How Does the Community Rate Lemmings 3?

[CrystalCore]

Do you guys like Lemmings 3 at all? It feels to me like a letdown from the previous two games, tbh.

[namida]

I wasn't a fan. I only ever played the demo, but yeah, it didn't really appeal to me. L2 also wasn't as great as L1/ONML, but it still felt like Lemmings. L3 on the other hand felt more like a different game in the same genre.

L3D and Lemmings Revolution are much better; make sure to check them out too.

[Simon]

The fundamental ideas in L3 are excellent. The tools are a fresh direction. You can make complex puzzles with interesting sub-goals. Clam and Kieran built custom L3 levels and I enjoyed those puzzles.

The L3 soundtrack is lovely.

Then L3 hampers itself with awkward engine features, and, in addition, it paints itself into a corner game-design-wise.

I get infinite blockers and walkers on every level. That's essentially direct control, I can shepherd every lemming into the exit exactly as I want it. In L1, in L2, and in the contemporary L1-inspired engines, we had iconic crowd control puzzles. L3 ditches those entirely.

The tools are so powerful that level designers can't afford to give too many spares. Builder bricks go in 7 directions and allow turning midway. Spades go in 7 directions and allow turning midway. L3 level designers are forced to make puzzles overly precise.

The block-based physics are evident and you will plan the micro-management in terms of blocks. Together with the powerful direct control, it almost feels like it shouldn't play in real time; it feels like it wants to be turn-based. You will spend many clicks to make lemmings do exactly what you have in mind.

Action replay with interruption exists, but the attempt counts only as a learning run, not as a solution. That bites itself with the micro-management from the infinite blockers and walkers. L3 levels need more clicks on average than other Lemmings games to accomplish similar-feeling work, player is more prone to fail that in L3, and still they forbid action replay. As a workaround, for user-designed packs, start with a fully completed savestate and treat learning runs as solutions.

By culture of DMA's 90 L3 levels, you're encouraged to save every lemming on every level. Never anybody made sacrifical puzzles. If you did, you'd have to tell the player somehow, but L3 shows no level titles. Thus, there remains a strong cultural push against designing lose-x levels. It's another unforced loss in the design.

The time limit also clashes design-wise with the direct control. If you run out of time in an otherwise fine route, you never have to re-plan the route, you must merely execute same route again, only faster. Contrast with L1-style games where some levels rely on a timer for backroute prevention. I already recommend to avoid time limits in L1-style level design, but in L3, it lost its last merit.

Still, I have a soft spot for L3. Making good L3 puzzles is hard, and I was happy every time I saw Clam and Kieran design a level around a nontrivial idea.

-- Simon

[kieranmillar]

As the resident Lemmings 3 guy, who likes the game enough to learn to code to finish a level editor for it then design an entire replacement set of levels, do I like the game?

No. It's bad.

Alright, it's not all bad. The music is pretty good, and it looks great. It tried something different, and I give it some credit for that. However the game has a ton of unrealised potential in amongst the major design errors it made.

Detrimental inheritance of now irrelevant gameplay mechanics
In Lemmings 3 you collect tool boxes and then have to get that Lemming to the right place to use that tool, and they can only carry one type of tool at a time. In the original Lemmings, owned skills are "global" and can be used on anyone. To deal with this significant restriction on which Lemming can use what skill, you get a lot more control over the movement of the Lemming, but you get so much control that the Lemmings might as well not move on their own. With unlimited walkers, blockers and jumpers, why do the Lemmings pace around? It's just really annoying to control. There has always been a timing element to assigning skills in Lemmings, but in Lemmings 3 with all the control it feels like a waste of time. Missed an assignment? Just turn the Lemming around and try again, or at worst you have to restart. But what if the Lemming just didn't walk on its own? It would be a lot easier.

I've said before that Lemmings 3 should instead be a variant of The Lost Vikings. You get like 3 Lemmings and you have full control of them, and each one could have their own gimmick (e.g. maybe only one of them can jump) but even that's unnecessary as the single tool box carrying restriction provides opportunity for differences. They stand still when you aren't directly controlling one of them with the arrow keys or whatever. The automatic moving of the Lemmings just means you have to mash the pause hotkey constantly. Ducks was a better Lemmings 3.

It also carries over total Lemmings like in Lemmings 2, however the game can't handle that many Lemmings on screen at once because they are much bigger and more complex, so instead they came up with this idiotic reserve system where if a Lemming dies a new one falls from the trapdoor, but often that just means he's dead too because you bricked off the way forward or he is stuck at the same trap. And when this doesn't happen, maybe you lost a key Lemming so you have to restart anyway. Either way, losing a Lemming is a no go in this game, they should have just restricted the number of Lemmings the player has and set it on a case by case basis.

The level design is poor
The fact that each Lemming can only hold one type of tool is neither here nor there, the game would work either way with a different set of positives or negatives to each approach. However they chose to go with the most restrictive option. Unfortunately, the level design never realises any of the puzzle potential of this. The vast majority of the levels are just "here is a tool, use it here to reach the next tool, which you use in the location where you collected it". I would argue there is probably only a single digit number of levels in the original game that I would consider good. It has 90 levels.

Because the use of skills is so restrictive, you are most of the time always sending just one Lemming ahead. I refer to Lemmings 3 as Worker Lemming Deluxe, a damning commentary on the gameplay of the official levels. Although I also refer to some of my own levels as Super Box Shuffler, so I'm not really one to talk here.

I think this is the real setback of the game. I had fun creating new levels for it, there are things you can do with the mechanics. Yes, my levels are a very puzzley affair that isn't necessarily in the spirit of the official levels in the any of the original series, but the nature of the new mechanics basically demands this, as what other interaction do you have? The original levels are just so much garbage filler.

