Oh No! More Lemmings

"Drags you through the mud and has you begging for more"

How this game presents itself is as a clone of the original Lemmings. Of course the level designs are different, but you have the same old Lemmings, the same eight tasks to get the job done, and the same beginning-of-level statistics: how many, the amount you need to save, how fast they fall out, how much time you have. However, ONML was not designed with the Lemmings newbie in mind. Exceptional skills with the original game are needed here, because this one requires that you find more original, ingenious ways to use the few spare parts you've been given.

As per the usual, your Lemmings will walk off of cliffs and into quicksand, freezing water, or bottomless pits without your intervention. It's up to you to get as many as possible to the exit found in every level. You can assign tasks with the mouse, but for ultimate control, it is imperative that you learn the hot keys which allow you to jump to the task you want at once. Speed is essential in some levels where time is short or quick reflexes are required. Control and gameplay are airtight - if you make a mistake, it's your own fault. The music is more limited in this game than in the original (only six songs from the first Lemmings are featured), but it's still something to listen to, especially if you have ONML on CD-ROM (the one released by Slash in 1995).

Despite having a hundred levels, twenty less than its predecessor, you'll still be grinding your brain into a pasty pulp figuring out how to use what and where to use it. The Tame difficulty has no challenge whatsoever; Lemmings aficionados will pass right over it. Once you hit Crazy, you're thrust into the heavy-duty puzzles that fans of the first Lemmings only dreamt about. If they stump you there, you'll be playing this game for a very long time, which is why the replay value is enormous if you never beat it.

The repertoire of traps and obstacles that made the initial title so frustrating are back in full force here, with more creativity applied to each locale than in the original. One area seems to be a ketchup factory - there's a wheel that wrings Lemmings through itself when touched and a bottle capper to squash them flat. Stalactites will squeeze the blood out of your little frazzle-haired creatures, and chameleons that appear dormant will lick you up in one fell swoop. The insanity of it all will drive you absolutely batty, especially when you ''almost had it.'' Buying a new computer may be necessary if you have a short fuse.

So, with that in mind, Oh No! More Lemmings is a more-than-adequate follow-up to the puzzler that started it all. It's light years ahead of both its grandpappy and the horrendous Lemmings 2: Tribes. It's like having a child with ADHD: frustrating and mind-wracking at points, but you love it with an unconditional love that keeps you with it forever, and you have to devote hours and hours of time you'd normally spend doing something else to it. But you do it out of love. Seriously, though, great game. Everyone who loves Lemmings should give it a shot. Or four hundred.

Score: 10

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/19/02, Updated 05/19/02