By Jim Rossignol on February 8th, 2010 at 10:24 am.
Mod-making mothership Moddb has announced its mod of the year winners. You can see the full list of winners here, but the all important top ten – the players choice for mod of the year 2009 – is here. The prizes aren’t bad either. And yes, we’re acutely aware that we don’t do anything like enough mod coverage here on RPS, so consider this your notification to download and play all the top mods of 2009. If you don’t already own Crysis, this might be a reason to get it…
Ah mods, truly an ingenious way of immortalising the classics. Shame that a version of Black Mesa wasn’t ready in time for this.
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Glad to see TNM won
Even though I haven’t played the other SP mods I have a hard time imagining they’d top it
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Yeah, considering the development time and quality of design that these guys have managed, they definitely earned it.
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Surprised to see Median XL in the top 5. Nice achievement for a 10 year old game.
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Fuck yeah, TNM won! Heck, in my opinion it wasn’t just the best mod last year. It was the best game altogether. I expect great(er) things from Off-Topic Productions in a near future (can’t wait for their first commercial project)
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Alas. Mutliplayer only, plays like an FPS and requires Crysis all make me sad face icon.
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That Median XL clip was completely baffling. Why is everything blue? Is the guy at the center of the screen actually killing thing or just sliding through them at what seems like too high a speed?
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Good to see MWLL get the recognition it deserves!
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Oh my are we having trouble with game video voice overs today. Nerdy guys should not try to sound tough or portentious or, worstest of all, like a wrestling announcer. Someone with a good voice needs to just offer his services for free to all games type people: for the good of all games.
Anyways: all hail to Research & Development.
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12 year old aussie speaking slowly != gruff
really excruciating to listen to
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Where is the dark mod ? :-(
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…right behind you!
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@AndrewC
Duh! Duh! Duh! Der-der-der-duh!
Wait, wrong reference.
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People just want moar stuff to shooet! The Dark Mod may have deserved to win this contest, or it might not. Fans will still carry on and make more missions for it, and considering the Thief fanbase is what it is, TDM will prosper well.
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While I obviously loved the Dark Mod as an achievement, Mods are really judged by what you can play with. There’s nothing much you can actually *play* with the Dark Mod yet.
KG
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glad to see that a Zombie mod got the most original art direction (WTF!?!) ….
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Really, there was no contest here. There’d been quite a lot of good mods this year for a wide range of games, but The Nameless Mod is far and away one of the best singleplayer indie projects ever made, and Mechwarrior: Living Legends is probably the most fun I’ve had playing an online shooter in years.
Hats off to the winners.
Now if only I could convince more people to even TRY TNM. Despite the awards, most people hear the concept and immediately turn their noses up at it. There’s genuine resentment from some people – the immediate reaction of ‘Why would anyone put so much time and effort into this shit!?’ is hard to get past.
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I’d like to throw one of my own suggestions into the ring, if I may.
Fleet Operations for Star Trek Armada 2 is one of the best mods I have ever played. While vanila Armada 2 attempted to shoe-horn the Star Trek universe into an RTS, FleetOps, now at version 3.1.1 and still very much in development, improves upon every facet of it. The level of polish and attention to detail is simply astounding, and it needs far more recognition that it has so far received.
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No R & D? Zombie games winning both best art direction and best upcoming mod!
Boo!
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Another notable mod of 2009, which now seems largely wrapped up now, is Fallout 3: Wanderers Edition. It’s a total gameplay rework, changing it into something much more like STALKER in terms of combat, although VATS is still in there, it’s nowhere near the ‘automatic win’ button it used to be. It’s there to help you throw grenades and make tricky called shots when your own reflexes aren’t quite good enough.
It eventually becomes a bit more super-powered at higher levels, but you can still die in seconds if you get caught outside in front of a couple of enemies with heavy energy weapons.
Gameplay video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7b0mjp1wRA
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They should have called it Atomic Payne
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The character in that video seems to have all the bullet-time enhancing perks. There’s some that improve VATS, others that improve bullet-time, and some that improve sprinting. The three actions you can take that drain Action Points in the mod.
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Mother of god, that was exciting enough just to watch. Pity they haven’t amped up the flinch animations though.
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Actually a few more singleplayer-friendly mods in that list than I was expecting. Unfortunately, the only one of those I didn’t know about already was Median XL, and I don’t think I’m going to go back to Diablo II soon, even for crazy huge mods.
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I love best-of-the-year lists. Having been out of the music scene for most of the year I managed to find a treasure trove of albums that I missed out on when those lists hit in December.
The same thing has happened here. I haven’t really played any mods in the last 2 years, now I have a list of 10+ that I simply must try out!
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The guy’s character is very high level, it actually takes enough time and effort to make being that powerful feel worthwhile. Not sure if FWE is as comprehensive-overhauly as it might need to be to get in something like this, but it definately makes fo3 into a good game.
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ugh, darn comment system thwarted me again!
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Some zombie mod winning best original art direction (over Aaaaa! and Zeno Clash, no less!) makes me deeply confused.
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I was unaware Aaaaaah! and Zeno Clash were mods.
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But I might be stupid for not looking at the nominee list before posting. Bad TCM, no biscuit.
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Yay, Research and Development! That was one of my favorite games of 2009 period, not just favorite mods. I would LOVE to see a full-length game in that genre, if it could be done that well.
Is there a way to sort the winners lists to easily find the single-player games?
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