Mercury Hg is a downloadable puzzle game similar to Super Monkey Ball in which a ball or in this case a blob of mercury must be navigated around mazes by tilting the board on the x and y axis. Mercury Hg takes Super Monkey Ball's simple concept and adds a few original touches.

The mercury is semi-liquid and can by split by various traps scattered around the courses or by blobs dripping off the edge. Points are awarded for getting 100% of the mercury to the exit. Points are also awarded based on time and collecting elements. The score for each level can be uploaded to the online leaderboard and this gives the game great replayablity.

One cool feature is the use of your own music, which you are encouraged to use by the offer of an Achievement. Music is played from the harddrive and the whole board pulsates in waves of colour in time and the background throbs. The game's inbuilt music is crappy Europop but add your own carefully selected playlist - in my case MGMT Oracular Spectacular and the game transcends.

The graphics are simple but colourful and serve their purpose well, the levels are well designed (each one representing an element from the periodic table) and some of the later ones offer a good challenge to beat the time limits. For only 400 Microsoft points this would be a high recommendation, but...

The one problem I have with this game (and it's a huge one) is that they've done a Beautiful Katamari by locking out half of the levels and then charging extra to download the code as DLC to unlock them. That means to complete this game and get all the achievements/trophies you'll have to shell out more.

This is becoming an increasing trend with modern developers as they lock out big chunks of their games or withhold content on release to trickle it out to the fans. It's semi understandable with big releases that include one-time-use codes with new games and then charge for them if the product is bought second hand. This encourages gamers to support developers by buying games new rather than second hand which only supports the traders. Dirt 3 was a recent example, which had the entire online half of the game (the reason most players wanted it) locked out to those who hadn't purchased it new. Personally I'd rather a return to the days when you got 100% of the game when you bought it, regardless whether new or second hand, and release dates held back if content had still to be worked on. From Software's Demon's Souls and Dark Souls show that it's possible for developers to maintain integrity and respect for gamers, and this will be reciprocated in sales.

But in the case of Mercury Hg the locking out of half of their game for no other reason apart from greed is inexcusable. Those paying 400 Microsoft Points are buying it new and should get what they pay for - the full game. For this reason alone I'm reluctant to recommend this game at all as we as gamers, as consumers, should be sending a message to developers that we will not tolerate being treated this way.

For the game:

7

For the fact the developers hate you:

1

Richard A Bennett