I handed my wife this puzzle game
to play and she handed it back 15 minutes later exclaiming that she didn’t
understand what was going on. Sure enough, I began playing it and was soon
mildly confused as well. I didn’t want to break down and actually
read the manual but it appeared that I was going to need to. But
then, an idea came to me, I would give it to my six-year old. Well, true to
form, my son began playing and within five minutes understood what was going
on and exactly how to do it. After a crash course on the finer points of
breaking bricks with an M&M, I feel fairly confidant in my findings of this
title.
Break Em, plays like several other
similarly themed games, only now you are using an M&M that has the ability to
change color. Why? Well because that’s the way the game is played. By
controlling a non-stop flying M&M, your goal is to smash various bricks in
order to open the escape hatch that moves you to the next level. There is a
wafer-thin plot involving a disgruntled peanut named Mr. Runch who, because of
being rejected to be a peanut M&M, has decided to trap all other M&M’s inside
crystal prisons. It’s all a ruse just to get you to play a game involving
strange color-changing blocks, traps and colorful candy shelled snacks.
"I recognize every one but the orange one."
Ok, so you pick your M&M and then
enter the fray, going from absurd location to absurd location, beating the
handful of levels each location contains. I could see no real benefit from
picking a different M&M as the game plays the same way, hit the color-changing
icons on the level to free the captured M&M’s of the same color and find the
escape icon. The problems lie in the fact that there are evil icons that can
either be found (items are hidden in rock that you must smack a couple of
times to see what’s under them) or strategically placed to make things more
difficult. Plus, if you can’t beat the game’s level fast enough, this weirdo
little dot chases you around the level trying to destroy your colored shell.
The game has really no redeeming value other then to shamelessly point the
player in the direction of eating those addictive candies; yes, it’s not much
more then a video-game commercial.
The graphics in said title are
pretty poor to look at since there are lots of colors to make you think you
are in a more involved game than you really are. They are little colored dots
after all. The skull icons that provide so much trouble are so tiny they
hardly seem threatening. Even the sounds and music that grates out of this
(ahem) title seem to be more of an afterthought than anything, the game has
the feel of something that was designed by a couple of guys who worked on it
for a handful of weekends and then at the end said "Oh, we need some music,"
and slapped whatever they could find/come up with. Disappointingly the
semi-famous voices of the characters from the TV commercials never make an
appearance, even though you are playing as one of them. Sad though, with the
smart-allecky voices they could have brought to the game may have given it
some gravitas.
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Gameplay: 4.0
It’s clunky and it isn’t much fun at all.
Graphics: 4.0
I believe this could have been a
GBA game. Looks about the same to me.
Sound: 3.0
I have never turned a game’s
sound down as fast as I did with this one. Why couldn’t they get the voice
actors?
Difficulty: Easy
Come on, once you figure out how to keep moving without hitting
anything, it is just an exercise in going through the motions.
Concept: 3.5
Not much more then a commercial
for M&M’s, only not as much fun.
Overall: 3.4
This was a really sad, sad game. It’s too easy, has no redeeming
qualities and quite frankly is not worth your time.
