One of gaming’s oldest and most popular franchises has gone portable, as the green-haired creatures we’ve come to know and love as the Lemmings have made the move to the Sony PSP.
I’ve personally saved more of these little critters than I’d probably care to admit over the years, and after spending some time with the PSP’s version, I can safely say that I’ll probably be saving a whole lot more of them while sitting in buses, subways and airport terminals across North America. And maybe even a few of them from my couch.
The game is being billed as a faithful and loving restoration of the original Lemmings -- which was created for the Commodore Amiga in 1991 -- giving the creatures a hi-res makeover and fancy backgrounds and a better soundtrack than the few simple bars of music that permanently etched themselves onto the brains of players of the original game so long ago.
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For those who aren’t familiar, the premise of Lemmings is pretty simple: Lemmings are incredibly stupid, and will follow each other straight off of treacherous cliffs -- or into even worse trouble -- without your intervention.
It’s up to you to save the Lemmings from themselves, and the fun lies in trying to figure out how you can save as many of the little simpletons as possible in each puzzle.
Through 150 different puzzles, your task is to grant your hapless Lemmings different abilities, which are then used in conjunction to solve the puzzle.
Throughout the game, there’s always one constant you can count on: the Lemmings will keep walking until they come up against an obstacle, or fall to their deaths. The obstacle can include a wall, or it can be another Lemming who you’ve assigned to be a “Blocker.” A Blocker will send all of the Lemmings packing in the other direction, and two Blockers can contain an unlimited amount of Lemmings between them if you ever need to buy yourself some time to think.
But Blockers are permanent, and the only way to get rid of one is to re-assign him to blow himself up after a count of five – basically a suicide bomber who will take out any other Lemmings in his immediate vicinity when the count reaches zero. These bombers can also take out some roadblocks, but be careful not to cause too much collateral damage – you’ll need those spare Lemmings later!
Other Lemmings can be assigned as Floaters, who are able to parachute off of high cliffs without scattering their innards on the ground below, and diggers, who will dig and dig and then dig tirelessly some more, straight down.
Still more Lemmings can be assigned as climbers, who will climb any obstacles and then continue walking. But don’t let them climb too high, or you’ll have to re-assign them as floaters in mid-air – a hair-raising task that’s sort of like saving falling humans in Midway’s classic Defender, for you old-school arcade fans.
Have we missed any? We certainly have.
There are also Bashers, who will “dig” horizontally, obliterating anything in their path.
There are builders, who will build stairs for a little while before throwing their hands up in boredom or confusion and walking off again, and finally, there are miners, who can chip away the ground on an angle, instead of mindlessly burrowing straight down like the Diggers.
Whew. That’s a lot of Lemmings.
As you can see, with all of these different types of Lemmings, there are infinite combinations of puzzles and ways to solve them, especially considering Lemmings can be assigned any two abilities apiece.
Throughout the game’s 150 puzzles, the action has been quite nicely transferred and updated from the game’s early days, and brought into the 21st century.
Thanks to some of the niftier abilities of the PSP, players can even create their own levels, and then beam them straight over to the PSPs of their friends through the Ad-Hoc network mode, or with other players on the Internet through the Infrastructure mode.
Overall, if you were a fan of the Lemmings way back when, this game will serve as an enjoyable blast from the past, perfect for a quick hit of gaming if you only want to play for a few minutes, and just as satisfying if you want to settle in for a good hour or more of puzzle-solving.
And if you’ve never played Lemmings, what are you waiting for?
Millions of gamers can’t be wrong, so you’re in for a treat.