5.0

M&M's Break' Em

Where do I begin with this…game? For starters, there’s not much of a game here. What is here is very simple and more of a marketing item than anything else. As such, the company has actually come up with a very basic story to propel you through the game.

The premise of the game is that a bad peanut has escaped from the discard bin and vowed revenge on the vast world of M&M’S by kidnapping them all and sealing them into crystals. As one of the commercial M&M’S, you managed to escape his wrath and must now save the others from certain doom by bouncing around in a retarded puzzle-like fashion.

Conceptually, this isn’t the worst puzzle game around. It’s fairly fast-paced and can be frantic at times, but for the most part, it’s just drivel. You start each stage out as your character’s default color. There are patterns of M&M’S floating around the stage in a sort of Bust A Move sort of way, but instead of lining up your shots with like-colored M’s, you will instead bounce your tiny piece of candy around the screen until you hit like colored ones to make them float off the screen, presumably saving them of the tyrannical peanut. There are little candy coaters located on the square stages that will change your color, allowing you to free the rest of the candy-coated chocolates before finally landing on the exit and completing the stage.

Just so the game isn’t too easy, the developers have strategically placed evil faces that will crack your candy-ass and take one of your lives away. This tends to be more of an annoyance than a game mechanic because your character will constantly bounce around and it’s pretty easy to avoid these skulls all the way until you get to stages where they are so numerous that you can hardly move about the stage, thus making the game move exceedingly slow.

I would have rather seen a more thought-provoking level design with other obstacles to deter my progress, allowing the game to flow better than it does. Unfortunately this is what we have to deal with.

I wish I could tell you that the game’s sound made up for its gameplay, but it just doesn’t. As with quite a few of DSI’s games, this game just screams of haphazardly and effortless musical overtones and underscores. I was not digging the music one bit and the constant “BOING!” noise just got on my nerves. I just can’t get into this game’s aural experience and I doubt anyone else would either.

The game has a decent presentation with colorful menus and a good set of options (like being able to turn off the volume). It’s really not all that bad until you get into the actual game. The DS can do much better than this, and more or less has with the same game. You can control your character with either the D-Pad or the touch screen, but touch screen gaming just isn’t my thing. I guess I’d have to give them props for allowing me to use the D-Pad at least.

As I mentioned, the in-game graphics aren’t the prettiest. The M&M’S are quite tiny. Also, by nature, these M’s don’t offer up a great chance for graphic flare at all. They’re freaking M&M’s, for pity's sake!

If you can manage to stomach the game for extended periods of time or just love playing with your candy, this game could give you a lot of replay value, but there are so many great Puzzle games on the DS that you should check out before buying this piece of doo-doo. Seriously, look away. It doesn’t even come with a small pack of candy! What’s the deal with that?