Download size:  N\A

My rating:  3.8 out of 5

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The Lemmings are back… in Flash form. They are on the loose again, still with those suicidal tendencies, and it’s up to you to guide them home. If you don’t help them, then they are condemned to a life of wandering aimlessly, falling to their deaths, drowning, burning in fire, and who knows what other atrocities. Assign them skills such as builder, basher, digger, and floater, to help them build a path to safety. Remember – their lives are in your hands. One misplaced click, one wrongly place blocker, one missed builder, could spell doom for your little critters. Could you live with that on your conscience?

This version of Lemmings contains four skill ratings – Fun, Tricky, Taxing, Mayhem – and 10 levels within each skill rating. You can choose on the title screen if you want Music, Sounds and Animation. Simply check \ uncheck the boxes as necessary. Choose which skill rating you want to play, then click on a level from the list within that skill rating. You are prompted to enter a code for that level before you can continue. Levels already beaten are marked with a tick, and code for that level is entered automatically when you click on the level title. All the familiar music and sounds are here for you to enjoy. The game is mouse controlled, just like the original. But I found the mouse a bit unresponsive at times, making you click several times before the action will work. This can be quite irritating on those levels that require perfect timing, as it may result in you having to attempt the whole level again.

Alan Probe is a pizza delivery boy. Nothing very special about that, is there. He is bored with his job, and dreams of becoming a surgeon. One day, he is driving his pizza delivery van at the same time as reading a book about surgery. He finds his book a lot more interesting than concentrating on the road, and all of a sudden… BANG!!! He has run over a poor, homeless man. The man pleads with Alan to operate on him, and repair his ribcage. Alan must act quickly, but he is not sure what to do. Luckily, the man seems to know what he is talking about, and he guides Alan through this ‘delicate’ operation. It turns out that the homeless man is none other than Dr Ignacious Bleed, the famous surgeon who was recently disgraced. Together, Alan and Ignacious open a clinic, and Ignacious guides Alan as he operates on seedy criminals, petty thieves, and other low-lifes and con artists.

Amateur Surgeon is kind of a simulation game, but very much tongue-in-cheek. The clinic is dirty and run-down, and the operating table is an old pool table. They just use whatever is lying around to perform operations. Things like the pizza cutter, stapler, corkscrew, chainsaw, and other bizarre items are all used as surgical instruments. You play as Alan Probe, and you must select the correct tool for the job. Tools available to you are shown as icons at top of screen. Use pizza cutter to cut open a patient, tongs to pull items out of the patient (but not too fast), cigarette lighter to seal wounds etc. You must be aware of the patient’s heart rate, and inject Pain-Away when it gets too low. Be careful not to rush things, and make too many mistakes, or the patient will die from loss of blood. On the other hand, you have limited time to perform each operation, and if you run out of time, then the patient will die since you took too long.

The game comes in 3 Acts, and each Act has 10 patients to operate on. Once you have successfully completed surgery on someone, then you have access to the next patient, and so on. The game is a lot of fun at first, but ultimately gets a little bit repetitive, and the time-limits seem to get harder. Still, it will give you a good challenge, as well as bringing a smile to your face as the operations get more and more bizarre.