When Mario Kart DS was released toward the end of 2005, it set the standard for racing games on Nintendo's newest handheld extremely high. Now, with the arrival of M&M's Kart Racing, there's a new benchmark against which to compare would-be competitors, though at the other end of the scale. This candy-inspired kart racer does almost nothing right as you negotiate its 11 uninspired courses, and it doesn't even try to do a lot of the stuff that you might expect to be standard over two years after Mario Kart DS. Even if you're allergic there's more fun to be found in a packet of M&M's than there is here, and given the game's dearth of modes the candy could conceivably last longer, too.

M&M's Kart Racing's eyesore of a menu screen affords you access to only three gameplay modes: Tournament, Time Trial, and multiplayer. Only one circuit and two different vehicles are available from the outset, but if you spend an hour or so playing through the Tournament mode you'll unlock everything else that the game has to offer. Regardless of which difficulty setting you choose, Tournament mode lacks any real challenge because you can retry each race as many times as you need to before unlocking and progressing to the next one. Because achieving any podium position in a field of five racers is good enough to progress you, you shouldn't really need to restart any of the races. But don't feel bad if you do; the game's AI doesn't play by the same rules that you do, nor does it appear to be hampered by the same awful vehicle handling and collision detection that you are.

Full story: gamespot.com