Reviewed by Brandy Shaul
When you think of chocolates, a few big brand names probably come to mind: Hershey, Snickers, Milky Way, and probably even M&M’s as well. Now while I like M&M’s as a colorful snack time treat as much as the next girl, I have to admit I was a bit shocked when I learned they were getting their own game, even more so when I learned it was a kart racer.
I guess I could stretch my imagination and see these personified edible goodies in some sort of a platforming title, where Red and Yellow track down Santa to see if he was real, while collecting M&M minis along the way, but racing each other for supremacy at various tropical locations? Alright, I’ll give it a shot.
Released by DSI Games, M&M’s Kart Racing is a very simplistic title that allows players to interact with their favorite chocolate spokesmen, and spokeswoman, in the case of Green. With five playable characters in all: Red, Yellow, Orange, Blue and Green, players should have no trouble finding a color that fits their current mood.
Gameplay itself is focused on Tournament races where points are awarded based on your finishing position, and time trials, where you can practice your moves on each track that you have unlocked. Unlockables come in the form of tracks and karts, which can be obtained via various tournaments. You can also choose multiplayer for those who can find someone else who owns a copy of the game, but the experience is the same.
Like in most kart racers, you are able to choose not only your racer, but the kart as well, with six options in all that vary in speed, handling and a few other areas. At first, you will only have one track to choose from, a one lap event in a forest inhabited by spiders and rock-men that try to block your path. Racing itself takes place on the top screen with the track map on the touch screen. The map conveniently places M&M symbols on not only your but your opponents’ positions as well, so that you can tell how far behind or ahead you are at all times.
As you start to win races, you’ll unlock more tracks until you eventually have access to all 11, ranging from actual racetracks to rural countrysides. However, winning a race is easier said than done. This isn’t because the AI is so much better than you, but because the game itself is designed to make you lose. Not only do you slow down as you lose fuel throughout each race (which is replenished by picking up rare chocolate bars), but the handling of the cars themselves is so bad that you find yourself slamming on the D-Pad just to have a slight reaction. Or, depending on the car, you may tap on the D-Pad for a split second only to see the car cross the entire width of the track.
Either way, turning is almost impossible, so you must rely on the in-game walls that let you bounce off of them to head in the right direction. Unfortunately, those in-game walls also have a tendency of trapping you behind them, if you hit them just so.
Likewise, the graphics here are nothing to be impressed by either. Clipping is a major issue, causing you to run into some obstacles and not others, or to miss a ramp completely, sending you down into the abyss. Speed strips are placed frequently throughout the track, but only some respond. Granted, they do give you a great temporary boost of speed, but when you can barely steer yourself into their path in the first place, they really don’t help as much as they should.
Furthermore, the actual tracks themselves look pretty bad. The graphical quality here is downright, dare I say it, ugly. While the option to change the camera angle from which you race is a nice one, getting a closer shot of random blocks of color isn’t necessarily a good thing.
On the other side of that coin however, the menus do deserve a bit of praise, as they are very intuitive and offer some of the best graphics on the whole title. This is definitely due to the fact that it’s comprised of stationary photographs, but still, any positive is better than none.
In keeping with the positive notes here, the music and sound effects are very cartoon-y and fit well with the comical personality many of us associate with these particular icons. However, with little variety in each track, the music can get a bit repetitive, and since sound really doesn’t play a big role in these races in the first place, you’ll probably be more likely to play with the sound off to save battery power.
In the end, I can’t hide my disappointment with this one. In fact, I would only recommend M&M’s Kart Racing to gamers with an extreme amount of patience, as the game’s handling alone definitely tried mine, not to mention the addition of clipping and annoying invisible wall issues. If you must have a racing game fix, I suppose you could use M&M’s Kart Racing as a challenge of your skills on the DS, but I really wouldn’t recommend it.
Special thanks to Alison Kain and DSI Games for providing a copy of this title.