A racing game based on the M&M's.A racing game based on the M&M's.A racing game based on the M&M's.
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20% - Rubbish advergame, but what did you expect?
One thing clear is that food is made to please taste buds, not gamer interests, and yet companies like Mars, Inc. Decide that gamers want to see food mascots go on adventures, save the world, serve food, and, in this case, race in go-karts. That's right, we are talking about a confectionary company seating mascots we sometimes see in commercials inside go-karts for a video game meant to drive Mario Kart into obsolescence. We were given DSI Games' M&M's Kart Racing, and what brilliant choice of a console would they pick for such a masterpiece of competent coding and design? The Wii, naturally! Sadly, this game (and the uglier Nintendo DS port) showed no signs of competent coding or design.
M&M's Kart Racing was just another episode in the decades-long chapter of advergames, where companies explore media through which to market their product, including video games. More than just containing product placement, the whole games are the advertisements. Although I am unconvinced they have ever had any meaningful effect on our food choices as consumers, some of them were fun to play. Others were shoddy cash grabs a reasonable company would find to be grounds for dismissing a marketing team. A favorite platform to develop games like this for was the immensely popular Nintendo Wii, where "cheap but good enough" beat "better" consoles, hence the glut of third-party Wii games, and unfortunately a lot of shovelware. I can safely say that when Forrest Mars founded M&M's in 1941, he did not intend the candy to be starred in video games, and frankly, it does not deserve to be. So what could go wrong with M&M's Kart Racing? Or rather, what could go right?
We get past the loading screen and enter the menu, and here we run into problem No. 1: the graphics. It gets obvious during racing, but already the graphics look fit for a GameCube game, though a GameCube game often looked more exciting. The color scheme is a mistake. One expects a game about candy like M&M's to be bright and bountiful in rainbow colors. Instead, the colors are pale, dark, brown, and just plain drab, and there is minimal lighting and visual effects. The game looks like a product that has passed the alpha stage of software development, and stopped there. On top of that, it feels as if some of its textures and models were recycled from the Internet as stock assets. Ironically, the graphics are anything but eye candy, and the loading screen is closer to that descriptor.
All right, pick one of the five generic M&M's as your driver, select a kart available in your garage, pick a race if you have not chosen Tournament mode, and you are off. As warned, the graphical shortcomings become obvious, but now we have entered problem No. 2: the courses, and boy, do these tracks look dull and lifeless. Everything moves like ever concrete, there are no elements to interact with, and driving on anything feels like racing on railroads (notwithstanding freedom of steering, a reverse gear, and even driving the wrong way - surprising if you ask me). And yes, one would have to be a fool to assert that having animated textures in several places brings about life to the world. It is still stale air, but with a scent of fragrance added. To make matters worse, the tracks are rendered with noticeably limited draw distance. Why would a Wii racing game ever need limited draw distance? Granted, it is long enough that it does not affect playability, but they did not bother to throw in fog for good measure? It turns out the capped draw is to prevent slowdowns, as evidenced by framerates getting halved when a lot of the track and scenery is drawn. You know, Mario Kart Wii had no fog and draw distances long enough that the limits are at least not glaring. Never mind that the courses can get disorienting to the point where the player wished there were more than a few signs on the track indicating where on earth they should be driving. Some of the tracks bear little semblance of what they are supposed to represent. Take the first track, The Factory, with mostly just large rooms with crates of M&M's. How about The Farm, where the only relation to a farm is a barn, several haystacks, and two mega-sized yet dilapidated tractors. The two maps set in alien spacecraft do feel alien, but not as if they are set in spacecraft. The Colosseum is unimpressive, and two tracks can be simplified as oval tracks. Even the NASCAR games had better ovals. To be fair, the tracks did show some potential and could have been fun to race on, but in the spirit of the developers keeping a low budget, we are in for a bumpy ride.
