Ah, Lemmings. Tiny, green-haired critters that have an alarming tendency to explode, walk off cliffs, fall down holes and generally do everything in their power to come to an unfortunate and usually messy end in ten minutes or less.

The premise of Lemmings is straightforward enough - you just need to save as many of the blue-clad mammals as possible by building bridges, digging holes, giving them umbrellas, oh, and occasionally sacrificing one of the blighters for the greater good. To hinder you in this mission are various traps, ranging from bottomless pits that the lemmings will invariably fall into given half a chance, to nasty slicing blades or lethal hangman ropes that sweep a lemming off its feet to a grisly end. The first few levels start you off gently so you can get the idea of what the various worker buttons do, before suddenly getting a lot trickier, requiring careful planning before the poor little lemmings are launched from their hatchway in the sky.

But that is what Lemmings is all about; planning how you are going to save the suicidal creatures and then discovering halfway through your well-thought-out plan that actually the lemmings are walking in the wrong direction, or you don't have enough bridges to cross that huge gap, or if you blow that blocker up it just makes a new hole for all your lemmings to fall squealing into. As the levels progress, you need to think more laterally - for instance, you might need a blocker to prevent all your lemmings walking off the edge of a ravine, but those meanie designers have not provided one for that particular level, so instead you need to try digging a shallow hole to trap your lemmings in. There are other little tricks that you pick up as you go along, some by pure accident, others after hours of trying to solve that one specific level. Fortunately, if a level does prove to be unfathomably hard you can skip it and try the next, and there are times when you will decide to do that, though hopefully not too often.

If you first came across Lemmings on the Amiga computer, this will all be very familiar - in fact, little in the game has changed since that first incarnation. The graphics are a little tarted up for the sake of the PlayStation 2, but basically identical to its long-ago predecessor. Some of the musical scores are the same as the original game (remember the Can-Can music?) though now they sound less electronic and more like they are played on real instruments.

The biggest similarity is that all the original levels from the Amiga game are here (well, except the special Christmas edition ones) - in fact, they make up the majority of the game's 130+ levels, with only 30 new, special levels that you will whiz through in a couple of hours. However, the old levels have not been spared a revamping and in a couple of instances they have been made considerably easier than the original. One example is the ominous level 13, which originally required you to get every single lemming in the level (about one hundred) to dig through a small platform and fall safely to their home. This required careful timing, as the platform was only just long enough for all the lemmings to dig through so long as they worked side by side. As a child, this took me more attempts to complete than I can count, however the new version is nowhere near as hard - in fact, it is almost pointlessly easy with only ten lemmings in the level.

Another thing that has been removed is the nuke bottom that used to be on the control panel at the bottom of the screen. Instead, if you do desire to explode all your poor little lemmings you need to press the select button and choose the quit option. On the plus side, your controller now vibrates with every tiny explosion, making you feel the results of your miniature massacre. However, if you are one of the few who doesn't like seeing their lemmings popping like champagne corks, you'll be pleased to know you no longer have to blow up blockers to complete a level - it ends automatically even if there is a blocker remaining and the blocker itself mysteriously vanishes off the screen.

The time limits for the levels also seem to have been made more generous. On very few occasions, even on the harder levels, do you feel the need to worry about the clock ticking down slowly in the corner of the screen; most of the time you hardly notice it is there. By no means does this make the game less enjoyable, and there are still plenty of challenging levels, but some of the franticness of the original has been lost and you can now rescue lemmings at your own leisurely pace.

Unfortunately, the few glitches from the original that should have been changed in this version have been overlooked during the revamp. One of the most annoying things is when you dig a slight hole to avoid a trap, the hole does not go right to the bottom of the screen and there is a thin layer of ground left, but despite this your lemmings all walk straight through the bottom of the hole and disappear completely. However, next time dig your hole a millimetre to the right and the lemmings will have no problem walking safely down it and under the trap. A similar problem can happen when you build a bridge up to a wall and then start bashing through the bricks - you might suddenly hear a squeal and your unfortunate basher disappears into oblivion, falling through a gap between the bridge and the wall that is too small for you to see. These glitches can prove frustrating, but luckily do not occur in every level and can usually be worked around by adjusting timings or positioning.

There is one other glitch, however, that appears to have arisen only with the new game. The developers of Lemmings also created Worms and you can tell that much of the program code from the latter has been cannibalised for the new Lemmings, even down to the gently blowing breeze that can be constantly heard in the background. But disappointingly they have also carried across a fault that was in Worms 3D, and that is the occasional sound error, when sounds jam and begin repeating or two sounds try to play at the same time, causing a jarring cacophony of noise. This usually happens with the background music, but sometimes the little lemmings get their words muddled and try speaking over each other, particularly when they are excitedly jumping into their little home.

One of the new features of the game are the EyeToy levels; there are twenty of these that require you to contort your body in various directions to assist little lemmings safely home. A word of warning - these levels are highly sensitive and it is all too easy to accidentally squash a lemming or knock one too hard so it strangely disintegrates in midair. These levels suffer from the same problems as the rest, in that everything has to be in precisely the right place to work, something that is exceedingly difficult to master when you are trying to form bridges with your body. The contorted poses you need to hold for several lengthy seconds as the lemmings walk over you can prove painful after a while, and the slightest movement will send your lemmings falling to their doom. In fact, twenty levels is more than enough for this aspect of the game, which can prove highly frustrating pretty quickly. Trying to keep one arm fixed at a curious forty-five degree angle to form a ramp, while bending your head out of the way so it doesn't block the lemmings' path and then trying to use the other arm to make the screen move along so you can see where your lemmings are going to end up, requires the skills of a fairground contortionist, and while these levels are challenging, it can be debatable how fun they actually are, particularly when family and friends start laughing at you.

Lemmings is a very enjoyable game, even if it is slightly short-lived. For anyone who reminiscences about the Amiga (like me) [And me! Old Ed.], this will be a nostalgic trip down memory lane with all those familiar old levels to enjoy. If you are new to Lemmings you will enjoy its simple charms, the tiny cries of pain and joy from the lemmings themselves, and the taxing levels with their quirky solutions. With its bright colours, atmospheric music (yes, some of it is atmospheric) and absorbing puzzles, you will quickly find yourself losing hours of your life. Yes, it has some flaws, but they are forgivable and the feeling of satisfaction when you complete a particularly tough level outstrips the despair of seeing that the next level is even worse. And if it all gets too much, there is always that quit button - that is, if you don't mind the sound of a hundred lemmings going pop!

Reviewed by Sophie Jackson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).