Mercury Meltdown Revolution

 

    Why, yes, I am reviewing another marble game after already having reviewed two of them recently. I guess during the early days of the Wii's life, everyone had a similar brainwave of “tilt the controller to roll the ball”, hence why they were so prevalent. However, I do at least think that Mercury Meltdown Revolution is worth writing about on its own for a few reasons. For one, it does have some qualities unique to it that I feel make it at least slightly notable. For two, it lies somewhere between the other two marble games I've reviewed quality-wise; it's not aggravating like Banana Blitz was, but can't quite reach the highs of something like Kororinpa.
    The main thing that makes it stand out from those previous games is that you're not controlling a solid marble or a monkey trapped inside one, but rather a liquid blob of mercury. Truly, the most obvious innovation to the marble genre was the introduction of one of the most deadly, poisonous metals known to man. It means you're naturally slower and heavier than a regular marble, and also that the shape of the blob naturally morphs to whatever is around it. This also means that the blob can split apart when pressed up against split paths, or can cause drops of it to spill off of platforms. Since the game keeps track of how much mercury you hold onto by the end of a stage, that means the challenge comes more from careful navigation and puzzle solving rather than finding shortcuts to get to the end as fast as possible.
    It's when the game zeroes in on the puzzle aspect that I think the game is at its best. The levels tend to be full of mechanical devices, including ones that change the color of your blob, ones that change the blob's temperature to make it easier or harder to break apart, magnets that attract or repel your blob, and so on and so forth. With the color of the blob specifically, you'll often find switches and doors that require the blob be a certain color to use them, sometimes involving intentionally splitting the blob in different sequences in order to mix different colors together. Obviously these increase in complexity with each world you complete, and by the end you'll encounter some real brainteasers with finding the optimal route to make sure all the mercury reaches the goal. It's brought together with visuals that are basic but serve the gameplay functionality well, as well as a surprisingly eclectic soundtrack that shifts wildly in genre and tone.
    However, for every well thought out and interesting level, there are others that end up being really tedious or simply frustrating. There are some level gimmicks that aren't that fun to begin with, and end up really overstaying their welcome as they get reused. One example is a recurring enemy just named Stan, which is admittedly pretty funny, but every level with him involves simply blocking his pathway at certain times as he slowly inches his way towards switches only he can use, and it gets to be boring. Also, because you always have to deal with the physics of the mercury blob, that means whether or not you complete a level often depends on the whims of an indifferent universe. You can already have the solution to a level long figured out, only to have to retry again and again just to get one single part of the level working like how you'd expect it to.
    \There are some minigames to play, which you unlock gradually by completing enough levels. There's one where you have to resist being pushed off the stage, a racing mode, a match-three puzzle game, a shuffleboard game and one where you paint the floor of the stage. None of them are that involved, but they prove to be effective breaks from the main game if you ever get stuck on a level. What perplexes me, though, is that none of these minigames have the option for multiplayer. Not only do all the games feel like they could easily function with multiplayer, but it's even listed as “party games” on the menu, which I'd think would imply that they have multiplayer, so I don't know what gives there.
    Mercury Meltdown Revolution has a solid foundation at its core and is often decent at what it does, but it tends to get dragged down by occasionally boring level design and unclear programming. It by all accounts, is simply a decent video game that exists, and sometimes you don't really need much more than that. Honestly, what's more interesting to me is how oddly pervasive this game is. More than a few people have said that it was one of the first Wii games they ever played, and it often popped up in stores you wouldn't expect to see video games at. In that sense, it's fascinating to me from a historical standpoint, how even an unmemorable game can still come away with its own footnote, however small that footnote may be.

