Home | News | Reviews | Previews | Hardware

Archer MacLean's Mercury: Liquid Marble Madness

Do you remember Marble Madness? That game that had you guide a ball through a series of mazes, and one wrong turn would put your marble in a bottomless pit? Yeah, I thought you knew it. Take that game, make the marble a ball of liquid mercury, add conveyor belts, electric enemies, and puzzles that require your mercury blobs to be specific colors, and you might come close to what Archer MacLean?s Mercury will have to offer when the PSP launches.

Mercury is made up of 72 levels across six worlds. You will have to tilt the maze and guide your blobs to the finish line (and not lose too much mercury in the process).


Some of the obstacles you?ll find throughout Archer MacLean?s Mercury include vacuums, teleporters, weight-activated bridges, and quick-moving pistons that will try to smash as much of your mercury blob as possible. These obstacles will start off slowly, but by the time you get to the end, more than 30 different types of obstacles will try and keep you from reaching your goal.

Other challenges include the need to split your glob into multiple parts in order to activate different switches simultaneously. That, coupled with the need to change your blobs? colors to activate specific switches, is just an example of what is to come.


The beauty of Archer MacLean?s Mercury really shines when you have to rejoin the blobs (after they have changed colors) and the combined ball is a perfect blend of the two.

Mercury features various types of levels that will keep the game challenging. These level types include Race Mode, Challenge Mode, Percentage, Combo Mode, and Boss Mode.


Mercury?s multiplayer aspect lets you and a buddy go head to head in Battle Mode or Ghost Mode across the PSP?s built-in Wi-Fi system.

Archer MacLean?s Mercury takes an old idea that has been in the gaming world for decades and runs with it. This game promises to be one of the best launch titles for the PlayStation Portable.



-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer
Related Links:


This site best viewed in Internet Explorer 6 or higher or Firefox.