The Adventures Of Lomax Review & Rating (and ramble)

After years of cute-funny puzzle games, Lomax got fed up with the other Lemmings' crap and broke off for his own thing, The Adventures Of Lomax, a 1996 Psygnosis 2D platformer for Windows and PS1.

It's very pleasant to the eyes and ears, and the platforming is intuitive and polished. There's even a nice story; your lemming friends were turned into adorable little monster baddies, and you have to save them! ...by spin-slapping the s**t out of them! But it's rife with scientific inaccuracy; no way these things are real lemmings, and the spin attack is obviously more reminiscent of the common bandicoot. 

Alas, a new 2D game in the late 90s might as well be a salad on the menu at the cheesecake factory. It suffered through underwhelming publicity and sales, but today, through the power of hindsight, it stands out as a 2D gem among it's s****y-low-poly-3D peers.

It's uncommon and expensive, so I as a renowned cheapskate I can't recommend it, but strictly as a game, I give The Adventures of Lomax a 4 out of 5. 

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I don't know, y'all, this is really starting to bug me. Not only do these things not look like lemmings at all, but I've come to find out that real lemmings don't even jump off cliffs or have magic! I mean I'm starting to wonder, do lemmings even wear costumes? Do bandicoots even wear jeans, do hedgehogs even wear sneakers, DO PLUMBERS EVEN WEAR TIES?! EVERYTHING I KNOW IS A LIE!

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Just a little bonus rambling for my audio- and text-only podcast and website audiences, I thought I'd share the story behind why I did this review. 

My wife and I go to a lot of garage sales. She's a quilter and a gardener, so it's a great way for her to find lots of stuff she loves, and naturally I look for games and trading cards out there, too. It's nowhere near as glamorous as the seemingly tremendous luck experienced by other folks out there on the internet, especially these days with so much competition, but I've had at least a few fortunate purchases.

In maybe 2014 we were south of Topeka, Kan., and I purchased a box of games for what I felt was exactly the right price. There were like 15 games in there and I want to say I paid $30, and they were mostly sports games but I saw MediEvil in there and knew I wanted that. I saw The Adventures Of Lomax in there and wasn't familiar with it, but I saw the Psygnosis label on it and I was familiar with stuff like Psybadek and Colony Wars, I figured this would be good too.

Later when we got around to unpacking our goodies, I looked up Lomax and naturally got very excited when I saw the prices; it's literally one of the two or three best garage sale finds I've ever had. But also, when that happens, I always feel some guilt for the sellers in those instances. I'm not trying to start a moral debate here, but maybe it's just important to remember that most of the time our good fortune correlates to someone else's bad, or something like that... I don't know...

Anyway, fast forward to today, in mid-2021, and I decided to swap it to a friend to help me pursue something in my current flavor-of-the-week interests. I'm really excited to see it in a great home and stellar collection, where I know it will get top-notch care, but before I sent it away I wanted to give it a quick review. Also I've kind of developed this weird notion that I'm going to try to play every game I own, at least for a few minutes each, and I don't have a very big collection or anything, but it'll still take me a while I'm sure, and I wanted to give Lomax the time of day before trading him away anyway so it seemed like a good starting point to kind of make that goal official.

In hindsight, all the ceremony behind this decision is kind of pointless since I use my Nvidia Shield TV to capture PS1 footage anyway - by the way, incredible emulation device for retro stuff, that thing - but as something for which I have a fond memory, it felt like a nice goodbye and offered me some closure.

Let me know if you like listening to these post-skit ramblings; I'd love to have your feedback, frankly in any way shape or form. Thank you so much for hanging out with me here today, I appreciate you and I'll see you next time.