Mods I've played

Posted by Beardy in Opinion on 09 1st, 2009 | no responses

Mods are something I've seldom played with, historically speaking, but more and more lately I'm stumbling on interesting-looking conversions for games I own that are too compelling to pass up. A case in point, and the mod that prompted me to raise the subject, is the superb tech demo for Ashura: Dark Reign, a Sonic the Hedgehog-themed total conversion for Unreal Tournament 2004. Having played this for only a few minutes, I was amazed by the technical achievement and attention to detail – had I not known it was a mod, I could almost have believed I was playing the latest Sonic Adventure game on my PC, but with usual FPS controls. The only real giveaway was the very recognisable rocket launcher sound effect from UT2004 when I jumped on a robot. All the usual accoutrements of a Sonic game were present and correct – the spin attack, springs, loop-the-loops, collecting rings and so forth, all executed with a surprising degree of finesse. Which makes it all the more disappointing to learn that development has ground to a halt.

From the same list of notable mods that led me to Ashura, I also came across lunar sci-fi adventure Hollow Moon, again for UT2004. This is also technically brilliant – a notable lack of any sound effects (because you're in a spacesuit on the moon, obviously) coupled with a black and white colour scheme and a masterfully understated ambient soundtrack, provides senses of engrossing reality and foreboding I honestly haven't encountered in a video game probably since Doom.

Then there's UnWheel, which I've played a few times before, and again is for Unreal Tournament 2004 – and as the name implies, it lifts the vehicular chaos of its source and makes of it a driving game, with a rather wide and ludicrous selection of vehicles and a choice of game modes, ranging from a standard race through to car football. This is a highly playable game in itself, with many live servers running last time I looked for some truly bonkers online multiplayer. The only trouble is that UT's vehicle AI is laughable and unimproved by UnWheel, to the extent that on my first attempt racing against bots, all seven other vehicles decided to pile together in one corner and get utterly stuck, unable to complete the race. This is an issue I've encountered before, and it's cost me many an Onslaught or Vehicle CTF match when all the bots on my team have opted to piledrive each other into a wall. But at least if you stick to racing against other players, it's jolly good fun.

Leaving the Unreal Engine behind, there's plenty of superb Source mods I've been pointed at – such as Goldeneye: Source, an excellent attempt at recreating the classic Nintendo 64 game on the Half-Life 2 engine; Fistful of Frags, a lively wild west team-based game that although technically quite flaky is still highly enjoyable; and Zombie Master, a modestly successful zombie shooter.

The problem that seems to plague most of these mods is that they never seem to get finished – most are still in beta and many have had no activity for months or even years, despite apparent efforts being underway to complete the project the modders set out on. I can certainly appreciate that modding can be very time-intensive, can often entail far more work and manpower than was originally envisaged, and even that people might lose interest. But it's a very sad state of affairs when a mod like Ashura can display such promise in a technical preview only to become widely regarded as a long-running joke by members of the community it tried to serve.

A glimmer of hope in this sea of inspired but poorly-executed creations is Killing Floor, which famously started its life as yet another UT2004 modification but attracted the attention of Tripwire Interactive, makers of Red Orchestra, who allowed the developers to port the mod to their own engine and ultimately release it as a standalone game to considerable acclaim. And deservedly so, for it is a tense zombie survival horror with more replayability than one would expect from a low-cost independent title.

If only more mods had the same momentum.

Post to Twitter Post to Facebook Post to StumbleUpon



Comments are closed.