Welcome to Modojo, 
Mo-Pets Review
Written by Justin Davis on Monday, February 12, 2007
Innovative Online features increase replay value. Looks & sounds great
Gameplay could use a little more depth.
Mo-Pets from Sony BMG and Floodgate is half Nintendogs and half Tamagotchi. What sets the game apart (in a good way) from both the smash hits is its emphasis on head-to-head competition with other real trainers, which contributes to an overall local and national trainer ranking.
The first thing that really struck me about the game is its cute sense of style. The four pet varieties available (dog, cat, monkey, and ferret) weren't designed to look realistic, but they aren't your typical "cute, cartoony" pet designs, either. They're pretty quirky, but endearing in their own way. I did manage to become attached to my cute little cat "Modojo" (I never claimed to be a creative namer).
The meat of the game involves putting your pet through a couple of unique training regimens, to raise its ability in various skills (sit, stand, jump up, crawl, etc). The first training session consists of putting your pet through a fairly simple obstacle course, where you'll issue your pet a command via the U, D, L & R arrows to progress. "Right" is a long jump and is used to jump over a puddle, "down" is crawl and is used to get through a tunnel, etc. The lack of obstacle variety and the relatively easy nature in which they're overcome makes this particular training method wear thin rather quickly, however.
The second training minigame is a little more complex and rewarding. Icons representing the various tricks will scroll across the screen, and you must press a softkey at the proper moment to collect one. Once you have three (or sometimes four or five) of the same icon, your pet gains some proficiency in that skill. The catch is that bonus and penalty icons are also scrolling across the screen, but not at the same speed. It becomes very tricky trying to collect five "backflip" icons while avoiding all the penalty icons that are also scrolling.
Once you think you've perfect your mad "pet skillz," you can enter it into a Talent Show, and it's here that Floodgate's previous online experience shows through. The show itself isn't too involved - you trade off performing tricks with the other trainer, with trick success/failure determined by your pet's obedience and skill. It would have been nice if "performing" the tricks was a minigame of its own, instead of just selecting the trick from a menu and hoping your pet's skill is enough to pull it off. What is neat about it however is how these talent show victories & losses tie into persistent local and national leaderboards. You choose what trainer you want to face off against, so at any time you can pit your pet against the national champ, or a scrub from your city. These rankings are great motivation to keep up with your pet's training.
The big problem with Mo-Pets is that the training gameplay just doesn't have the depth to support the cool online leaderboard features. The only way to move your pet up the rankings is just to play the same two training minigames over, and over, and over again. Mo-Pets is really just two not-especially-deep minigames wrapped up in a pet-themed package, with some online features there to motivate. There are a couple of minor extras like the ability to "pet" your animal with the numpad and feed him treats to reward good behavior, but they're both fairly throwaway and don't increase the longevity of the title.
With eight tricks to learn in all, why couldn't we have had eight minigames, one for each trick? Why couldn't the talent show have been made less passive, by not just being a check of your pet's skill against the difficulty of a trick? Why doesn't your pet require food or water (which could have been purchased with talent show winnings?)
Don't get me wrong, Mo-Pets is still a fun, cute title. I don't want to criticize the game too harshly for not being something it isn't trying to be. Over the course of a few weeks or months if you devoted a few idle minutes a day to training your pet you'd undoubtedly have a lot of fun, and have a well-trained pet, to boot. The title could just use some more depth to make it a more attractive overall package.