Kororinpa: Marble Mania

 

    So since Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz was a pretty bad marble game, the obvious solution would be to play more marble games, and hence, Kororinpa: Marble Mania by Hudson Soft. If you're anything like me, you looked at that title and thought “what the heck is a Kororinpa?” I had a feeling that it was probably a portmanteau of words that made sense in Japanese, like how Katamari Damacy roughly translates to “clump soul”. Doing some cursory searches online, “koro” simply means for something to roll, sensible for marbles, while “rinpa” was a historical school of decorative art that had a heavy emphasis on nature. I feel like I'm way off-base with the latter, not that it matters much, as in-game, it simply uses the term “Kororinpa” to refer to a stage.
    So about those stages, and by extension, the controls. Like with Banana Blitz, it requires holding the Wii Remote forward at a level angle, and tilting it around to tilt the stage, thus moving your marble. Different marbles can be selected from the main menu before you begin a stage, unlocking more as you complete the game, with each one either altering the physics of the marble in some way, or are just there for the sake of looking cute. Unlike the Super Monkey Ball games, however, there's no limit to how much you can rotate a stage; while those had a maximum limit on the angles possible, here, you can turn the stage on its side or even fully upside down if you want. It makes it so the later levels resemble less of a traditional marble maze and more of a Perplexus sphere, making you alter gravity constantly in order to reach your goal. There's also crystals that can be picked up within each level, with red crystals being required to open the goal, and green crystals being an optional challenge to eventually unlock secret stages with.
    Personally, even though it uses a similar control set up to Banana Blitz, I found this to be way more manageable and fun to control. I never had to move the controller that much for it to register which way I was twisting, with it also not being too sensitive or twitchy. The tilting itself is also eerily accurate considering this game came out long before Wii MotionPlus was introduced, so stuff like thin passageways or tight turns were never an issue. It also meant I could pull of some neat trick shots when needed; there was one level where I forgot a crystal earlier on, but I was able to tilt the level back, launch the marble up, and catch it with the other end of the level. On the subject of the crystals, I like that the lack of lives and the requirement to pick the red ones up means that there's actually a point to having collectibles in the level, making you engage with the level design more and be more daring when needed. It makes for a game with an incredibly well-balanced difficulty curve, getting considerably challenging without going overboard.
    There are forty-five levels in total, with fifteen secret stages to unlock by grabbing the aforementioned green crystals, and a mirror mode once you complete the main stages. The main stages are split into groups with different visual themes, consisting of a garden, candy world, city at day, toy world, and city at night. Going on about aesthetics further, while it can be a bit plain at times, there is something of a bespoke charm about it. The visuals are clear enough to make the marble rolling easy, while having some quaint dioramas in the background, like a variety of baking supplies lined around a table in the background of the candy world. The music is also rather charmingly whimsical, exciting enough to motivate you while being calm enough to not get on the nerves while repeating stages, with the secret stages being host to some great remixes of music from classic Hudson Soft games like Bomberman and Milon's Secret Castle.
    Of course, even with forty-five stages, their short length means that the main game can be beaten in about two hours or so if you're good enough. This is where the multiplayer comes in, because in a surprising rarity for marble games, it has an actual multiplayer mode. Every stage from the single player mode can be played within it, and you both race through each level within split-screen, trying to get a better time than the other. The different selectable marbles actually come into play quite a bit here, as it means there's some strategy in choosing either an easier to control but slower marble, or a faster but more unwieldy marble. The split-screen does mean that the visibility becomes a slight issue, as you can only see so much ahead of you, but it overall is a fun time, and contains some quality of life features to keep the pace up if one player is lagging too far behind.
    Safe to say, I came away from Kororinpa: Marble Mania quite impressed. Considering how I routinely bounce off of other games similar to it, I was surprised by how much I got into this game and how much fun I was having. Perhaps the aesthetics of it are a bit dry and could leave some wanting more, but the core gameplay is solid enough to where it doesn't matter that much. Plus, lucky me, there's a sequel called Marble Saga: Kororinpa that is supposedly even better, and I can't wait to play that when I eventually get around to it. I think I'm mostly good on marble games for now, though, and I probably should stop for a while so I don't start unconsciously rolling my food around on the table.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz

