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"The Jet Gamer" Game Review: M&M's Kart Racing
9 years ago
I’m playing more games like this yes.
M&M’s Kart Racing
An M&M game is what I’m playing now? Yeah, I hear you already. What in the world are you doing playing this? Hey, it was cheap and good for collection filler. That being said, what kind of game could something that was made to pretty much be a promotion for a candy be like? Honestly, hearing something like this and it being on the Wii doesn’t give me high hopes. Let us see if those fears are justified or not shall we?
Gameplay
In this game, you race as one of the five M&M characters you typically see in the commercials. Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Orange are all available to be played as. Yet, there are other characters that show up as you playing the game that obviously do not fit in this universe. I’ve never even heard of them or seen them before, one being someone named Foxy. Yeah, that’s not odd at all. You can’t even play as these characters, not that I found you could anyway. A racing game that really only has five characters and others that you can never play as. Yeah, that’s something you do in a racing game for sure. Well, getting away from the characters for a moment, the main gameplay of this racing game is no better than you would expect. Each race is a race pretty much just between five racers. You would expect more in a racing game, where honestly, the standard for kart racing games seems to be eight characters minimum. I don’t think I’ve seen less than that for a while. So really, you just race around each track three times before finishing the race. The thing is, this game is honestly so easy to finish. Almost every track I raced on, I had an almost thirty to forty second lead and could easily maintain it throughout the race, even when crashing into something. And believe me, you are going to crash into things all the time during this game. There are many places where turns are very hairpin like, and honestly way too curvy for what you would expect in a game where you are racing and trying to go fast. Fast though isn’t something you will be doing on about half the tracks in this game. Around half the tracks do allow you to go fast, because they are so wide open that you really don’t have to worry about anything at all. There are barely any hazards on these types of tracks and honestly are just about holding down the accelerator button and just getting to the finish. The other half of the tracks in this game are so curvy that you are going to be hitting walls all the time if you try and even go anything more than coasting or riding the breaks. Yeah, that’s what you want to be doing in a racing game, not going fast and having to go slow on purpose just so you won’t ram into things because your course is so curvy. Someone obviously didn’t know how to design curvy courses. There is nothing wrong with a curvy race track, but you do want to make it where your curves aren’t slowing the action down to super slow speeds either. There are really only two main modes in this game as well. There is arcade mode where all you do is collect little chocolate coins as you race around the track on your own. Then there is the tournament mode where you race against other racers around each track in the game three times. There are no points or anything. It is just finish the track and move onto the next one. They should have honestly just called this marathon mode instead of tournament mode in my opinion. How can you call something a tournament if there are no points or honestly any reason to even play through all the tracks like this. So really, I can’t say I’m that impressed at all here. Someone obviously didn’t know how to design racing tracks, and someone didn’t even know how to make a tournament mode properly. Yeah, I don’t think I really have anything positive to say here about the gameplay. That’s a first really. The game isn’t broken, but it is very close to being broken. I doubt many will be having fun here.
Story
Not applicable, this is a kart racing game.
Graphics
I have nothing positive to say on the graphics really either. Everything represents what it should be in this game, so at the very least I can say that. However, everything looks pretty poorly designed and very flat when you see a lot of things up close. There is also the fact that I notice a lot of blurring as you are going along in these karts. I can understand when things are trying to load when you are going along in racing games, but you should never be able to see loading or blurring as you are driving along. It can be a little disorienting when you see blurring like this as well, but I have definitely seen blurring in a worst effect than this. Just be ready for some distance blurring as you going along. Then as I said, so often, I see many things in the backgrounds looking so blocky or flat like they were just card board cut outs. For example, one track as you racing in an arena with a crowd, many times as you are racing by you come pretty close to the crowd and you get a good look at how card board cut out like they look. I can understand this back in the PS1 era when they were still getting used to this, but this was the Wii and PS2 era. They were starting to get better at things like this. This is obviously a budget title and just more shovelware for the Wii. They didn’t even try and hide that fact. Especially when you flat out drive through some objects or certain things that should be barriers or things that slow you down, don’t do so at all. You don’t even have to stay on the tracks, as there are no driving differences between the road and the sides of the tracks. You can just go riding off in the dirt and on some tracks it is actually faster to do so. Yeah, you can’t even change the game to drive your car differently or slower when you go off the track than when you are on the track? Yeah, that’s just lazy programming.
