Oh No! More Lemmings

The Good
Given the addictive character of Lemmings games, pretty much any decent set of levels is welcome. Psygnosis was quick to provide Lemming addicts a new game. ON!ML has slightly less levels than the original game, but in my opinion their new division is better - just 20 levels in each difficulty stage can make progressing feel faster. However, the difficulty curve isn't that simple - there are really tough "Wild" or even "Crazy" levels and there are really easy "Havoc" levels (for example the first level of this stage). This can feel inconsistent, but isn't really that bad - you can relax when playing some of the levels, while others keep you alert and busy.
The lemmings look the same, their skills are completely unchanged, however the areas are completely different now. While most levels don't look as good as the "underground" or "crystal" levels in the original game, most look nice in their own style, especially the "golden-blue" ones with lots of small pulsating balls in place of water. However, it's a pity the game doesn't have any "special" levels like in original "Lemmings" ("A Beast of a level" etc.).
Being happy about the game not having some bugs sound like really modest expectations, however it's nice that the game is free from a musical bug that spoiled gameplay in "Lemmings". In the original game if you fail a level, it restarts with melody no. 1, which of course can soon get boring under these circumstances (the only exceptions are the "special" levels, which don't change their music when replayed). Fortunately, there's no such bug in "Oh No! More Lemmings".
The original game had only one single-Lemming level on the very end of the game, ON!ML has two of them and they are closer to the middle.Actually the first one is more difficult - it requires great precision when building in a narrow corridor. The second one is weird - it's the only level in the whole game to be sped up in order to make it more difficult, yet it remains easier than the first single-Lemming level.

The Bad
Like all early Lemmings games, ON!ML has an uncomfortable level starting screen, especially in VGA version - somebody called it "Magic Eye screens" and they indeed look a bit like those images where you are supposed to see something in 3D (I don't). It's hard to read level data such as release rate or percentage of Lemmings to be saved when the letters aren't visible well on this bright background.
While I generally like the way levels are divided into stages here, the first stage is a bit of a throwaway. In the original games the first few levels were meant as tutorials, however then "ordinary" levels started and formed a majority of the first stage. The first stage in ON!ML isn't made of true tutorial levels - you have all skills available If you are and aren't told in any way what to do - however these levels are so trivial, so boring that they are just a waste of time.Their graphic quality is lower than in several later levels - when first playing this game I thought the graphics were a big step backwards compared with the original game. In all levels of this stage you have the same amount of time, the same number of Lemmings, the same release rate... The one thing I really liked about these levels was that in every single one it's possible to save all Lemmings.

The Bottom Line
If you are addicted to Lemmings and need to play "just one more level", you should enjoy this game. While still being "more of the same", it also feels different due to its different graphics and so can give some relief when you already feel you've had enough of (original) Lemmings - yet when having a break from this game, you still train your Lemming tactics.

The Good
100 more levels of Lemmings action, at a time when people couldn't get enough of it.

The Bad
Many of these levels appear to be ones that weren't considered good enough for the original, and some seem to have been designed in five minutes. The difficulty curve is uneven, there is too much reliance on precise clicking which makes levels far harder in practice than theory - the one thing that could prove dislikable in the original. Cashing in seems to have been the main purpose. The stand-alone version was largely pointless, because you'd be mad to get this one before the main game.

The Bottom Line
Guide a tribe of Lemmings to safety by assigning skills such as bashing, climbing and blocking to them. For each level you have to get a certain percentage of them to safety.

The Good
The replayability of this game is amazing mainly because the later levels in the game are so difficult that you have to keep playing the game to complete them! That is another good thing about it. It is demanding enough that you don't complete it in a couple of weeks and then end up playing it over and over again (I have had this game since July 1997 and have yet to complete the last thirty or so levels.

The Bad
There is nothing not to like about this game.

The Bottom Line
Oh!No! More Lemmings is a classic strategy game that can literally take months and months to complete. Although some people may find the overall objective tiresome after a while I have never become bored since I bought it over three years ago.

The Good
This game was a staple of my childhood and is one of my absolute favorites. My parents bought me this game to play on my Macintosh LC III and I was addicted. I also ran it on my black & white PowerBook 100, and it was still fun. I still have the original two floppy disks and the user manual with the passwords/codes for the different levels (a form of copy protection). I remember bringing this game to school when I was in second or third grade and my teacher making copies of the manual and installing the game on all the computers in our Mac lab and the Macs in the classroom. It was the most popular game for students for years and years (until Pocket Tanks was released, and after that, we installed CounterStrike on the new computers that ran Windows).

This game ran without issues on all my Macintosh computers. It was the first piece of software I would install after getting a new machine. It ran on all my machines that ran the classic Mac OS (LC III, LC 580, Performa 6290cd, Power Macintosh 5200, Power Macintosh 5400, Power Macintosh G3 Blue & White, iMac DV, PowerBook 100, PowerBook 1400cs, PowerBook 3400c, and iBook DV) and thanks to the Classic emulator in Mac OS X, I was able to run it on all my newer PowerPC-based machines running Mac OS X. For a while, I couldn't run the game on my Intel-based Macs but there is an Java-based emulator/port that allows the original Lemmings and Oh No! More Lemmings to run on Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel machines). Unfortunately, the Java port uses the Windows versions of the game and not the Macintosh version, so the graphics aren't as crisp and clean, but at least the game lives on. I also play the original version using the SheepShaver virtual machine for Mac OS X/Linux/Windows.

The Bad
On smaller displays, or computers that can't run the game full screen (only in a window, which is usually small and can't be resized), it is hard to clearly see the picture on the buttons to assign jobs/tasks to Lemmings/blow them up/speed up/etc. This wouldn't be a problem except that, unlike versions for other platforms, you can't hover your pointer over the button to see what the button does. You have to just hope you remember what the button does (the pictures don't clearly illustrate this) and blindly click.

The Bottom Line
It is a nostalgic look back at a time when games were simple but engaging, and weren't dependent on 3D/graphics/multiplayer over network, etc. This was a game that someone of any age and any level of computer skills could play for hours and enjoy themselves. It ran on old hardware, black and white displays, all-in-one Macs that had incredibly low screen resolutions, and always worked. The soundtrack gets stuck in your head and you'll find yourself humming it all the time. It's a great game. Hopefully they eventually will port it to the iPhone/iPad and Android OS.