Already, we make an emergency pitstop with problem No. 3: the gameplay. Like the tracks to be raced on, it is dull and bland. There are no distinctive traits or obvious fun features, not even power-ups that rip-offs have tried to outmaneuver Mario Kart with, save for speed boosts in the form of coffee cups here and there. Too bad they do not regenerate until the next race - and even then, despite one voice promising enormous speed, they provide marginal speed bumps - because I bet I can ride my bicycle faster than any of my kart-seated losers. Speaking ill of my opponents, there is little skill involved. Although there are three difficulty levels, the AI is still shallow on Hard, and one can finish a race with a comfortable lead, provided they retain their sense of orientation. Maintaining that lead is possible even with an unhelpful camera, which centers on the player's kart sometimes and trails behind it often to give them a poor view for tight turns, and reports of rusty controls. The latter would not surprise me. I vaguely remember the steering responding somewhat awkwardly to how I tilted my Wii Remote in 2010, when my siblings and I received the game as the first family purchase for a console that, along with three games, was gifted to us while I was a boy approaching teenhood, and I think I wished I could use a gamepad instead. I do not need to play such a wreck of a game again just to confirm the controls. I only need to watch online videos to remember the dreck I went through and how and why I even enjoyed it until I beat it. I could play split-screen multiplayer with a friend as competent as I, but the chances are, if they think as I do that the game is far cheaper than its $19.99 price tag would suggest, we both would agree that it belongs in a junkyard. The only interesting thing about the game is collecting coins - a missed opportunity since they should have been M&M's pieces - and unlocking vehicles to see what they look like, the best of which is the 4×4 Jet Convertible Kart, being the only one to drive at a velocity of what the karts should be driving at. That and the car models, fairly nice. As a note, it is possible to perform a stunt that car aficionados would call skiing, whereby a car balances itself on a pair of wheels, either the driver's side or the passenger's. It is awfully dangerous in real life, but in M&M's Kart Racing, it is a minor inconvenience. Again, little skill involved, and it just seems to be there to up one's wealth. There is also a stunt in which the player quickly lifts the Wii Remote to cause their kart to jump. This might have been a fun feature specific to the courses, but of course, the developers decided not to explore it, so we are left with what has no tangible effects on player experience and is totally pointless. Tragic.
Our tires get blown flat with problem No. 4: the sound effects. The karts sound as if they should not be driven at all, with some sounding harsher and more grating than others. Related is the voice acting. The voice design is a joke, and one of the most ridiculous in commercialized gaming. The clips seemingly play all over the place, at least when one gets to hear them, including in areas they should not. The voices themselves, like the game and unlike the candy it advertises, are bland and say pointless dialogue. Take such instances of ingenious, unparalleled quotes as the un-lame joke "A tasty combination" that is heard arbitrarily in the main menu, or the clearly justified racer's grievance "I need a better engine" when the player is overtaken by opponents, and of course, let us not forget the monumental masterpiece of vocal euphony that is the clip for each time the player approaches a speed boost power-up, "Approaching SOUND BARRIER! {sic}" (emphasis added) This honestly would have been great for a film or another video game. It is funny that whenever this game shows signs of talent, that talent gets wasted in the wrong places.
The fifth and last problem is the physics. At this point, one should grasp that it is off-road, just like everything else, without my explaining why. It is subpar, there is no reason for these sluggish karts to perform wheelies, there appear to be physical as opposed to motor barriers for maximum velocity, and the karts actually skim down hills, hampering steering. On the bright side, surprisingly, there is kart-to-kart collision detection. It is still poor, but credit where credit is due, no matter how small.
VERDICT: In short, M&M's Kart Racing is engine exhaust, but is it really one of the worst games ever? Is it really worse than Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing? I have seen games that are incredible to look at, games that engage us to let go of every preconception we have had of the worst game and accept that there may not be rock bottom for how execrable such madness of nominal entertainment could get. Coincidentally, the two games were outsourced by American companies from small European studios, but, whereas the truckers behind Big Rigs totaled it, the M&M's crew delivered a working product. It is still hard to recommend this product even as a form of dirt road cheap entertainment. It was supposed to bring us to more M&M's. Instead, I have not eaten it in years. This could be due to my desire to eat and live healthier. Then again, it could also be due to what I have witnessed.
