Reviews// Lemmings (PSP)

Right, that's your objectives, tools and controls explained. So how does the thing play?

Well there are some flaws with the controls. Apart from the choice of pointing control mentioned above, it is all too easy to lose the cross hairs altogether. Sometimes you will start a level and the cross hairs are positioned off screen, they don't move when you activate the zoom, so they can disappear off screen at that point too. Then you find yourself trying to move them in any direction just to make them appear again. By the time you have found them, you are bound to have lost one of your little critters or missed a crucial bit of timing. You can get around this problem by pausing the action and recovering your cursor, but that is a bit of a work around.

Once you have control of your cross hairs, the game plays quite well, with a couple of nice features to stop the game requiring pixel perfect clicking or nanosecond timing. When your cursor nears a lemming the little creature is highlighted with a box that follows his movements until he moves out of range or another lemming gets closer to your cursor. The highlighted lemming is the one that will receive your instructions. You can also hold down the square button to keep the highlighted lemming selected, no matter how far he wanders from your cusrsor. In addition, you can assign a task to a lemming when the game is paused. This sounds like heresy, but you can only assign one task per pause, the last lemming you click on will take the selected task, all others will ignore your attempts to tell them what to do. You can also move on to the next level as soon as you have saved the pre-determined number of lemmings instead of having to wait for all of them to get to the exit. However, doing so will remove all bragging rights regarding the number of lemmings saved, especially bad if you have managed to contrive it so all of your lemmings will be saved. Then again, that's what the fast forward feature is for.

As far as longevity goes, you have 36 special levels and 120 original levels, this last set are glossed-up versions of the levels from the first version of Lemmings and are split into difficulty groups named fun, tricky, taxing and mayhem. In addition there is the promise of being able to download levels from SCEE's Your PSP website - at the time of writing (before the game's release) there are only a couple of movies and some PSP wallpaper images. On top of all that, the game comes with a level editor so you can make your own levels. These will be shareable through the infrastructure wireless mode option, requiring you to have access to a wireless access point.

Lemmings for PSP is an entertaining game, slightly let down by a few control issues, that successfully captures the feel of the original. The graphical and audio updates work well and enhance the feel of the game, rather than smothering it as so often happens with updates and remakes of games. The game works well on the PSP, with the level time limits seemingly tailor made for hand held play.

SPOnG rating: A-

Team17 have produced a rare treat, an update to a classic game that doesn't ruin the memory of the original. Despite some issues with the control method, the game is every bit as enjoyable as the original Amiga version and retains the sense of fun that made the game such a legend in the first place. Highly recommended for puzzle fans everywhere.