Published by: Psygonosis
Reviewed by: Pascal "Saturnman" Vellet
System: Sony Playstation (Also available on PC CDROM)
Rating: 4 out of 10
Summary:
The latest instalment in the Lemmings series enters the brave new world of 3D. However, the addition of another dimension hardly made anything better. In fact, Lemmings 3D is a slow, repetitive and annoying puzzle game.
The Review:The original Lemmings came out many years ago with much critical acclaim. Scottish coders DMA Design created a cast of cute characters set in an innvovative game-playing enviroment and helped put Psygonosis (the publisher) on the gaming map. But DMA Design left the Psygonosis camp and joined Nintendo's "Dream Team", to develope games for the Nintendo 64. The Lemmings 3D project was thus given to the little-known software developer Clockwork Games.
To be quite honest, I've never got into the Lemmings craze. I tend to prefer my puzzle games to be like Tetris; deceitfully simple yet full in frantic gameplay and limitless in replay value. Lemmings 3D had the potential to change my mind. A new dimension could allow to move beyond restrictive 2D. Sadly, nothing has changed.
The basic gameplay in Lemmings is to take a group of Lemmings from point A and allow them safe passage to point B. To do that, you have to assign certain lemmings specific jobs, like digging or guiding the other Lemmings in a different direction. So the gameplay consists of occasionally clicking at certain Lemmings and oversee their progress ensuring as many Lemmings as possible will make it to point B. And this is one of the main differences of this game, compared to another puzzle game like Tetris - that you spend a lot of time doing nothing, just waiting at the next moment, when you'll "click" again.
The 3D iteself offers nothing new. The side-on view of the previous Lemmings games that allowed to glance at entire levels is now gone and has now been replaced by 3D worlds that you need to swivel and pan, raise and lower, zoom in and zoom out as well, rotating the camera left and right to begin to grasp what you have to do. Well, that's 3D for you, bigger and bolder but also more confusing. The gameplay is virtually the same as in the original Lemmings. It's still the point-and-click gameplay and you assign the same tasks (building, digging, guiding) as well. So what's the use of 3D here if the gameplay stays the same? It seems this is just an attempt to be another 3D game (with a familiar name) to fit in Sony's strategy to make the Playstion the 3D system of choice. The graphics in this game are just window dressing.
But let's talk about the window dressing here. Suprisingly, the graphics are nearly identical to the PC version of Lemmings 3D. While this isn't bad, you come to expect better things on the Playstation. Certainly, there's nothing here to wow superficial gamers and owners of rival systems alike.
The music is perhaps the worst aspect of the whole game. You can dislike classical music, but at least you know composers like Beethoven and Mozart put a lot of effort in their symphonies. Well, it's the opposite in Lemmings 3D, I hate the music and it's obvious it's only there to fill the CD.
In the end, Lemmings 3D is just a collection of new levels for diehard Lemmings fans. But for anyone else, there's nothing here you haven't seen or played before.
© 1997-1999 i_hammer@netvision.net.il
Get your own Free Home Page