M&M's Kart Racing was just another episode in the decades-long chapter of advergames, where companies explore media through which to market their product, including video games. More than just containing product placement, the whole games are the advertisements. Although I am unconvinced they have ever had any meaningful effect on our food choices as consumers, some of them were fun to play. Others were shoddy cash grabs a reasonable company would find to be grounds for dismissing a marketing team. A favorite platform to develop games like this for was the immensely popular Nintendo Wii, where "cheap but good enough" beat "better" consoles, hence the glut of third-party Wii games, and unfortunately a lot of shovelware. I can safely say that when Forrest Mars founded M&M's in 1941, he did not intend the candy to be starred in video games, and frankly, it does not deserve to be. So what could go wrong with M&M's Kart Racing? Or rather, what could go right?
We get past the loading screen and enter the menu, and here we run into problem No. 1: the graphics. It gets obvious during racing, but already the graphics look fit for a GameCube game, though a GameCube game often looked more exciting. The color scheme is a mistake. One expects a game about candy like M&M's to be bright and bountiful in rainbow colors. Instead, the colors are pale, dark, brown, and just plain drab, and there is minimal lighting and visual effects. The game looks like a product that has passed the alpha stage of software development, and stopped there. On top of that, it feels as if some of its textures and models were recycled from the Internet as stock assets. Ironically, the graphics are anything but eye candy, and the loading screen is closer to that descriptor.
All right, pick one of the five generic M&M's as your driver, select a kart available in your garage, pick a race if you have not chosen Tournament mode, and you are off. As warned, the graphical shortcomings become obvious, but now we have entered problem No. 2: the courses, and boy, do these tracks look dull and lifeless. Everything moves like ever concrete, there are no elements to interact with, and driving on anything feels like racing on railroads (notwithstanding freedom of steering, a reverse gear, and even driving the wrong way - surprising if you ask me). And yes, one would have to be a fool to assert that having animated textures in several places brings about life to the world. It is still stale air, but with a scent of fragrance added. To make matters worse, the tracks are rendered with noticeably limited draw distance. Why would a Wii racing game ever need limited draw distance? Granted, it is long enough that it does not affect playability, but they did not bother to throw in fog for good measure? It turns out the capped draw is to prevent slowdowns, as evidenced by framerates getting halved when a lot of the track and scenery is drawn. You know, Mario Kart Wii had no fog and draw distances long enough that the limits are at least not glaring. Never mind that the courses can get disorienting to the point where the player wished there were more than a few signs on the track indicating where on earth they should be driving. Some of the tracks bear little semblance of what they are supposed to represent. Take the first track, The Factory, with mostly just large rooms with crates of M&M's. How about The Farm, where the only relation to a farm is a barn, several haystacks, and two mega-sized yet dilapidated tractors. The two maps set in alien spacecraft do feel alien, but not as if they are set in spacecraft. The Colosseum is unimpressive, and two tracks can be simplified as oval tracks. Even the NASCAR games had better ovals. To be fair, the tracks did show some potential and could have been fun to race on, but in the spirit of the developers keeping a low budget, we are in for a bumpy ride.
