ) just like extra lush enviorments and some of the greatest puzzles ever consieved then buy, rent, borrow mercury, or deny yourself a great psp game.
88
If you wanna play a pinball game from the year 2096 this is the game you should be playing. This has to be one of the coolest looking and playing games ever, I'm having so much fun with this, the controls are cool, the graphics are awesome I would recommend this game to anybody.
88
I finally found this game in stock yesterday, and since putting it into my PSP I've not been able to put it down.
Anyone that may have been a fan of the game Marble Madness will fit right in with this game. Instead of a ball, you have a blob of colored mercury to guide through some twisted mazes.
The mazes are broken down into 3 types, 1) Race, 2) Percentage and 3) Task.
Race mazes are usually pretty straight forward, get to the goal as quick as you can. These I usually get through on the first try (so far  )
The Task levels are trickier, but I can usually get through those pretty well also. Task levels require you to go activate things, get painted, and get around obsticals. These levels have been challenging and fun to do so far.
It's the Percentage levels that will drive you mad. You must comlete the level with a certian amount of your blob of mercury in tact. This is compounded by the fact that in some cases, the platform is too small for your blob to begin with. So you must tilt the platforms to the max to keep your mercury moving fast.... then come the turns... and drop offs... ect... These levels will reqire you to have a commanding control over your analog stick!
The most important thing to remember about the analog control of tilting the platforms... the further you move the stick, the more drastic the tilt. The more drastic the tilt, the faster your mercury moves.
The biggest drawback of this game, is that you move through some of the levels so quickly, that you spend more time loading the next level, than actually playing the game 
It's been very nice to have a puzzle game, that wasn't just another variation of tetris Overall, I'd recommend this game to anyone that loves the puzzle type games.
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