2009: Year of the Finally-Released Mods?
Since the start of summer, I've been checking back on some interesting game mods that I have been looking forward to, and have been surprised as many projects that have been in the works for a few years are finally reaching completion and are likely to be released this year.
The first is "Black Mesa", a mod for Half-Life 2 that remakes the original Half-Life using the new graphics and physics engine. The current trailer looks especially impressive, and the developers have also announced a 2-player co-op mode. Currently, it's unknown if there are any plans to remake the expansion packs for the original game.
http://www.blackmesasource.com/
The next is a modification for "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords". This was an excellent game, except for one major issue: the ending. While I won't spoil it (especially since I haven't even finished the game myself), most people thought it was rushed and dropped a lot of the plot threads that were established earlier in the game. However, some fans found some unused code in the game's files, including scripts and voice files for story events that did not appear in the game. It seemed that the developer, Obsidian, was under pressure to push the product out the door, and in their haste was forced to hamstring the ending. Thus, a group of fans set out to re-build the ending of the game. They have been working for several years, and now they seem to be on Release Candidate 1 of the patch, which is about 2 releases away from a public release.
http://team-gizka.org/index.html
Hopefully, these mods will be out this year, and I'm looking forward to playing both. And I would highly recommend everyone to check out the original games, if they have not done so already. Half-Life 2 is my very favorite FPS, and the Knights of the Old Republic games are similarly classics of the CRPG genre (not to mention that the first in the series was made by one of my favorite game companies, BioWare). They are fairly cheap now, but generally have to be bought in game collections; HL2 as part of the Orange Box (which also comes with Portal and Team Fortress 2, also excellent games), and KotOR as part of the "Star Wars: Best of PC" collection (which comes with Battlefront, another excellent game).
The first is "Black Mesa", a mod for Half-Life 2 that remakes the original Half-Life using the new graphics and physics engine. The current trailer looks especially impressive, and the developers have also announced a 2-player co-op mode. Currently, it's unknown if there are any plans to remake the expansion packs for the original game.
http://www.blackmesasource.com/
The next is a modification for "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords". This was an excellent game, except for one major issue: the ending. While I won't spoil it (especially since I haven't even finished the game myself), most people thought it was rushed and dropped a lot of the plot threads that were established earlier in the game. However, some fans found some unused code in the game's files, including scripts and voice files for story events that did not appear in the game. It seemed that the developer, Obsidian, was under pressure to push the product out the door, and in their haste was forced to hamstring the ending. Thus, a group of fans set out to re-build the ending of the game. They have been working for several years, and now they seem to be on Release Candidate 1 of the patch, which is about 2 releases away from a public release.
http://team-gizka.org/index.html
Hopefully, these mods will be out this year, and I'm looking forward to playing both. And I would highly recommend everyone to check out the original games, if they have not done so already. Half-Life 2 is my very favorite FPS, and the Knights of the Old Republic games are similarly classics of the CRPG genre (not to mention that the first in the series was made by one of my favorite game companies, BioWare). They are fairly cheap now, but generally have to be bought in game collections; HL2 as part of the Orange Box (which also comes with Portal and Team Fortress 2, also excellent games), and KotOR as part of the "Star Wars: Best of PC" collection (which comes with Battlefront, another excellent game).