M.O.O.D.S. Second Preview

 Hey, I did a preview of M.O.O.D.S. around a year ago, and this top-down roguelite shooter, all about using emotions to shoot robots to scrap, has undergone quite a few changes since then. If you haven’t checked it out yet, give it a read before continuing this article because I won’t be retreading too much ground here.

Hey, they changed the intro!

For the uninitiated, humanity has left Earth to the robots, who have been trying to replicate emotions to understand them. This turns out not to be a good thing, as the emotion modules ended up corrupting quite a lot of them, like a drug that every bot wants for a fix. However, you are one of the few machines that can handle these modules without going insane, so you’re the best chance of resolving this mess, using every aspect of the emotional spectrum… and guns.

Emotions are the main focus of M.O.O.D.S.: they’re your character classes, with different abilities, stats, and starting weapons. With every boss, you'll choose from emotion-based dialogue options that can affect your foe's behaviour, making them hold back, disabling an attack, keeping them in place, or encouraging them to fight harder with new moves/abilities. It’s still a great mechanic that you can eventually learn and abuse. You probably should take notes on what emotion evokes what response.

Feel whatever you want.

Since I first played the game, more classes have been added and previous ones have gotten makeovers. I remember that the only difference between them was the colour and face they had, but now they have a lot more that stand out from one another, which I find great. I think there’s been an overall change to the art style, adding thick black outlines over characters and interactables. It makes chaotic gunfights a little more understandable, and since you can now play the game with three other players, this is a good change.

However, with updates introducing new weapons and armour to help you, enemies have gotten more dangerous. Bosses have all new attacks (that may or may not be used if you anger them), there are new enemy types to deal with, and just general tweaks to ensure you’re not having too easy of a time. There’s also a difficulty setting that was added in a previous update, so you can tackle M.O.O.D.S. however you want, either as a relaxing time or as a constant near-death experience.

Make them feel everything.

I think M.O.O.D.S. is going in a really good direction; however, the best way forward before the full release now is optimisation. This game isn’t running as well as it could be, and it becomes more of a problem as you progress. With each Add-In (mods that change how your gun behaves) I, uh, added in to my weapons, the more the FPS dropped every time it fired. Eventually, things got crazy enough that my screen would be filled with bullets, making it impossible to see enemy projectiles, which eventually led to a crash. It might be my PC, but I have run more graphically intense games with better FPS.

I’m worried about what will happen when more players are added to the mix when they’re firing their boomsticks all over the place. I’ve also noticed quite a few issues with audio and gotten softlocked a few times, even getting placeholder menus. However, the version I was playing was a test build (that did include extremely tempting cheats), so this might all be changed at a later date or already has.

"You fight like a cow!"

In all, I’m still eager to play more of M.O.O.D.S., seeing how much progress there has been to the game since my initial preview. However, there should be a focus on smoothing over its technical aspects over adding new content; I like my games to run at over 30 FPS after all.