 

    So picture this, you're Sega in 2006. Nintendo has put out this wacky new console with a focus on motion controls, and they're asking you to make a launch title for it. Whatever are you going to do to make full use of this strange gimmick? The answer, of course, is obvious: “monkey.”
    In case you're somehow unaware, Super Monkey Ball is a series where you are Monkey In Ball, Esq. and have to maneuver them through obstacle courses by tilting the level itself. It's basically a more elaborate take on a marble maze, and you'd think not a lot of people would be passionate about that, but to call this a divisive entry in the series is massively understating it. A lot of people treat Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz like it delivered a plague unto their houses or something, and it left me very confused for the longest time. It was actually the first game in the series I ever played, and I remember liking it fine enough at the time. Going back to it now, while I think the hate for it is massively overblown, I can't exactly say the game was enjoyable either.
    I will say that the obnoxious thing about the GameCube entries for me was that, while they have a solid gameplay foundation with fantastic controls, the level design can get downright sadistic, to the point it feels like it's a ROM hack of itself. The funny thing is that on some design aspects, it's actually made to be rather sensible; the level design is dialed back to be far more forgiving, so you're no longer clipping underneath mechanical colossi or selecting the correct switch to not die. They even added a jump button to the game, both so you could save yourself at the last second and also to give the levels more variation. On the subject of positives, the music is actually pretty awesome, as required per Sega law, with the snow level theme being an easy standout.
    However, this game ends up having the opposite problem of those earlier installments, in that the controls are extremely unreliable. I don't mind motion controls, I wouldn't have started a Wii blog if I did, but it's the way they were implemented here that poisons my potato chips. My first thought was that you would hold the Wii Remote like a joystick and tilt it around to move your monkey, akin to the original Monkey Ball arcade game with the banana joystick. While you still tilt the Wii Remote to move, the default position of the Wii Remote is pointed towards the screen, with no way to change it. I find to tilt it forward, I have to move my wrist to very uncomfortable angles, no matter how I held the Wii Remote. It's compounded by the fact that even the slightest nudge will send your monkey flying off in a random direction, resulting in a fair few unfair deaths.
    This all comes to a head with the boss battles, which were a new addition to the series with this installment. Most of them are pretty standard, being either “hit the glowing spots in a circular arena” or “hit the glowing spots after completing a smaller course”. A sound idea in theory, but often the boss's elaborate animations will completely push the monkey off the stage, in a way that doesn't feel intentional. That octopus fight in particular was absolutely awful with this, since you have to account for any slight movement of the octopus's limbs that could send you off into the water. At the very least, the boss battles are mercifully brief once you get the hang of them.
    Of course, it wouldn't be a Super Monkey Ball game without the minigames, and this game features fifty of them to choose from. It hindsight, it's pretty much the blueprint for every single Wii minigame collection going forward, and has about the same level of quality variance. While some of them can be a decent time, like Dangerous Course and Monkey Target, it also has quite a few that were very obviously not playtested, like Trombone or Alien Attack. The variety and ensuing randomness could prove to be a fun time with friends, but you're going to eventually hit a point where you play something like Monkey Bowling, and wonder why you aren't playing Wii Sports instead, with its significantly worse controls.
    I feel like this game definitely came out underbaked, as with some tweaks, it could prove to be a pretty fun time. However, it's very clear it was rushed to meet the Wii launch, with its frustrating controls and unfinished-feeling minigames. It feels important to note that this game got a remaster in the form of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD, and while that does swap the motion controls for more traditional analog stick inputs, it also replaces the music and changes the level design to ramp up the difficulty significantly, so it becomes a very pick your poison kind of choice. The game in its original form very much represents the start of the long, awkward journey developers had getting to grips with programming controls for the Wii Remote, although whether or not they ever truly figured it out is debatable, especially on Sega's end.