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With the continuous stream of new releases, it’s sometimes hard to remember that there's still plenty of excuses to fire up games you already own. User-made modifications are one of the best things about being a PC gamer and so I’ve taken the time to make a very biased list of games that have great mods.

For the uninitiated, a mod or modification is some sort of change that’s made to an existing game by fans and players. It can be anything from massive graphical overhauls, new story lines to simple interface tweaks or changing the game balance and difficulty. While not really limited to PC games anymore, it's still something that's predominantly with the platform.

I remember using mods (and making my own) for almost as long as I’ve been gaming. Sure, editing .ini files for Command & Conquer games to make “new” units was sort of primitive, but since then I’ve always appreciated mucking about with a game’s internals whenever I get the chance. With the current wave of Linux games that ancient desire hasn't abated in the least.

I couldn’t even begin to make an exhaustive list of mods or even my top favorites, as there’s been too many over the years. Nonetheless, here’s a few games that I’ve played where I think mods have significantly enriched the experience.

Cities: Skylines [Official Site] has an absolutely bustling mod scene. Nearly everything about the game can be modded like game rules, the UI and ways of interacting with the mechanics, maps, and new buildings outright. There are thousands upon thousands of mods, ranging from minor to complex packs full of changes. It’s entirely possible to tweak the whole game to your liking as a result.

Civilization VI [Official Site] is the latest installment in the long-running series by Sid Meier. These games have always had a reputation for being modder-friendly, and Civ 6 is no exception. I don't usually play with big flashy things like new units, maps, scenarios and civilizations for my average game. Those are great too, don't get me wrong, but I spend most of my time with mostly vanilla gameplay. So I gravitate more towards quality-of-life-type things like bringing back statistics, dynamic city names and scaling down the unit sizes.

Delicious stats are but a click away now

Darkest Dungeon [Official Site] is known for being an unforgiving and gritty dungeon crawler, where you end up losing most of your party to unspeakable horrors and mental attrition. There’s plenty of mods to mix up the difficulty, add new character classes or otherwise spice it up a bit. Of course, most importantly, there’s plenty of mods that change the cursed and damned inhabitants of the hamlet into anime girls.

Dwarf Fortress [Official Site] is infamously complex and unwelcoming to newcomers. It’s still, highly moddable with many of the games systems being completely open to tweaking and tampering. One of the bigger projects to take on the complexity of the game is Dwarf Therapist that a lot of people could not get by without. Naturally, if your beard isn’t yet fully grown and you can’t stomach letters and numbers as graphics, you can opt to install one of the many graphical tile sets. If you’re just getting into it, I suggest you look into the LNP as it includes most of the popular utilities and makes managing things much less complicated (and if you’re an Arch user like me, you can find it in the AUR).

Don't worry, some day you'll be cool enough to play without needing graphical tilesets

Knights of the Old Republic II is one of my favorite RPG titles and I was extremely pleased that Aspyr ported it over to Linux. There’s a lot of fine texture and weapon mods out there but the reason I had to include it in this article is The Sith Lords Restored Content Modification. TSLRCM restores much of what was cut from the base game due to time and budget issues and offers the definitive KOTOR II experience in my opinion.

Paradox grand strategy titles are all very mod-friendly. Obligatory Game of Thrones mod? Check. Turn CK2 into a game about the Sengoku Jidai? Of course. Ability to live out my Star Trek fantasies? Ahead, maximum warp. While I’m at it, I can add as many servings of minor flavor as I want. Playing in antiquity is also lovely as are mods that have their own take on core gameplay. Finally, conquering the world is more memorable when your troops have their own unique equipment, but perhaps it’s an even more memorable experience when you’re defeating the Kaiser after the second American civil war.

Portal 2 [Official Site] was a fantastic experience regardless if you were playing by yourself or cooperatively. Valve opened up level design to the community and the result is that there are countless number of levels you can easily download and play. I could probably spend a whole article talking about the different collections but here’s a few to get you started: the TimeTodie series, 12 Angry Tests, and Decay. Make sure to check out Portal Stories: Mel as well if you're still hungry for more cake.

The testing never has to end if you don't want it to

Total War Titles [Official Site] can be engrossing and fun to play but they’re also hampered by questionable design decisions and AI. Mods can help mitigate some of that and over the years we’ve been lucky to get some truly excellent ones. The DarthMod for Shogun 2 makes for an interesting experience if you’re bored of vanilla gameplay and things like better camera and overhauls for WARHAMMER make starting new campaigns more fun. The games with Steam Workshop support are easiest to get mods up and running but I’ve heard some people had luck getting mods for Empire and Medieval II working as well.

XCOM 2 [Official Site] has stolen many hours and rookies away from me. Liam made a partial list a while ago (and I named a few mods there, too) but since then there’s been a mountain of new content. Long War 2 is an almost obligatory suggestion at this point, giving the game a fresh and challenging coat of paint. I couldn’t live without the mods that speed things up but there’s plenty of people who couldn’t live without all the myriad of graphical and item overhauls. I mean, who doesn’t love more tacticool options? Or futuristic swords whose hi-tech steel was folded over a thousand times?

