Lemmings review

After a hiatus of some years, the suicidal rodents make their return. But unlike Prince of Persia and other resurrected classics, Lemmings sticks to its roots.

The aim of the game is simple - guide the rodents to the level's exit. Sadly, being lemmings, they'll blindly walk off cliff edges, casually march into lava pits and happily stumble into traps unless you help.

Apart from an extreme lack of self-preservation, your lemmings have no special attributes by default, but by clicking on one of eight icons, you can assign each of them skills allowing them to negotiate their surroundings.

The skills available, for those unfamiliar with the game, include the climber, who'll clamber up any walls; the floater, who gently floats down any drop that would normally kill it; the blocker, who bars the path of others; the digger, who digs a hole straight down through the floor, and a stack of others into the bargain.

You'll need to put only one or two of these skills to use as the game begins, but as you progress through the increasingly intricate levels, the combinations of abilities needed to succeed become far more complex.

To make matters worse, the deeper you get, the more useful skills like basher and blocker become far scarcer and the number of expendable lemmings is much less.

Yes, Lemmings gets very tricky, very quickly, so take a tip from us and strap your PSP firmly to your wrist before playing, unless you want to make a frustration-fuelled, PSP-shaped dent in the nearest wall.

While Lemmings is just as much fun as it always was, apart from being able to design and share levels, virtually nothing has changed from when it first appeared 15 years ago.

Yes, there's the new special mode but, despite the name, it's simply a collection of new levels that aren't that different from those found in classic. Even the original Amiga version had a two-player mode, but there's no sign of a multiplayer here.

This is a faithful conversion of the original game rather than a souped-up remake, but it's one that lends itself well to PSP. While there's much fun to be had, it's just a little disappointing that after 15 years and a host of sequels, there's little here that's new.