Sound
The music in this game is honestly very ignorable. I barely even noticed that there was music for the most part, as the cars sort of drown them out with their engine sounds. When I did hear music, it was so forgettable that I honestly don’t even know remember what any of it sounded like at all. There was though something super annoying about this game and that was the voices from the announcer and the other racers. The other racers only have a few sayings they say, but they repeat them over and over again. They sound no different from each other as well, so you will hear the same saying from different racers in the same voice with the same sayings. There is also the deal with the announcer constantly spewing out this same one line over and over as you are racing. He keeps saying Approaching Sound Barrier over and over again on each track. You are going nowhere near this speed, but he feels the need to constantly spew this line over and over again. It gets old very fast. So honestly, the sound and music in this game is more annoying than anything. That’s not good at all.
Control
The controls in this game are mixed at best. You can at least control where you are going and gas and break as you please, which is at least better than some things in this game. However, your car can sometimes make odd movements with certain button presses, and really just seems to have some unnecessary functions, such as jumping and horn honking. You will get stuck on things every now and then though, which is quite annoying. You turn so oddly as well that really, hitting things is just going to be something that happens in this game. I know it is sometimes hard to describe how tricky it is to control something in a game, but believe me, it is tricky. It isn’t broken like other things are in this game, but any more and it would have been. At least you can race, when you are racing, at the very least I can say that.
Replay Value
I doubt anyone would want to come back and play this game any more than they have to, unless you are a young or a completionist. The only thing I can see that would keep people wanting to play this game some more, would be if they want to collect enough coins to unlock all the carts that are available in this game. For anyone else, or people like me, a few hours and you are likely don’t with this game for good. I’ll give it a few points for having something for the completionist to poke around at for a while, but there is absolutely nothing else that will keep anyone wanting to play this game more than a few times. When you can’t even make a tournament mode work properly, you have lost all hope for a lasting racing appeal in a kart racing game.
Overall, M&M’s Kart Racing is nothing but cheapo shovelware for the Wii that honestly, I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. That is not something I say often, but honestly, when you can’t even get some of the basic functions that people come to expect these days in a racing game correct, your game honestly has no hope at all. Graphics are way out of date. The controls are poor, and with no lasting effect to even want to bring people back to your game, you know your game is doomed. If you see this game, give it a pass, unless you just want to add it to your collection just to say you have it. I see that the only reason people would want this game. Everyone else, just stay away.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give M&M’s Kart Racing a three out of ten.
Gameplay: 2
Story: N.A.
Graphics: 3
Sound: 3
Control: 4
Replay Value: 3
Overall: 3
M&M’s Kart Racing
An M&M game is what I’m playing now? Yeah, I hear you already. What in the world are you doing playing this? Hey, it was cheap and good for collection filler. That being said, what kind of game could something that was made to pretty much be a promotion for a candy be like? Honestly, hearing something like this and it being on the Wii doesn’t give me high hopes. Let us see if those fears are justified or not shall we?
Gameplay
In this game, you race as one of the five M&M characters you typically see in the commercials. Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Orange are all available to be played as. Yet, there are other characters that show up as you playing the game that obviously do not fit in this universe. I’ve never even heard of them or seen them before, one being someone named Foxy. Yeah, that’s not odd at all. You can’t even play as these characters, not that I found you could anyway. A racing game that really only has five characters and others that you can never play as. Yeah, that’s something you do in a racing game for sure. Well, getting away from the characters for a moment, the main gameplay of this racing game is no better than you would expect. Each race is a race pretty much just between five racers. You would expect more in a racing game, where honestly, the standard for kart racing games seems to be eight characters minimum. I don’t think I’ve seen less than that for a while. So really, you just race around each track three times before finishing the race. The thing is, this game is honestly so easy to finish. Almost every track I raced on, I had an almost thirty to forty second lead and could easily maintain it throughout the race, even when crashing into something. And believe me, you are going to crash into things all the time during this game. There are many places where turns are very hairpin like, and honestly way too curvy for what you would expect in a game where you are racing and trying to go fast. Fast though isn’t something you will be doing on about half the tracks in this game. Around half the tracks do allow you to go fast, because they are so wide open that you really don’t have to worry about anything at all. There are barely any hazards on these types of tracks and honestly are just about holding down the accelerator button and just getting to the finish. The other half of the tracks in this game are so curvy that you are going to be hitting walls all the time if you try and even go anything more than coasting or riding the breaks. Yeah, that’s what you want to be doing in a racing game, not going fast and having to go slow on purpose just so you won’t ram into things because your course is so curvy. Someone obviously didn’t know how to design curvy courses. There is nothing wrong with a curvy race track, but you do want to make it where your curves aren’t slowing the action down to super slow speeds either. There are really only two main modes in this game as well. There is arcade mode where all you do is collect little chocolate coins as you race around the track on your own. Then there is the tournament mode where you race against other racers around each track in the game three times. There are no points or anything. It is just finish the track and move onto the next one. They should have honestly just called this marathon mode instead of tournament mode in my opinion. How can you call something a tournament if there are no points or honestly any reason to even play through all the tracks like this. So really, I can’t say I’m that impressed at all here. Someone obviously didn’t know how to design racing tracks, and someone didn’t even know how to make a tournament mode properly. Yeah, I don’t think I really have anything positive to say here about the gameplay. That’s a first really. The game isn’t broken, but it is very close to being broken. I doubt many will be having fun here.
