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Mercury Hgis a new game for Xbox Live Arcade, with Hg is the chemical symbol for mercury.
It’s a game that feels a bit like the old arcade classic Marble Madness but with a twist – whereas that one sees you moving a ball about and staying within the confines of a maze, where this differs from the marble-based game is that you’re moving a mercury blob about and you’re tilting the game world rather than the blob. Also, part of the blob is allowed to disappear off the edges of the world and you’ll be left with what’s still on terra firma, so to speak, so it’s not all-or-nothing.
To make it harder, you’ll find you have to move your blob under colour-change devices hovering in the air in order to colour a patch of ‘ground’ later on in that level, which in turn will allow you to progress whether it’s to match the colour of the exit, or the colour of another part of the level (to access it) or to make your part of the level move to an otherwise inaccessible area and continue or complete said level.
There are various other obstacles and layout alterations which you will need to get used to as well, as well as collecting various bonuses along the way, the number of which you need to reach a target being displayed as you begin the level.
Mercury Hg – Group 1 levels (720p HD)
The main way to play the game is with the Discovery Mode, where you’ll work through the groups of levels one by one – and you’ll see that each group takes up a section of the periodic table, that thing you haven’t looked at since you were taught chemistry at school. That said, I found it a bit confusing at first because once you complete a level, based on how you’ve done with collecting bonuses and retaining as much mercury as possible, you’ll be given points which will take you towards making the next group of levels available. Once I reached this, I thought I would automatically play them, but you don’t – you have to select them, hence why I ended up playing a lot of the same levels in the second video I’ve put online, as I thought it hadn’t saved them.
However, in doing that, the first time I went through the Group 1 levels, one of them went particularly slowly for no apparent reason. Everything in the game was running normally, so it was definitely something with that particular level. Then, when I replayed them, I found a different level slowed down, again for no apparent reason!
I can only presume there’s some bad programming here, as the reaction times of the game were exact to how I was using the controller, but the game was just on a bizarre go-slow. Some time after, the game unexpectedly crashed. I could include footage of this, but the screen just went white as if something exciting was about to happen… but obviously it didn’t.
Go to page 2 for more thoughts on the game.
Mercury Hg – Group 1 levels replayed but with some David Bowie music (720p HD)
Tilting the game world takes some getting used to, but once you’ve mastered it, it’s easy enough unless you try to rush a level, especially when the countdown to the target level completion time can be heard and then you might come a cropper.
The Challenge Mode and Bonus levels can also be unlocked by completing sections of the main game itself as you go along.
You can also select your own music from the Xbox 360’s hard drive to go with your game (I opted for David Bowie’s superb – but hugely underrated – 1987 album, Never Let Me Down), but it plays far too quitely compared to the game’s own tunes, so you may as well stick with those, especially as they are exceedingly funky.
Mercury Hg – Tutorial levels (720p HD)
Overall, Mercury Hg was fun for about 20-30 minutes, until the novelty of the game wore off because it’s just so repetitive. There are many levels to work through, this game having a total of 60, all in batches with various elemental names and which get more complex as you progress, but while you’d think there’d be longevity in it, I found it gets old very quickly and I didn’t play with it for too long.
It’s only 400 points so won’t break the bank, but I’d advise a free trial first before considering a purchase.
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Important info:
- Publisher: UTV Ignition
- Price: 400 MS points
- Players: 1
- HDTV options: 720p/1080i/1080p
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GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT |
8 8 7 5 |
| OVERALL | 9 |
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
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