Cursed Halo.
I believe it was a passion project by one guy that took 5 or 10 years but holy shit it’s a masterpiece.
It’s lesser-known, but the Battletech Advanced 3062 mod for Battletech from Harebrained Schemes is incredible. It adds so much it’s almost an entirely new game (but still Battletech).
RogueTech is also insane in how much it adds.
Team Fortress and Team Fortress Classic.
That’s true. I don’t know if the original TF was definitely the first game in the “class based team capture-the-flag” genre, but it certainly very early and influential.
considers
In the same vein, I’ve never played it, but maybe the original Defense of the Ancients, which I understand spawned the MOBA genre.
Not that many genres that are created by mods.
There are quite a few honestly. Team Fortress and DayZ are obvious examples, I also quite liked Natural Selection.
Came here to say Natural Selection.
I would’ve picked DayZ mod as well but I really only got into it after the standalone version. It’s still unlike any other game though.
Cataclysm: Darker Days Ahead.
Daily pull requests for over two decades on an open source project
Black mesa. Half life and half life 2 modder community is amazing.
Portal is basically a Half-Life 2 mod. It’s still got the fanboat asset. You can use the console to bind spawning a fanboat to an input, so there’s a speedrun category where you’re not allowed to use portals, but younare allowed to spam fanboats. Literally called fanboat%.
Endless hours playing Sven Co-Op. A few clips of my friends and my own earliest YouTube videos ended up in the NoClip documentary about Half Life!
Speaking of Half-Life mods, Entropy Zero 2 is a solid game.
There’s also some great Portal 2 mods out there as well.
To be fair, Garry’s Mod is up there too.
The amount of customisation that one “small project” opened up in general, is astonishing.
Are Skyrim mods allowed, or is that cheating? 😜
Enderal is allowed.
What about Elsweyr? 🖖🏼
Okay, fine, and Wyrmtooth while we’re at it.
Oh, see, now you’re gonna get me going 🤩…
Let’s just round it out by saying that the many QoL mods for VR are generally incredible improvements on the OG pancake experience, but second (IMHO) to the brain-meltingly beautiful visual overhauls (thanks, Panda & team!)… Still, nothing comes close to the aforementioned modules that offer completely new areas w/ fully voiced NPCs, unique quests/activities, brand new lore, etc., and dozens of hours of gameplay. (assuming you simply run their main plotlines)
Heavily-modded Skyrim (300+) on the Index has pretty much ruined me for most other VR games, but I still try to enjoy the lesser titles for what they are. 🤣
Schreitet wohl!
The “Vanilla: Expanded” series of mods for Rimworld adds an almost unbelievable number of new mechanics, almost all of which are intercompatible with most other popular mods. It’s truly impressive how empty the default game feels after you play with mods for a while.
And if you limit it to just one single mod, I’d say “Save Our Ship 2” should get the Rimworld modding crown. IIRC Tynan himself reacted with amazement at how that had managed to add so many new mechanics to the game.
Expanded Stardew Valley! So much added stuff!
Rounding out my top three for Stardew are the pause and teleport mods
Elden ring seamless coop. I can’t believe that such a small file could create such a better experience in the game.
Similarly, Blue Sentinel for DS3 is a better, more effective anti-cheat than Elden Ring’s use of Easy Anti-Cheat. Heck, part of the performance enhancements fron Seamless Coop come from the fact it turns EAC off.
In terms of actual impact, a Fallout: New Vegas mod named Tale of Two Worlds that takes a Fallout 3 copy and brings all of it into the Fallout: New Vegas world.
The mod makers didn’t create the great bulk of the content, made a converter, but it amounts to a new experience wirh an AAA-game level of content addition.
Does make me wonder about other mods that can leverage pre-existing work. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead had a mod where someone imported a real life map of Massachusetts, for example. Some flight sims can do similar stuff.
UEVR
Pokemon unbound. Its a completely new game.
Space Exploration for Factorio. My dude built a huge mod for free, then was hired by the devs to desogn the paid sequel, Factorio 2, and although large and great its still smaller and less complex then the mod.
Krasstorio 2 as well. Not as complex, but just as good and the sprites were better than the base game.
First thing that came to my mind: OreSpawn
Too bad that the creator went crazy
or he already was…
Yes, orespawn. that sure was something, probably was crazy all along. I am reminded of certain Skyrim modders when I think of orespawn
