Mercury Meltdown Remix is an interesting brain-teasing puzzle platformer for the PS2 that challenges players to take a glob of colorful mercury through a colorful sci-fi world filled with machines, crazy characters and more. Players take control of this liquid blob guiding it around traps, door switches, spikes, moving floors and other hazardous elements in order to complete the level. Mercury Meltdown Remix takes the popular PSP title (Mercury Meltdown) and delivers a pretty solid platformer puzzle experience for PlayStation 2 owners. There are a few differences between this new game that are both positive and negative - like additional exclusive levels and no multiplayer, but the end result is still a fun game where you try to direct a congealing, oozing wad of mercury down inventive and --once in awhile -- frustrating tracks that will test your brain and occasionally your patience.

The gameplay in Mercury Meltdown Remix is pretty straightforward: players must direct their Mercury through a variety of maze-like stages by titling the board. If you've played SCEA's LocoRoco on the PSP then you get the basic concept already. The end goal for each stage is to try and make it to the finish with as much of your mercury glob as possible. You can lose part of your mercury in a number of ways including getting too close to the edge or being subjected to the game's myriad of bad guys. There are plenty of puzzles that are based on the whole titling the world concept and most of them are fun to overcome. The only real complaint that could be lodged against the game is that some of the more narrow platforms you'll traverse make things a bit harder than they should be. Besides that, Mercury Meltdown Remix does a good job of scaling the challenge as you advance in the game and by the time you hit the end you'll have earned every bit of your victory.

As players advance through the 200+ stages in this game they will run into a lot of different challenges and obstacles to overcome. You'll find yourself having to unlock gates, avoid bad guys and deal with the affects of heaters and coolers that speed you up or slow you down, respectively. There are plenty of other things to deal with along the way like teleports, stalls that change your mercury's color and even a device that changes your mercury wad into metal ball that makes you go faster and gives you the ability to ride rails in select areas of some levels.

It is hard to understand why the game doesn't offer multiplayer support on the PS2 like its PSP predecessor. While this isn't too much of a drawback in the grand scheme of things, it would have been nice to play the game with friends if you so desired. Usually it's the other way around with any cross-platform title: it is usually the hand-held version of the game that gets the short end of the stick. Still, even without multiplayer of any kind, Mercury Meltdown Remix still offer plenty of challenges in the game's single player campaign.

The world of Mercury Meltdown Remix is bright, colorful and does a good job of using the tilt gameplay mechanic to make the game fun. Likewise, the soundtrack fits in well with the game's overall presentation, offering tunes that are catchy and upbeat. Sure the music and the presentation style aren't as flashy as LocoRoco's but overall its a pretty overall gaming experience thanks to the visuals and audio.

If you like puzzlers and don't mind the lack of multiplayer than Mercury Meltdown Remix will be worth picking on the PlayStation 2. The gameplay is fun and challenging, the graphics are pretty decent and the overall theme of the game works well. If you're looking for something you can take on the go, then we suggest checking out Mercury Meltdown on the PSP.