More additions to the game play can be found in the inclusion of teleporters, cloning devices and darkened levels that can only be lit by your lemmings' torches, igniting fire bowls or the odd flash of lightning. The darkened levels add an exploration mechanic to the proceedings since you must visit a fire bowl in order to ignite it, this means you can't always see what is coming up until you have got quite close to it. A favourite of the level designers seems to be to hide a ‘suit of armour with axe’ trap in the shadows and let you blunder into the killing grounds. These additions genuinely add to the fun and flavour of the Lemmings experience. They are the best change to the basic formula since
Lemmings 2: The Tribes provided a huge list of extra skills to support the
Tribes mechanic.
It's not all rosy though,
Lemmings for PS3 retains some of the frustrations of the PSP version. For example, it's all too easy to lose your cursor when using the zoom function, since the zoom is centred on the current view not on the cursor - which would have made more sense. Another annoyance is that you must create a profile within the game before your progress is auto-saved, even though you have already logged in to the PS3, quit without creating a profile and your hard work goes down the pan. Also, there are too few levels, with only 40 main levels and five introductory training ones as opposed to the 156 levels in the PSP game. I'm sure there will be the ability to download more levels in the future, but I'm also sure that they will be paid-for downloads.
The graphics are updated over the PSP version, more detailed
and better animated, and the presentation in the menus is excellent, putting across the bubbly fun feel of the game quite well. Special mention has to be made of the music too, its a great updating of the classic
Lemmings tunes, although there is a smaller number of tunes than I remember from the original. Also, the spot effects are great capturing the essence of the original Amiga game, except the, "Oh no!" just before a lemming explodes has lost some of its character in the intervening years. The original squeaky voice exclamation has gone down in gaming history as one of the all-time classic sound effects.
On the whole though,
Lemmings is as excellent a game as ever it was, with the new additions to the game play enhancing the experience, not detracting from it. Perhaps in the future we will be treated to a Games 3.0-style level editor and community trading post for our
Lemmings creations. Until that time, we will have to make do with the game as downloaded from the PlayStation Network, and that's not a bad deal at all.
SPOnG Score: 84%
Lemmings is as Lemmings ever has been, but with a twist. That twist has helped to keep the idea fresh and playable, it's just a pity that we couldn't have more of it to start with.
