The Lemmings Chronicles

Ah, the Lemmings. Where would we be without these little fools, blindly following one another into extinction? In The Lemmings Chronicles - All New World of Lemmings you control the little fellers, and have to guide them to the end of each level with as few casualties as possible. This is achieved by overcoming objects that are on the map, be they pitfalls, water (lemmings can't swim!), spikes, or other general nastiness.

How can one mere mortal hope to save the suicide-bent lemmings, you ask? Well, it’s by changing their jobs or classes.
You change lemmings into several different classes, enabling them to do things like dig (The little guys take out shovels, how cute), fall safely (I wish my umbrella let me fall safely), and climb things, just to name a few.
I remember originally playing this game and thinking "Aw, this isn’t so fun." But 3 or 4 hours later I'd still be sitting there, trying to save the dumb lemmings from themselves. The only problem that you might have with this game is the tendency of the lemmings to continue doing whatever it is you set them to doing; for instance if you aren't careful they will walk directly off of a cliff, if you fail to set them to the safe fall mode as they walk near the edge then they will leap to their untimely demise. It requires a combination of quick movements and quick thinking to continually keep them alive; and you will probably find yourself growling in frustration at least once or twice. Despite that however, you WILL try to fix what you did wrong! Plus, it’s also fun to just relieve some tension by dropping the little blighters off a cliff and saying "There. Are you happy now!?"
I remember playing the SNES version of this game, and my cat tripped over my power cord near the last level. I was mad, but not so mad as you'd think; the game is fun to play again, and since you know what to do and when to do it you should be able to exert the minimum of effort and just enjoy the show!
At times the game reminds me of a kind of Lost Vikings precursor; you need to use the right tool (or Viking, or lemming time) for the right now. I can't really think of any new school game that reproduces the Lemmings charm, making you as a human player try to save the incredibly stupid and self destructive AI; however if you enjoy strategy games you should enjoy Lemmings!