Author Topic: Little Idea: Voting for the "Worst Levels" of the original games  (Read 8214 times)

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Offline ccexplore

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Re: Little Idea: Voting for the "Worst Levels" of the original games
« Reply #15 on: February 25, 2016, 08:29:11 PM »
Hmm interesting, I don't know if I'd count "Take a Running Jump" as a builder-heavy level, at least it's different from the kinds of levels that typically comes to my mind.  As far as I remember it's just about spam-assigning builders at the start as delay.  The rest of the level actually uses comparatively few builders.  It's almost like the builder equivalent to "With a Twist..." but less repetitive and much more forgiving in the spam-assignment part.  It is a fair point though that putting it right next to "King of the Castle" might not have been the best placement.

I'm not sure I buy the comparison between Tricky 23 and 26, out of curiosity, which part of Tricky 23 is "fiddly execution"?  Also for Tricky 26, while doing a builder wall is a legitimate strategy and at the same time a bit fiddly due to the high release rate, I think it's quite possible that they might have only intended on assigning builders to lemmings 2-N for delay only (without necessarily forming a perfect wall), similar to "Take a Running Jump".  That being said, it's still fiddly for doing that, given the relatively lack of space and the high release rate.

This was the level that had me completely stumped and caused me to stop playing Lemmings for a while

It's a fair point, they really should've designed a progression system that allows you to skip levels after some number of tries, for example.  And to be fair, they've definitely revamped the game progression systems in subsequent games in the series to be somewhat more forgiving in this regard.

Offline Flopsy

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Re: Little Idea: Voting for the "Worst Levels" of the original games
« Reply #16 on: February 25, 2016, 08:35:42 PM »

It's a fair point, they really should've designed a progression system that allows you to skip levels after some number of tries, for example.  And to be fair, they've definitely revamped the game progression systems in subsequent games in the series to be somewhat more forgiving in this regard.

You could say that's one thing the PSP Lemmings/PS Vita Lemmings Touch lemmings games did quite well. The whole letting you view the next 5 uncompleted levels only thing so if you were stuck on a level, you weren't up against a brick wall pretty much.

Offline Wafflem

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Re: Little Idea: Voting for the "Worst Levels" of the original games
« Reply #17 on: February 25, 2016, 08:44:29 PM »
I'm not sure I buy the comparison between Tricky 23 and 26, out of curiosity, which part of Tricky 23 is "fiddly execution"? 

The part where you have to bash the wall and make sure that you still meet the save requirement by the time you finish bashing the wall (as there is no other way to hold the lemmings back). In fact, I didn't even know that was the solution back then until I saw a FAQ for Lemmings.

I guess the comparison is too small, and the only thing the two levels have in common is the release rate is 99 and that they are way too hard to be even in Tricky. This is just me letting my frustration out on the two levels :P
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Offline namida

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Re: Little Idea: Voting for the "Worst Levels" of the original games
« Reply #18 on: February 25, 2016, 08:48:42 PM »
Quote
(as there is no other way to hold the lemmings back)

Except the miner. :P
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Offline ccexplore

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Re: Little Idea: Voting for the "Worst Levels" of the original games
« Reply #19 on: February 25, 2016, 09:05:33 PM »
The part where you have to bash the wall and make sure that you still meet the save requirement by the time you finish bashing the wall (as there is no other way to hold the lemmings back). In fact, I didn't even know that was the solution back then until I saw a FAQ for Lemmings.

I always thought that was more a psychological impediment similar to "Cascade".  Though to be fair, I haven't tested exactly how forgiving or unforgiving that part is relative to the save requirements.  I do concede they probably could've gone with a more forgiving release rate for this level and save the RR 99 for Cascade only two levels or so later.

One additional wrinkle is that if I recall correctly, some ports like the Amiga has 100 lemmings instead of 80, but in both cases they use the same save percentage requirements, which inadvertently makes the 80-lemming versions harder as you couldn't lose as much.

Offline Wafflem

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Re: Little Idea: Voting for the "Worst Levels" of the original games
« Reply #20 on: February 25, 2016, 09:13:25 PM »
One additional wrinkle is that if I recall correctly, some ports like the Amiga has 100 lemmings instead of 80, but in both cases they use the same save percentage requirements, which inadvertently makes the 80-lemming versions harder as you couldn't lose as much.

That would actually make sense; I grew up with the DOS version which has 80 Lemmings instead of 100! Gah, no wonder I struggled with that level! >:(
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