As Crash Bandicoot clones go, this must be one of the most blatant. You run through hallways smashing crates, jumping on enemies and spinning your way to the end goal. Even the button mapping matches exactly. The original Crash trilogy is not without its flaws, especially the first game, but at least you can say with confidence the games played well and looked good for the PS1. ‘M & M’s Shell Shocked’ is unnecessary, poorly programmed, ugly as sin and yet somehow not completely without merit.

Shell Shocked is an altered version of the earlier PC title The Lost Formulas. The major difference between the two being that Shell Shocked removed educational, Math zones from each level. Yes, that was a thing in this candy-based license platformer. Otherwise, the story, level design and gameplay are exactly alike.

The premise of this game is that the M & M’s Red & Yellow are heading off on holiday only to realise that they left the Minis in charge at the factory. Inevitably, the factory quickly descended into chaos: robots are malfunctioning, the chocolate has been tampered with and the electrics are all over the place. Ahem, sure. Flimsy pretext, it may be, but at least it is different.

Thus starts the first level: a driving level. Interesting decision there: make the opening level of a platformer a vehicle section and a dull one at that. The first thing you’ll notice is how ugly the game is. In terms of model quality, things seem more akin to a Gameboy Advance title than something on a 5th generation home console. The road undulates significantly, but your car never veers off the horizontal, so you end up with awkward, stuttered movement up and down hills. All you’re trying to do is drive back to the factory, but for some reason everybody else is going out of their way to crash into you. Nonetheless, you make it and will most likely be 40 or so lives to the good by the time you do.

There are 8 levels in total with 3 zones each. Level 2 and beyond, we enter more traditional Crash territory. Disappointingly, the graphical fidelity does not get any better. The ‘robot’ enemies are a mess of random polygons and Yellow’s 3D model looks horrifyingly depressed. Mostly though, you’re just overwhelmed by blue. The floor is blue, the walls are blue, the conveyor belts and floating platforms too.

The levels vary in theme as you travel through the factory from the frustrating Oh Chute where jumping off conveyor belts continues your momentum (enjoy trying to jump forwards off a backwards moving belt) to Candy Colours where food colouring is your nemesis. This conveyor belt momentum continues through death to the previous checkpoint, which gave me one hilarious moment where I kept respawning, flying forward and falling to my death in an endless loop. Each level culminates in underwhelming boss stages. However, there is real creativity in the game taking you through the different areas of production in a fictional candy factory. The juxtaposition of the originality of the story and themes versus the derivative, cloned nature of play is stark.

Put simply, Crash was good, but Shell Shocked is a weak knock-off. In truth, it doesn’t play horrendously, but just poorly enough to be irritating. Hit detection is all kinds of whack: which you’ll benefit from as much as suffer, but it lends an unpredictability and therefore a frustration to making your way through levels. You’ll be hitting moving obstacles that appear to be nowhere near and destroying enemies after your spin attack looks to be finished. Platforming is (mostly) saved by an ever-present shadow showing where you’ll land without which the lack of perspective would make certain leaps near impossible to judge.

In the sound department, we’re left with a soft whimper where you might find exploding TNT crates, sorry, bomb crates, and robots smash like glass. Music is mediocre at best: you won’t be caught humming any tunes after a play session.

One big difference with Crash is that you should fight your urge to smash all the crates. You get no reward other than the Minis within to gain more lives. Get the no-risk crates and the blue ones (worth 100 Minis and therefore an extra life) only. The exception to this is the brown crates which contain power-ups or a piece of a ‘secret formula’. Collecting all 3 of these within a single zone unlocks a hidden bonus level. However, the bonus levels serve absolutely no purpose and the power-aps (aku-aku equivalent aside) are just as likely to cause your death as prevent it. In fact, there is absolutely no incentive to do anything other than make your way to the end of the level via the fastest possible path.

So far, so bad, but there really is a saving grace here. At the start and end of every level, you get short fully animated cutscenes where it’s made clear the bulk of the budget went. The cutscenes are genuinely some of the most entertaining short sketches found in any video game right up to this day, thanks mostly to the superb vocal talents of Billy West (Red), J.K. Simmons (Yellow) and Cree Summer (Green). You can tell they had a lot of fun portraying their candied characters.

Is this worth playing? I can’t justify saying yes as I’m struggling to think of a demographic I’d recommend it to other than people who enjoy bad games. Crash fans? Definitely not. Kids? Better choices. PS1 collectors? Nope. M & M’s lore enthusiasts? Is that a thing?

Do yourself a favour and just watch the cutscenes instead.