When I popped in Mercury Meltdown Revolution, I had two expectations. The first one was excitement about using the Wii-mote to tilt the level, and the second one was anticipation of new levels and challenges. Unfortunately, only one of the two feelings would come to fruition.

So how are the game's graphics? Like the past two installments of this game (Mercury Meltdown and Mercury Meltdown Remix), the game has a much more cartoony and cel-shaded feel than the original PSP launch title. The visual style is full of bright colors with dark, thick black outlines giving the game a very distinct feeling.

The game's audio is pretty dead-on. As your blob slides across the level and separates or rejoins together, you are treated with a nice blooping sound, and when you encounter a Mercoid and get a chunk eaten out of you, there is a very distinct crunching sound that fits nicely.

Where Mercury Meltdown Revolution left me feeling a little deflated was the lack of new material. This game has eight labs (each containing 16 test tubes or levels). Instead of providing eight all new labs, instead we get a mix of the labs found in Mercury Meltdown and Remix. That is to say, you can play through the Astro, Bio, Electro, Geo, Atom, Aero and Hydro labs found in both games, plus you also get to play the previously PS2 exclusive Cryo Lab instead of the Chem one found in the two other versions.

This isn't to say that these levels aren't fun; on the contrary, even though I was able to go through most of these levels pretty efficiently previously, didn't mean this time wasn't still fun and challenging. I had just done it already.

So, for those that have not had the chance to play a Mercury game yet, let's talk about the basic premise behind the series. Your job is to take as much of your blob in its mercury state across the game board and to the finish line. You will run into various walls and obstacles that will require you to change your blob into various colors or even make the mercury more or less solid by changing its temperature.

There are quite a few differences between the Meltdown versions and the original Mercury game. Besides the graphical differences and the ability to change states, the Meltdown games also change the balance a bit. In the original game, the requirements to proceed to the next puzzle were pretty stringent, but in this line, a lot of the restrictions have been let up in order to make it appeal to a much wider audience. In these games, you can try out any of the 16 levels in the current lab at any point, and you don't have to complete all the levels in the world in order to go on to the next one. You just need to save as much mercury as possible in each level since all the mercury you save goes into a game in the lab. Once that lab fills up, the next lab is opened.

Mercury Meltdown Revolution also has several mini-games, and all offer a nice distraction if you're getting too frustrated at the main game. Rodeo tests your ability to stay on the platform while it bucks around, while Paint sees if you can paint more of your color on the board than your opponent before the time runs out, while Shove is a shuffleboard-esque game. The last two games are Race where you try to make it through levels as quickly as possible and Metrix is an odd, yet really fun puzzle mini-game.

Even though I had already played all of these levels on one system or another, and thus, theoretically knew how to get to the finish in each puzzle, I still found Mercury Meltdown Revolution a nice challenge. I'm not sure if the still existing challenge is because of the difference in control scheme, or because it has been a while since I played the other versions of this game, but either way, it was nice to return to Mercury Meltdown and still find it fun to play.

As you would expect, early labs and levels start off with smaller platforms that have a lot of walls and very few obstacles. As you progress to the higher test tubes in a lab, you will find more and more steps to have to go through in order to get to the finish line, but you won't notice any real jump in complexity until you move on to the next lab. Overall, the game has a very solid and nice difficulty gradient so you never feel like you're in over your head, provided you were able to beat the previous level, that is.

And now for one of the things that really gives this game just a little more umph, the controls. Since I first heard about the Wii's motion and tilt-sensing controller, I thought the system would be perfect for the game. When Mercury made it onto a console, I felt like the jump to the Wii was just around the corner, and now with Mercury Meltdown Revolution, we get to control the angle of the level and motion of the mercury blob in a much less abstract way - by tilting the Wii-mote.

The controls are very simple: no buttons to press, no jumping. In fact, besides actually holding the controller sideways and tilting it all around, the only time you will use your thumbs is to pause the game or change camera angles with the arrow buttons. It really is wonderful in its simplicity and the actual tilting of the levels translates so much better with a Wii-mote in your hand than with analog sticks.

It's hard to say exactly how I would recommend this game. While there is no actual new content, the feel of the game is much smoother with the control change. Existing fans of the line will have to decide if that difference is enough to get the same game yet again. On the other hand, if you've never played a Mercury game, or at least not a Mercury Meltdown one, then this is a great version to jump into.