Oh No! More Lemmings

"Snuggle up to a lemming!"

Firstly, what is ''Oh No! More Lemmings''? The one thing it isn't is a sequel to Lemmings. That would imply a completely separate game that was like the first, only better. Instead, ONML is not a completely separate game: although it runs without the original Lemmings game program, you should never buy it or play it if you haven't played Lemmings first. Secondly, ONML isn't ''like the first, only better'': it's an extra eighty levels to tack on to the end of the game. Apart from the introduction of Super Lemming, the gameplay is absolutely identical. As for whether it's better, read the review to find out!

I've already reviewed Lemmings, so I won't waste space here on the elements that are identical. Instead, I'll consider the difficulty of the levels. In terms of how hard the solutions are to realise once you've seen them, the Crazy, Wicked, and Wild categories are roughly equivalent to the first game's Tricky, Taxing, and Mayhem. In addition, ONML has the new ''Havoc'' category, which is extremely difficult. However, progress through the categories is much more slow than what I've just said might suggest, because the game's designers have concentrated a lot more seriously on the puzzle element, with the result that many levels in all four categories look completely impossible until you know how to do them.

There is also a category aptly called ''Tame'', which one might assume to be equivalent to the first game's Fun category, but which differs in two ways: it's tame, and it isn't fun. It's all too obvious why this has been included: so that buyers who haven't played Lemmings will be fooled, by the fact that there are some levels they can complete, into not demanding their money back. Strange, when one considers that if the makers had simply attached a warning to the front of the box, something like ''This is one of the most brilliant games ever, but you really ought to buy Lemmings as well if you don't have it'', they could have made much larger profits. And so now we all have to put up with the tedium of the Tame levels, because of course you haven't really completed the game until you've done all of these too. After all, how do you know I'm not lying and the twentieth isn't actually very hard?

To get back to the levels that are the real meat of the game... as I was saying, you need two things to solve the puzzles that are set for you right from the beginning of the Crazy category. You need a good puzzle-solving brain (and I include in that not only the intellectual ability, but also the sheer pigheaded ''I can't give up on this when it's stumped me for all these hours!'' drive, they require); and you need excellent knowledge of how the eight Lemmings skills work and interact. The necessity of acquiring this knowledge is the reason why you must play Lemmings, at least up to the end of its Fun levels, before trying this.

The levels themselves (which are, obviously, the main difference between this and Lemmings) are brilliant: the puzzles have an insane ingenuity that gives a huge boost to your ego when you solve them; the steady increase in difficulty is handled well up to a ridiculous level; and there are enough levels that aren't pure puzzles to keep you from going insane. The skills will combine in ways you wouldn't believe possible. There is almost nothing you can think of that can be done with them that isn't on the levels somewhere, usually in some warped and twisted fashion just where you least expect it.

Here are my ratings for this game:

Gameplay 10/10. It hasn't changed since the first game.
Puzzle element 10/10. A work of staggering genius.
Music 6/10. The tunes are excellent, but there aren't enough of them. And they lack something of that magic the music to the first game had.
Sound 10/10. Again, this hasn't changed.
Graphics 8/10. Instead of five different graphics sets, we have only four, and two of them (the rock and snow ones) very quickly become boring: all levels on them look the same.
Replayability 2/10. This is the most obvious casualty of ONML's heavy-duty concentration of the puzzle element.
New features 2/10. Super Lemming (a lemming who does everything much faster than normal lemmings) was a nice idea, but his being drastically underused makes him one of the most forgettable things in the game. The new traps are much nastier than in the first game: hidden traps are much more frequent, and some of them will give you nightmares for weeks if you're at all squeamish.
Overall 8/10. The higher frustration element and the lack of replayability are worth the deduction of one mark each, wonderful as the rest of the game is.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/29/03, Updated 03/29/03