I know that the examples above are heavily slanted towards certain genres. It’s not that there aren’t interesting mods and games outside of strategy and RPG titles, it’s just that I’m hopelessly addicted to both. They’re my main time sink when it comes to gaming. I do play all sorts of other games, but I don’t feel qualified talking about, say, the massive amount of Doom WADs and the incredible community around them.

That’s why I’m turning it to you guys: what sort of mods do you like to play around with? Or maybe you're a square who has never tried mods and finds all this baffling. Let us know either way in the comments.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Editorial
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About the author -
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History, sci-fi, technology, cooking, writing and playing games are things I enjoy very much. I'm always keen to try different genres of games and discover all the gems out there.

Oh and the name doesn't mean anything but coincidentally could be pronounced as "Buttery" which suits me just fine.
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14 comments
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NotSoQT Feb 4, 2018
I'm not very fond of mods, but if there's a game I can hardly play without them, it's Starbound.

Some examples:
FrackinUniverse
RPG Growth
Starboy Handheld Games
rea987 Feb 4, 2018
- Quake
- Half-Life
- Half-Life 2
- Unreal Tournament
- The Ultimate Doom/Doom II
- Duke Nukem 3D
- Star Wars: Jedi Outcast
- Star Wars: Jedi Academy
- Doom 3

Thousands of SP and MP mods.


Last edited by rea987 on 4 February 2018 at 8:50 pm UTC
ElectricPrism Feb 4, 2018
QuoteLooking for ways to spice up your gaming? Here’s a few games with awesome mods

Nezchan Feb 4, 2018
Plus, y'know, Minetest is practically made of mods.
Philadelphus Feb 4, 2018
I was going to start out this comment by saying that I didn't use mods as much anymore as I used to, then I went down the list again and realized that every game on there that I've played I've used mods with: Cities: Skylines, Dwarf Fortress, Knights of the Old Republic II, most of the Paradox games I have (EU IV, CK II, and HoI IV, and I keep meaning to check out the selection for Stellaris, though they're all cosmetic and music mods that don't disable achievements), Portal 2, and XCOM 2. Phew! :) Come to think of it the only games I really used a lot of mods with before getting a Steam account and the ease of access of the Steam Workshop were Dwarf Fortress and Civilization III (though I was pretty heavily into modding it myself), so it's actually probably true to say that I use more mods now than I've ever done before! :D

(Though oddly enough, when it comes to Dwarf Fortress mods I've never used a graphics pack; I started out without one and learned the interface that way, and now find graphics packs to be incomprehensible and ugly. I'm like Cypher from The Matrix, I don't see the code anymore, just little dorfs, running around…oh look, a goblin ambush…how did that magma get there‽ )

Another game with an incredible modding scene worth mentioning here is Rimworld. There's a mod that lets you play it like Dwarf Fortress and design your starting people down to the last detail instead of picking randomly-generated ones if you like, there are a ton of content mods, and a very long list of starting scenarios that dictate how you start off and what creative restrictions you have.
axredneck Feb 4, 2018
> the massive amount of Doom WADs
This. Isn't Doom 2 the game that has more good mods than any other game?
soulsource Feb 4, 2018
I'd also list Kerbal Space Program, as it's a quite good example for an extraordinary modding scene.
Not only are there alternate solar systems to explore, hundreds of new rocket parts, and graphical additions, there are also physics mods that turn the rather casual KSP into a semi-realistic spaceflight simulator.
razing32 Feb 4, 2018
Very good article. Bookmarking for future use . Thanks :)
Also you may want to throw the Shadowrun series in there. The Workshop is buzzing with mods and I noticed some were praised as complete campaigns in themselves
rea987 Feb 5, 2018
Quoting: axredneck> the massive amount of Doom WADs
This. Isn't Doom 2 the game that has more good mods than any other game?

Could be. Arguably Half-Life and Quake follow it. O' glorious id Tech! ;-)
stretch611 Feb 5, 2018
Quoting: axredneck> the massive amount of Doom WADs
This. Isn't Doom 2 the game that has more good mods than any other game?

I still fondly remember the simpson mod/wad. Medical packs were beer and donuts. Barney would replace the main demon and constantly belch... also included chief Wiggum and Lenny. (Its been a long time... I dont remember everything.)

There was also a Barney (the dinosaur) mod... The Boss was replaced by him singing that infernal song... "I love you... you love me..."

That being said, I rarely use mods... with one exception... Rimworld... there I use QoL mods

I've tried a few factorio mods... but they constantly improve the game making the the need for QoL mods uneccessary. I'm happy with vanilla... Though I may consider one of the huge mods that extend the game.
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