Story
Not applicable, this is a kart racing game.
Graphics
I have nothing positive to say on the graphics really either. Everything represents what it should be in this game, so at the very least I can say that. However, everything looks pretty poorly designed and very flat when you see a lot of things up close. There is also the fact that I notice a lot of blurring as you are going along in these karts. I can understand when things are trying to load when you are going along in racing games, but you should never be able to see loading or blurring as you are driving along. It can be a little disorienting when you see blurring like this as well, but I have definitely seen blurring in a worst effect than this. Just be ready for some distance blurring as you going along. Then as I said, so often, I see many things in the backgrounds looking so blocky or flat like they were just card board cut outs. For example, one track as you racing in an arena with a crowd, many times as you are racing by you come pretty close to the crowd and you get a good look at how card board cut out like they look. I can understand this back in the PS1 era when they were still getting used to this, but this was the Wii and PS2 era. They were starting to get better at things like this. This is obviously a budget title and just more shovelware for the Wii. They didn’t even try and hide that fact. Especially when you flat out drive through some objects or certain things that should be barriers or things that slow you down, don’t do so at all. You don’t even have to stay on the tracks, as there are no driving differences between the road and the sides of the tracks. You can just go riding off in the dirt and on some tracks it is actually faster to do so. Yeah, you can’t even change the game to drive your car differently or slower when you go off the track than when you are on the track? Yeah, that’s just lazy programming.
Sound
The music in this game is honestly very ignorable. I barely even noticed that there was music for the most part, as the cars sort of drown them out with their engine sounds. When I did hear music, it was so forgettable that I honestly don’t even know remember what any of it sounded like at all. There was though something super annoying about this game and that was the voices from the announcer and the other racers. The other racers only have a few sayings they say, but they repeat them over and over again. They sound no different from each other as well, so you will hear the same saying from different racers in the same voice with the same sayings. There is also the deal with the announcer constantly spewing out this same one line over and over as you are racing. He keeps saying Approaching Sound Barrier over and over again on each track. You are going nowhere near this speed, but he feels the need to constantly spew this line over and over again. It gets old very fast. So honestly, the sound and music in this game is more annoying than anything. That’s not good at all.
Control
The controls in this game are mixed at best. You can at least control where you are going and gas and break as you please, which is at least better than some things in this game. However, your car can sometimes make odd movements with certain button presses, and really just seems to have some unnecessary functions, such as jumping and horn honking. You will get stuck on things every now and then though, which is quite annoying. You turn so oddly as well that really, hitting things is just going to be something that happens in this game. I know it is sometimes hard to describe how tricky it is to control something in a game, but believe me, it is tricky. It isn’t broken like other things are in this game, but any more and it would have been. At least you can race, when you are racing, at the very least I can say that.
Replay Value
I doubt anyone would want to come back and play this game any more than they have to, unless you are a young or a completionist. The only thing I can see that would keep people wanting to play this game some more, would be if they want to collect enough coins to unlock all the carts that are available in this game. For anyone else, or people like me, a few hours and you are likely don’t with this game for good. I’ll give it a few points for having something for the completionist to poke around at for a while, but there is absolutely nothing else that will keep anyone wanting to play this game more than a few times. When you can’t even make a tournament mode work properly, you have lost all hope for a lasting racing appeal in a kart racing game.
Overall, M&M’s Kart Racing is nothing but cheapo shovelware for the Wii that honestly, I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. That is not something I say often, but honestly, when you can’t even get some of the basic functions that people come to expect these days in a racing game correct, your game honestly has no hope at all. Graphics are way out of date. The controls are poor, and with no lasting effect to even want to bring people back to your game, you know your game is doomed. If you see this game, give it a pass, unless you just want to add it to your collection just to say you have it. I see that the only reason people would want this game. Everyone else, just stay away.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give M&M’s Kart Racing a three out of ten.
Gameplay: 2
Story: N.A.
Graphics: 3
Sound: 3
Control: 4
Replay Value: 3
Overall: 3