Already, we make an emergency pitstop with problem No. 3: the gameplay. Like the tracks to be raced on, it is dull and bland. There are no distinctive traits or obvious fun features, not even power-ups that rip-offs have tried to outmaneuver Mario Kart with, save for speed boosts in the form of coffee cups here and there. Too bad they do not regenerate until the next race - and even then, despite one voice promising enormous speed, they provide marginal speed bumps - because I bet I can ride my bicycle faster than any of my kart-seated losers. Speaking ill of my opponents, there is little skill involved. Although there are three difficulty levels, the AI is still shallow on Hard, and one can finish a race with a comfortable lead, provided they retain their sense of orientation. Maintaining that lead is possible even with an unhelpful camera, which centers on the player's kart sometimes and trails behind it often to give them a poor view for tight turns, and reports of rusty controls. The latter would not surprise me. I vaguely remember the steering responding somewhat awkwardly to how I tilted my Wii Remote in 2010, when my siblings and I received the game as the first family purchase for a console that, along with three games, was gifted to us while I was a boy approaching teenhood, and I think I wished I could use a gamepad instead. I do not need to play such a wreck of a game again just to confirm the controls. I only need to watch online videos to remember the dreck I went through and how and why I even enjoyed it until I beat it. I could play split-screen multiplayer with a friend as competent as I, but the chances are, if they think as I do that the game is far cheaper than its $19.99 price tag would suggest, we both would agree that it belongs in a junkyard. The only interesting thing about the game is collecting coins - a missed opportunity since they should have been M&M's pieces - and unlocking vehicles to see what they look like, the best of which is the 4×4 Jet Convertible Kart, being the only one to drive at a velocity of what the karts should be driving at. That and the car models, fairly nice. As a note, it is possible to perform a stunt that car aficionados would call skiing, whereby a car balances itself on a pair of wheels, either the driver's side or the passenger's. It is awfully dangerous in real life, but in M&M's Kart Racing, it is a minor inconvenience. Again, little skill involved, and it just seems to be there to up one's wealth. There is also a stunt in which the player quickly lifts the Wii Remote to cause their kart to jump. This might have been a fun feature specific to the courses, but of course, the developers decided not to explore it, so we are left with what has no tangible effects on player experience and is totally pointless. Tragic.
Our tires get blown flat with problem No. 4: the sound effects. The karts sound as if they should not be driven at all, with some sounding harsher and more grating than others. Related is the voice acting. The voice design is a joke, and one of the most ridiculous in commercialized gaming. The clips seemingly play all over the place, at least when one gets to hear them, including in areas they should not. The voices themselves, like the game and unlike the candy it advertises, are bland and say pointless dialogue. Take such instances of ingenious, unparalleled quotes as the un-lame joke "A tasty combination" that is heard arbitrarily in the main menu, or the clearly justified racer's grievance "I need a better engine" when the player is overtaken by opponents, and of course, let us not forget the monumental masterpiece of vocal euphony that is the clip for each time the player approaches a speed boost power-up, "Approaching SOUND BARRIER! {sic}" (emphasis added) This honestly would have been great for a film or another video game. It is funny that whenever this game shows signs of talent, that talent gets wasted in the wrong places.
The fifth and last problem is the physics. At this point, one should grasp that it is off-road, just like everything else, without my explaining why. It is subpar, there is no reason for these sluggish karts to perform wheelies, there appear to be physical as opposed to motor barriers for maximum velocity, and the karts actually skim down hills, hampering steering. On the bright side, surprisingly, there is kart-to-kart collision detection. It is still poor, but credit where credit is due, no matter how small.
VERDICT: In short, M&M's Kart Racing is engine exhaust, but is it really one of the worst games ever? Is it really worse than Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing? I have seen games that are incredible to look at, games that engage us to let go of every preconception we have had of the worst game and accept that there may not be rock bottom for how execrable such madness of nominal entertainment could get. Coincidentally, the two games were outsourced by American companies from small European studios, but, whereas the truckers behind Big Rigs totaled it, the M&M's crew delivered a working product. It is still hard to recommend this product even as a form of dirt road cheap entertainment. It was supposed to bring us to more M&M's. Instead, I have not eaten it in years. This could be due to my desire to eat and live healthier. Then again, it could also be due to what I have witnessed.
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- FreeMediaKids
- Oct 23, 2023
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