Unappealing rip-off of two classics
What do you get if you take two classic but very different puzzlers and mix them up together? Well, if you're somewhat devoid of imagination and are interested in just making a cynical cash-in which rips off the work of other more talented designers, then you get Lemris. As you can probably guess from the title, the puzzlers being blatantly copied here are Tetris and Lemmings and while this could have been an intriguing mash-up, unfortunately a complete lack of of imagination means that this is barely worth playing. The game is mostly Tetris-inspired, and follows the familiar pattern of manipulating falling blocks so that they form solid lines. Once you have created such a line, it disappears, racking up some points and if you can achieve the legendary Tetris itself, four solid lines, well you get even more points. So where do the Lemmings come into things? Well, that's the disappointing part. The lovable little green-haired critters have been shoe-horned into the game in quite possibly the most useless fashion imaginable. Rather than actually having any significant impact on gameplay, they simply wander the screen inanely, waiting to be squashed by falling blocks at which point they make a supposedly amusing sound as they die. That really is about the only thing they seem to do and which thus makes this little more than a novelty game, rather than being a truly imaginative addition to the genre. Really, unless you are a die-hard Tetris fan, you can easily skip this one over, simply for the fact that its mixing of two industry giants is so insultingly weak that you can't help but pity the poor designer who though this was a good idea.
