Smarties: Meltdown

released on Mar 17, 2006

Smarties: Meltdown is a 3D action platformer game. The game lets the player control one of the sweet Nestlé snacks and has to save the Smarties factory spaceship from an invasion by the evil dr. Soursweet and his underlings. The player takes control of a Smartie called Big Blue who is equipped with a power suite that enables him to walk and jump. Blue can also use hand-to-hand combat or a range weapon called the Choco Ray to defeat the underlings of dr. Soursweet. Permanent and temporary upgrades like super role and Super boots can be collected along the way.


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Might be one of the worst things Nestle has ever done to society.

This game has been given a rating of 1/10 by OPM saying "to say Smarties: Meltdown isn't a fraction as good as the title suggests doesn't even begin to convey how soulless, ugly and utterly starved of charm this confectionary-themed platform really is".

When I think of the niche subgenre of "Video games based on candy" my first thought is early 2010's Wii shovelware, mainly starring the M&M's spokescandies (May God rest their soul), so colour me surprised to see that Nestlé managed to waste even more of the world's resources by making some poor sods develop a video game based on their Smarties candies. Man, they're good at that.

For the uninitiated, Smarties are like chocolate M&M's only sadder, not the chalky things you Americans get.

In this game, you play as a blue Smartie, played by Dave Benson Phillips (I don't know who that is, but he's a selling point on the back of the box), whos job is to defeat the Stroopers, sentient candies that have invaded the Smarties' spaceship (yes, the Smarties candies are sentient too) in order to stop them being delivered to Earth, and their boss, Dr. Soursweet, who wants to defeat the Smarties so he can deliver the Stroopers to Earth instead.

The game itself is a pretty straightforward 3D platformer, a confusing choice of genre for a game like this, and even on the hardest difficulty it's pretty easy.
The voices are stupid in the best possible way and the camera's a bit wacky at times but it's not really offensive to any of my senses, although it is rather empty.

You collect Smarties in order to progress, kinda like Mario 64's Stars, and it can be quite fun collecting them.
The game's enemies are really easy to kill as you can just spam the Hit button and they won't fight back at all.

I think the most annoying thing about this game is that the majority of your time in it is spent pushing buttons and hoping something works in your favour.
One of the first "boss battles" uses a first person mechanic I didn't even know existed, only figuring it out via the game's manual.
It's a good thing I had one or I'd have been shit out of luck.