Think about making an already bad rip-off of an already good racing game. Think it'd be unnoticeable considering that Mario Kart Wii was released after this game? Although making a racing game out of M&M is a horrible idea, It was pretty innovative. But making a racing game out of M&M's is an extremely questionable idea, since the characters in that food brand themselves, while they can have potential for a video game in general, however don't for a racing game. Therefore, it is pointless to make a kart racing game out of M&M's, especially when it actually turns out to be an obvious Mario Kart rip-off, just like some other racing games, like Crazy Frog Racer and its sequel, just to prove how the developers/publishers were unoriginal.
The game plays very similarly to Mario Kart, only with a lack of items and other elements stolen from the original game itself then remade so poorly. Some characters you race against, like a grasshopper and a fox, feel out of place for a game based on M&M’s. If they used different coloured M&M’s, it would make sense, but with other creatures, it doesn’t in this game.
The controls are incredibly unresponsive. This makes the game pretty difficult to complete, no matter how many times you will press the button that controls your M&M. The unresponsive controls are on par with Sonic Free Riders. The turning is so inconsistently sensitive because it’s either way too sensitive, or not sensitive enough, which makes the narrow turns even more of a pain. Some kart control design choices don't make any sense, such as when you’re going down a ramp or jump with your kart, you can’t turn at all, this is especially a problem in the Mountains course where you’re supposed to turn when going downhill. Also, you cannot perform manual drifts at all, which is unacceptable because drifting (depending on your view) is a staple in racing games.
The graphics are abysmal with their low-quality textures that belong to an early fifth generation game more than a early seventh generation game, the textures are very muddy and low-quality, and the colors are very bleak and washed-out compared to the colorful design of the M&M’s brand, Mario Kart 64 came in 1997, a decade after this game, looks five times better than this, and that was an early N64 game. The models look fugly, outdated and blocky. They look like they were actually made for the PlayStation, at least in 1995 or 1996, despite this is a game from 2007 or 2008. No matter which model of M&M you will see, they will still look ugly. The shadow lighting is very inconsistent, there are times where there are shadows reflecting, but other times, the shadows are non-existent, with the most notable instance is when on the character selection screen, where the M&M’s lack model lighting. The visuals look poor, most notably the water in the Beach track, which looks like static, and the sand in the same track, because it looks way too pale for sand. In addition, much like Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, the framerate is very inconsistent and can’t decide what it wants to run at, with some areas feeling like it’s running at 60 FPS, but for most of the game, it’s locked to 30 FPS or lower.
The tracks, two of the fifteen tracks which are pretty creative, are both bland and horribly designed, most of them have very tight and narrow turns which are so short, it’s sometimes impossible to even get through the turn, all of them have very linear and cookie-cutter track designs which aren’t interesting, there are some tracks where there’s a lot of obstacles with small breathing areas, which like the narrow turns, could be impossible to get through, the Beach track is the biggest example of obstacles with small breathing areas, with most of the track being filled with random obstacles that are nearly impossible to get through unless you master the controls. Not to mention, the tracks can contain very narrow passageways and very tight turns. There is also no minimap, which is strange for a kart racer, though you wouldn’t need it because the track design is so cookie-cutter.
The karts make an ear-scratchily annoying sound when the player crashes into a wall, just to kill your ears and go to the hospital to get them fixed. Even GP vs. SuperBike's sound when the player crashes into a wall is not annoying. Adding to that, the voice-overs are very irritating and will get on your last nerves, since most of the time, they say the same things over and over again, most infamously is for when you reach full acceleration:
“APPROACHING SOUND BARRIER!!!”
Speaking of, the awful voice acting. It is clear they only had 2 actors, which is one for all the male M&M’s, and another one for the Green M&M, and the voice acting for the male M&M’s and the Green M&M barely sounds like the original voice cast. Even M&M's Shell Shocked managed to get the original voice cast like Billy West and J. K. Simmons and that was on the PS1 back in 2001.
The loading times are hideous, lasting for about 15 seconds. Even the game's official website had to put a screenshot of the loading screen. Not to mention, it uses the Comic Sans MS font, which is just plain laziness.
There are numerous bugs and glitches, one of which involves you bouncing another player's car up a window in multiplayer and driving into it, causing the game to crash. The camera angles are dreadful, which can often fly away from the player, eventually hiding the gameplay.
Some of the power ups are inconveniently placed so that they boost you into a wall if you run into them by accident. There is no item system whatsoever, and the only Power-up you get is a cappuccino, which acts as a brief speed boost which is sometimes hard to control. For some reason, if you unlock a car, you only unlock it for that specific character, for example, if you unlock a new car as the Orange M&M, you have to unlock it again for the Red M&M, which could be considered artificial padding.
The multiplayer mode doesn't support more than two players, similar to the PlayStation port of Lego Racers, despite the PS1 supporting multi-taps to allow more than 2 controllers to be connected to the console. The Wii is capable of supporting up to 4 players for multiplayer.
In the words of James Rolfe, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?