Mercury is a fascinating element. It's also a fascinating word; doesn't it just roll off your tongue? A quicksilver, a shiny liquid, can be runny, can be rather solid, can be dangerous, and can be used in scientific devices such as thermometers and barometers. Don't drink it though - or you'll end up like Freddy Mercury - dead. Unfortunately. God rest his silvery soul! Mercury isn't just a quicksilver deadly fascinating liquid though. It's a planet, it's been a god - it's even a plant and. more recently, a game. However, the game doesn't have you control the god, or the planet, or the plant, thankfully, no - it's has you controlling the greatest mercury of them all - the liquid. And it was a PSP hit too, a puzzle game, one that had you throwing your handheld down with frustration and disgust. But Mercury shouldn't be frustrating - it should be fascinating and I think that Mercury Meltdown, the sequel, is right on the science with this one!

I never really played the first Mercury for the PSP - I'll admit, I'm not one of these gamers who goes out of their way to pick up a puzzle title, even if I do enjoy them once I get going. You can tell from even the back of the box that Mercury and Mercury Meltdown are different, however - the graphical style looks so much more appealing on Meltdown; everything is cel-shaded, including the Mercury blobs, and the whole interface is very lab orientated, so you have all of these glass vials to represent levels and sounds of boiling chemicals when you start a level. Even the level design itself has a scientific theme, with various devices such as attractors and repulsers that alter the flow of the mercury, plus new devices such as ones that heat you up to make you go faster and make the mercury break up easier, another that cools you down, slowing your flow speed and make breaking up more difficult. A final device turns you into a solid ball bearing, so you can roll along rails and play a game much like Super Monkey Ball.

That's what I thought before I even got transformed into a solid though - Mercury Meltdown is very much like Super Money Ball in the sense that you actually rotate and tilt the level rather than controlling the ball, or the mercury in this case. However, I actually prefer Mercury Meltdown, because at the end of the day all you can do with a ball is roll, but the possibilities for mercury are almost endless - which is where all those hard puzzles come from! The camera pans around the stage before you start and you tilt the entire level with your analogue thumb pad, causing the mercury to slide along the floor in the direction you've tilted it. Controlling the mercury isn't hard, which of course is fundamentally important to the gameplay.

So, what sort of puzzles can you expect? Well, for example, to get through a certain door you have to be turquoise mercury. Ahead sit two paint shops, a blue one and a green one, flowing through either of which turns you the corresponding colour - but neither is any good, because you need to be turquoise! So what do you do? Head for something sharp on the stage and split your mercury in two! Now all you have to do is carefully colour one of the blobs green and the other blob blue, then mix them back together by tilting the stage so that both blobs head for a corner. Blue and green makes turquoise, and that's what you need to get through the door! Colour mixing doesn't stop there either - add a red paint shop to the equation and expect to create other colours such as purple and yellow, in addition to turquoise. It's great when all of these colours have to be used on one level too, not just for doors, but for switches or even level goals - it really gets you thinking.

When you put the whole colour system next to things like floor tiles that are slippery, or those machines that heat you up or cool you down and bring in things like crafty sloping floors, areas where you could fall and lose some of your mercury and places where you're forced to split your mercury up - or dodge swinging hammers and quickly glide past mechanical arms that push you off the stage, you have a great range of elements to give you plenty of challenge to balance out thinking and the actual control of the mercury. So when you've figured something out, and you're proud of that, you won't be so worried about the frustration of getting past the tough bits, because you just want to get to the end of the level to test out your solution! Just watch out for those Mercoids - they'll eat your mercury if they get close!

Mercury Meltdown has plenty of replayability. There are over 160 levels to complete and each has a par time for you to beat or match. In addition, each level has a few bonuses to pick up and factors such as your time and how much mercury you carry to the goal, determine your level score, which you can keep on coming back to beat. Not only that, but you'll be able to download level levels to keep you even more occupied! Yet more replay value comes in the form of being able to record your own ghost data and then trying to beat your ghost over and over. Last but not least come various multiplayer options - some of them take the form of party games that can also be enjoyed alone, but the meat of the multiplayer has to be the battles, which take place on the main single player levels.

Scrap the bonuses that you'd normally pick up and replace them with weapons such as the Zapper, which throws lightening at your opponent, vaporising some of their mercury 0 and my favourite, the Reverse Controls pick-up, which hinders the controls for your opponent, normally resulting in them sliding off the edge of the stage! Who'd have thought you could have so much fun battling with mercury? It's just a shame that there's only support for two players over Wi-Fi. Four player support, maybe with online play too, would have put the score through the roof.

The cel-shading was something of a risky direction to take, but it pays off; Mercury Meltdown is a more attractive package because of it, and the whole cel-shaded level design continues through menus and loading screens - everything looks very quirky, perfect for a handheld puzzle game. You have a lot of control over the camera too, so you can see all the stages from a 3D perspective, or you can change to a top-down view if you find that easier. However, one small gripe has to be the mercury itself; there is a black, cel-shaded traditional outline that goes around the mercury blob, which makes it look as if it's a ball rather than a random blob that mercury should be. It does have its advantages, as little blobs that split off the mercury are easy to spot, but some people may have a hard time getting their head around this ball-like blob that doesn't have many of the properties of either the mercury or a ball - because it doesn't roll! The sound is very good; lab sounds to compliment the laboratory theme, catchy futuristic sounding music lots of effects to go with all of the objects and sometimes their effects on the mercury too; slippery floor tiles sound a little slippery when your mercury glides over them, for example!

For those who like their puzzle games, Mercury Meltdown comes highly recommended. It's easy to pick up and play, but very difficult to put down - some of the levels will leave you with a big grin on your face, while others will have you coming back with a fresh approach to try and try again, and the amount of replay value in this game should have you coming back months down the line, just to beat previous scores, check for new downloadable levels online and maybe have a wireless battle with your friends. If you've heard complaints that most games on the PSP are just PS2-influenced graphically rich games that don't always work on a small screen then Mercury Meltdown is your answer; it's a true handheld title to rival the best puzzlers on the Nintendo DS. Mercury Meltdown - not to be miscible!

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).