The game is a slave to its animation system
I'll say it again, Lemmings 3 is gorgeous. It looks phenomenal. Full credit where it is due. Something that I think people don't pay enough attention to, is just how smooth the animations are. The Lemmings actually have a lot of sprites. Loads of them. Different walk animations up and down different step heights. And almost every state has transitional frames from one to another. The only states I can think of that are allowed to "snap" from one animation to another is when you use a tool that is directional, and even then the lemming will slide into the direction selection sprites, and when you use a walker on a Lemmming already turning around, in which case the animation plays back in reverse to still make the turn around look smooth.

The problem with this incredibly smooth system is that everything else in the game takes a back seat to ensuring that things animate properly. Here's a simple example: collect a group of lemmings in a thin pit with the shovel, then dig out the floor. Like so: https://youtu.be/-2Ku5FC6Srs?t=78 Notice anything weird?

Notice that the Lemmings don't actually fall at the same time! They aren't allowed to fall until they reach the correct part of their individual animation cycle where they are allowed to transition into being a faller. Absolutely everything in the game is a slave to these keyframes. If a Lemming isn't in the correct spot at the correct point of their animation, you have to wait until they finish, and this includes gravity.

Some animations have more keyframes so you don't notice as much. Walking on flat ground has a keyframe aligned to the grid but also halfway between grid squares so using the walker feels responsive. But if they are walking down a step, you have to wait for them to finish stepping down. Monsters similarly have to wait and align themselves. The potato beast will wait still for the lemming to enter exactly the correct place to execute a kill. The psycho buzzard is particularly bad for this, and the dive is buggy and exploitable.

It sure looks good though.

The interface is given a hard (but smoothly animated) kick in the balls by the animation system
Lemmings 3 is notorious for being unresponsive. You ever tries to make a Lemming jump and he walks off the edge? Instant rage.

Most of the time when playing a game, you interact with the game and it responds immediately to your input. Press the jump button in a Mario game and he will immediately change to a jump animation and sail into the air. It doesn't matter if there's no real transitional frame, you asked him to jump so he better well jump right now. Not Lemmings 3, when you click a Lemming he queues up the action until the correct position and keyframe.

Sometimes this isn't so bad. It's a grid based game, so it makes sense, and it only takes a few frames. I'm happy to give some leeway here. And the directional tools that are extremely grid based have an exception built in where the Lemming will snap out of its animation and slide forwards or backwards quickly so it responds appropriately, so they did try in some places.

But when it goes wrong its unacceptable. There's a problem with the Jumper in particular. It's like the queued up flag gets immediately forgotten so if the Lemming isn't in exactly the right place, it simply won't jump. And there's no "coyote time". In platformers, it's a widely known industry secret that the player should still be allowed to jump after they've fallen off a ledge a few frames ago because our reaction times aren't instant. But only the directional tools are allowed to miss the assignment being before the centre of the grid square to get the slide back to position, jumping doesn't. Clicked a little too late? The Lemming isn't allowed to cancel finishing walking out of the current grid square and off a ledge, because the jump must be from the correct place so it looks good. You have to queue up really early, but not too early or it forgets about it. There's only one solution, hammer the mouse button like a mad man.

Even the directional tools don't get a full pass though because of another animation-based oopsie. I said they will slide backwards and forwards to the nearest grid square centre, but not all grid squares are the same. You often want to use bricks and shovels right next to walls, but unfortunately to make the animation smooth, Lemmings will barely step into these squares so they turn around before hitting the wall, so the timing allowed on these most important squares is very tight. You may have noticed its way harder to assign a tool use right next to a wall. I would recommend jumping into the wall so the Lemming properly aligns with it first, if jumping wasn't even worse.

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Looks like Simon posted while I was typing this and made more points more succinctly including some I forgot about, like how using the replay feature makes the solve not count (why oh why did they do this? Idiots), so I'll end this here.

[jkapp76]

I've played the game here and there, but always lose interest eventually.

The gameplay may be awkward, but we still got a lot of good things from it. I believe this was the first game to feature walkers. The first to have different-colored athletes. The first to have jumpers. And the first to offer pick-up skills. Probably more.

Lemmings Revolutions was the return to good gaming IMO.

[LemSteven]

I think Simon and kieranmiller nailed most of the flaws with Lemmings 3.  The buggy and often counterintuitive mechanics, poor level design, and ability to micromanage each lemming with unlimited blockers, walkers, and jumpers definitely drop the game below the quality of its predecessors.

Nevertheless, I really liked Lemmings 3, or at least I really liked what it tried to be.  The music and graphics were top-notch for the time, and the tool pickups were a novel idea that had a lot of potential.  Classic 26 is one level that did an excellent job of demonstrating some of that potential.  It required you to dig a hole to reach a bunch of bricks down below, then build out of the hole you just dug and build a splatform for the crowd, and finally dig back down through the bricks to reach the exit.  If you didn't manage the tools carefully, you could end up with all of the spades down at the bottom of the hole when you built back up, leaving no way to get back down the second time.  Unfortunately, good levels like Classic 26 were the exception rather than the rule.

One other flaw I should mention is the sheer amount of struggles I went through back in the day to get Lemmings 3 to run properly.  Today with DOSBox, it's trivial by comparison, but back then, it took a ton of troubleshooting to keep the game from freezing on my Windows 3.1 machine, and trying to get the game to run at all on a Windows 95 machine was a fool's errand.

Ultimately, despite the flaws, I consider the game to be a noble attempt at a novel idea.  I would have liked to see a spin-off title that takes the same idea and executes it flawlessly with improved mechanics and better puzzles, but as it stands, the flaws in Lemmings 3 drop it from what could have been a phenomenal game to merely a good game.