The Lawnmower Man

The Good
The Lawnmower Man easily has one of the better sound tracks for a Super Nintendo Game, it creates a mood around the game and will get stuck into your head. Simply one of the best parts of the game.

The story itself follows the Lawnmower Man movie pretty well but takes several liberties for the sake of making it platformer friendly. You know who all the important characters are and you get a pretty good gist of the plot. So if you haven't seen the movie you may end up not understanding some of it without playing the game. In fact, by playing the game before the movie you get a better understanding of the film and you may like it that much more.

The enemies and the AI itself are fairly smart. While you're usually just mowing down soldiers (pun fully intended), they at least have the brains to duck and fire back at you. The level bosses, though they don't require more then staying in a place their guns don't reach and firing away, are quiet clever in their design.

The Bad
My biggest compliant about this game was the cyber world missions. During breaks between the platformer stages, players have to go into the cyber world and get from one end to the other (sometimes shooting stages, dodge obstacle stages, and cyber run stages). These stages require a lot of trial and error, mostly due to the fact that you can't react fast enough to the changing environment. The hit detection feels a little off (even for SNES standards) and sometimes you have no idea if a hit will kill you or not. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if you didn't have to do them so frequently but they are a big part of the game and if you are no good at them (or just get frustrated with them like me) you will not get very far.

Another problem would be how the game handles itself in the platforming department. Using you weapons and upgrading them are no problem and at times are even quiet fun but when it comes time to jump the bottomless pit boy can it get frustrating. There is no run function so you can't build up momentum to ensure you make it to the other side of the platform, you just have to pray that you jumped close enough to the edge to make it. This isn't so much of a problem earlier in the game where falling typically means having to go back up and try again but it really starts to become a pain later on in the game.

While a good game is challenging, a great game makes you want to keep going and Lawnmower Man doesn't make you keep going. In fact, after getting the game over screen just once you think "That's it, I'm done. Its not like I have any physical proof of my accomplishments in this game (since the password screen doesn't save your scores) " and then you pop in your favorite game for the SNES.

The Bottom Line
Basically, its standard movie game stuff. You don't need to play it to like the movie but playing the game first does make the movie seem somewhat more epic then it probably has any right to be.

Since the game wasn't all that hot back then it obviously hasn't changed much since you last played it. Sure its attempt at virtual reality looks painfully shallow then most open world games look but this game really didn't focus much on virtual reality instead just trying to scoot by as just a platformer (kind of like when you work on a project in school just to get the passing grade so you can be done with it and never have to see it again).

If you own the game already then it won't hurt you to play it again. If you don't own it and are curious about it don't go out of your way to get it (as in don't go farther then garage sales or 2nd hand stores for it), Cause honestly this game would have been weekend rental material back in the day and no matter how rare it maybe today by collectors standards, its not worth more then $5 at most.