Genre: Action/Puzzle
Publisher: SCEA
Developer: Team 17
Release Date: May 23, 2006

It's hard not to love the lemmings. As a species, they are so small, determined, and for lack of a better term, stupid that you can't help but like the little critters. Even if you don't particularly like them, you at least feel sorry enough for them that you're willing to lend them a hand.

For those of you who have never played a Lemmings game before, each stage consists of a spawn point and an exit. Your goal is to direct a specified number of the lemmings across the map, from the spawn portals to the exits, within a certain time limit.

The challenge is that the stages are fiendishly designed to make your lemmings' journey as hard as possible, and the lemmings themselves don't help you out very much. They are quite single-minded, you see, and can only march forward, continuing onward until they either die or hit a wall, in which case they simply turn around and march the other way. They aren't even all that good at following orders. Your control over them is limited to assigning individual lemmings specific jobs - such as "Blocker," which will make that lemming stop moving and act as a wall for other lemmings, or "Digger," which tells that lemming to dig down until he can't dig anymore.

There are eight jobs in all, and you'll need to use them all in order to carve a safe path through each stage. The end result is that you force the lemmings to create for themselves a path from start to finish, and then move on to the next level. It's that simple, but it can be as challenging as almost any other puzzle game. Additionally, i>Lemmings blends puzzle elements with a definite real-time urgency. Time plays a key factor in this game, since you need to keep an eye on the clock and on where your lemmings are at any given moment - are they safe in a penned-in area or about to march off a cliff? In order to beat the more difficult levels, you need to figure out what combination of abilities to give your lemmings and where they should use those abilities. You also need to figure out how to keep the rest of the bunch from getting themselves killed in the meantime (level designers love to limit the number of times you can assign various jobs and to put ingenious deathtraps all over the place).

Games like Lemmings are perfect for an on-the-go system like the PSP. This is a game you can pick up at any time and then proceed to devote any amount of time to. Each stage is an independent challenge, and there is almost always more than one way to beat any given level. There are only eight different jobs to assign, but in many ways, the simplicity is what makes the game manageable. It almost always requires a huge combination of abilities to handle any situation, and you're always free to pick and choose how you want to try and solve any puzzle.

Lemmings takes pretty good advantage of the PSP's infrastructure mode to allow you to connect to the internet and download new levels to your memory card, which means that even if you manage to beat the 156 stages that come with the game, there is a potentially limitless number of new challenges out there. While there is no head-to-head multiplayer (and how that would even work is beyond me), users can design their own stages and share them with friends or the rest of the world. I had no trouble connecting to my wireless network at home and downloading a couple of level packs. I didn't see any content out there that was especially compelling, but once the game becomes widespread, I have no doubt that superb level packs will start popping up from all over the world.

The graphics are a facelift over previous versions of the game, and the PSP does a fine job of making the environment look vibrant and alive. I had no qualms with the look or feel of the game; it's cartoony, but in a good way. You know that it isn't serious or meant to be taken seriously, just from the look of things. When lemmings die en masse, you shouldn't feel bad about it - just reload the level, and do a better job next time.

Sound doesn't really play a huge role in games such as this. Personally, I play with the sound turned off, and that doesn't detract from the enjoyment of Lemmings at all. If you do enjoy wearing headphones while playing puzzle games or have a soundproof room in which you can actually hear the PSP's tin-can speakers, then I suppose the sound effects and music will be more than adequate.

It's good to see classic games like Lemmings make their way onto modern systems. The gameplay that made such addictive titles is no less compelling now than it was a decade ago. If you're an old-school gamer like me who remembers Lemmings with fond memories, then do yourself a favor and pick this one up. For you new-schoolers who think that lemmings are just some sort of rodent, there's no better time than now to see what you've been missing all these years.

Score: 8.8/10