The basic overall gameplay of
Mercury Meltdown Remix isn't all that different from
Archer McLean's Mercury. Your goal is to tilt the level around so that your blob of liquid metal can make it to the finish line with as little lost as possible. At first, this is a simple task of avoiding holes and weaving your way around obstacles. But as you progress, you will have to learn how to split apart your blob, change their colors and recombine them to form other colors. That all comes from the first game, but
Meltdown gives you even more, with the ability to change the state of your mercury so that it can be solid, cold or warm.
The ability to change states also means the developers have thrown in a few more obstacles that can really challenge you. For instance, when in a solid state, you become like a ball bearing and you can ride along rails to other parts of the level. In the cold state, your blob or blobs move slower, but they stick together a little more. And when turned hot, the mercury is faster but harder to control and doesn't stay together quite as well.
The structure of the hub world has changed as well. In the first game, you could not progress to the next world until you completed every level in the current world. This lead to a lot of gamers getting stuck halfway through the game and getting fed up. The developers have changed things around some so that you don't need to pass every level in order to progress, you just need to have saved enough mercury in the levels you have completed to continue. Of course, there are benefits to beating all of the levels.
So that is what makes Mercury Meltdown Remix and Mercury Meltdown different than the first one. How does the console version vary from the PSP title? The biggest difference, aside from the control changes that will be talked about later, is the addition of two new themed labs/worlds in Remix. The other differences include a lack of multilayer capabilities in the console version (the PSP title has wireless battle games) and better all around graphics.
