M&M's Adventure

M&M's Adventure
There's nothing fun in this adventure.
Protagonist(s): Red Yellow Green Genre(s): Action-adventure Platform(s): Wii Nintendo DS Release: Wii November 13, 2008 Nintendo DS November 21, 2008 Developer(s): Nikitova Games Publisher(s): Zoo Digital Publishing Country: United States Series: M&M's Predecessor: M&M's Kart Racing Successor: M&M's Beach Party

M&M's Adventure is a 2008 action-adventure game developed by Nikitova Games and published by Zoo Digital Publishing, it was released only in North America for the Wii and Nintendo DS.

Plot

Taking place in the M&M’s factory around Christmas Eve, Red, Yellow, and Green are getting ready to pack up and enjoy their Christmas holidays, however, a system malfunction occurs which causes to eject 120 M&M’s around the factory, and makes every robot in the factory go haywire, so it’s up to Red, Yellow and Green to go around the factory and collect the 120 M&M’s just in time for Christmas.

Gameplay

It is mainly an open-world action-adventure game with 5 worlds with 5 levels in each world, including bosses, the 5 worlds are Valentine, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, and Christmas, which are locked behind M&M's candies.

Why It Sucks

1. The opening cutscene is terrible and poor.
   • The camera is really janky. It mostly never stays still or it just pans way too fast to another character.
   • There is some noticeable model clipping such as Yellow closing his locker and putting a item in his locker and when Green is typing (the arms are kinda clipping through each other).
   • The subtitles are out of sync and don't match the characters dialogue well. What happens is that a new subtitle appears sometimes when a different character is still talking.
2. For unknown reasons they didn't get the rights to use the voice cast heard in the M&M's commercials hence why the replacements sound like they were trying way too hard to sound like the original M&M's cast in the commercials. The worst offender is with Yellow, who sounds like a drug dealer with a very sore throat. The other voices don’t sound great either like how Cupid sounds monotonous, almost like a speech synthesizer.
3. This game has horrible controls. Since some of them use motion controls, it could be a pain to use them.
   • Red’s wings are very clunky to use especially when trying to turn (which is very hard to pull off).
   • Yellow's double jump is the worst of them all. First, the jump can only be used when ascending and not as a saving grace to correct the jump. Secondly, the jump has to be performed right after you press the jump button, and is very difficult to execute properly.
   • Green's tennis racket is used to deflect projectiles and attack enemies but it's so unresponsive and way too slow to use.
4. The graphics look like a 1997 Nintendo 64 game rather than a 2008 Wii game. The textures are very low resolution, the models are very polygonal (mainly the M&M's) and the characters never move their mouths once in the game.
5. The characters move so slow with Yellow being the worst one. All Yellow does is walk and nothing else. Every other character does have a bit more variety in movement, but still. However, there is a power-up for Red (which are speed shoes) which makes him go faster, but the problem is that it's very rare to find (only being in a few levels) and it only lasts for 10 seconds, making it a pathetic item.
6. The boss battles are lackluster and aren’t challenging at all since they can be easily defeated in one try.
   • The first one, which is against Cupid, is very easy. All you gotta do is wait for platforms to appear then push a button at the top of the platform which activates wires to shock him. Rinse and repeat.
   • The Easter Bunny one is pretty strange since you feed him nuts to regenerate his health. It's strange because generally in a boss fight you have to take away the boss's health and not regenerate it. Besides, if you're regenerating his health why are you fighting him?
   • Uncle Sam in the Fourth of July world is lackluster. You have to lure him into the coloring dye over and over and it isn't much of a challenge to the player.
   • Jack O’Lantern is the most easiest and pathetic boss in the game. You must activate Danger boxes to deplete his health and it can be beaten in under a minute.
   • The Snowman, which is the final boss, is pretty boring. All you do is jump on platforms to activate a button that melts him while he's throwing snowballs at you (You have to hear the same "Oh, it's hot!" line over and over).
7. Much like Mr. Bean and the 2001 Shrek game, you can't kill enemies at all. You can only stun them for a few seconds. Speaking of stunning, you can only stun a specific amount of enemies with the only type of enemies you can’t stun being the flying enemies (once they see you they start attacking you non-stop and they never stop coming which means you will take damage from them all the time).
8. The game has pretty long loading times. Most load times would take around 15-25 seconds to load an area, level, or a screen.
9. Most of the platforming and gameplay are not challenging at all due to the bad level design even with the terrible controls. Also, most of the mechanics in the levels are borderline frustrating to use especially with Yellow’s double jump as mentioned above.
10. For the most part, its soundtrack is generic and bland (sometimes it would feel like you even forgot that the music is even there at all even with you losing track on what the music sounded like). Hell, most of it consists of a repetitive elevator music-like loop.
11. The hub worlds are boring and lacking for a 2008 game because there's practically nothing going on aside from unlocking levels and some platforming to reach the doors. Super Mario 64 and Sonic Adventure has much more to offer in their respective hub worlds and those came out years earlier. Super Mario Galaxy had a better hub world as well and that was in 2007 (a year before this game came out).
12. There are some glitches throughout the game such as falling through a platform during a platforming section, some textures falling to load correctly or not loading at all and managing to clip through a door locked through an amount of M&M's.
13. With the laughable and awful animations, all of the M&M's move very awkwardly and stiff. There are some times where the animations can start freaking out such as in the opening cutscene when Yellow is closing his locker and even when Green is typing (there’s a few times where her hand starts freaking out).
    • Speaking of awful animations, the developers thought it would be hard to make a new walk-cycle for Green when she isn't holding the racket so they decided that she should have the same walk-cycle even when she isn't holding the racket. This is confusing for new players on why she has that walk-cycle.
14. Much like Smarties: Meltdown, the font used for the game is Comic Sans (a really questionable choice for a font).
15. Due to atrocious sound mixing, most of the sound effects and music abruptly end all of a sudden and often drown out the voices. They could sometimes be low-quality too mainly when Yellow is snoring in the ending and when the alarm triggers with Yellow saying "Uh-oh".
16. Every single M&M's candy you collect will always be green no matter what. There’s not a single M&M's candy that is a different color. The developers could've at least give some of the candy collectibles a different color to make them stand out from one another.
17. Unfortunately, due to the lack of voice acting in the DS port you can't even hear the voice acting with all the dialogue being text on the bottom screen.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The voice acting could be unintentionally funny for some people, mainly due to how atrocious it is.
2. The ending isn't too bad, and (depending on your view) pretty funny when you Yellow is supposed to be dumb, since he’s still sleeping when Red calls him to wake up.
3. The DS version at least stays true to the Wii version instead of being a completely different game, unlike most games released simultaneously on the DS and other systems.

Trivia

• A PlayStation 2 version of the game was in development, but was cancelled, though some theories say that this version is in limited quantities, due to the fact it has a page on the official PlayStation website, and has an Amazon page, though it says it's currently unavailable.

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