10 Perfect Video Games (You've Never Heard Of)
4. Archer Maclean's Mercury
Developed by the confidently-named Awesome Studios, Archer Maclean's Mercury is another PSP puzzler that didn't get anywhere near the level of attention it deserved.
The premise is simple: you control a blob of mercury by tilting the stage with your analog stick, guiding that precious liquid through puzzles and obstacles to reach the end line. One stage might have you splitting your mercury to hit different switches, while the next might require you to tint several blobs with different colours, in order to pass by colour-activated gates.
It's a head-scratching experience, but in the best way possible. Splitting your mercury and watching everything fall into place hits a level of satisfaction that can only be matched by getting all your orange peel off in one smooth tear. Yeah. It's that good.
While Archer Maclean's Mercury did get a couple of sequels, these completely switched up the graphical style to be more cartoony, lowered the difficulty, and also dropped the Archer Maclean name, so fans of those later entries might not even know about the original - which, by far, is the best in the series.