9 Fan-Made Mods That Make Great Video Games Even Better

Picking up where the developers left off.

Knights Of The Old Republic 2 Darth Nihilus
Disney

Leave it to the dedicated fans to finish what a developer started.

Amateur modders have been silently making their own tailor-made alterations to beloved franchises for decades, it's only thanks to the new avenues of distribution enabled by the world wide web that's thrown open the floodgates for self-educated hobbyists to share their efforts with others.

Without deadlines, corporate pressure and the contractual roadblocks that come with making games for a living, modders have free reign to dive in at the digital deep end and explore the inner workings of a video game, have a poke around and then add to the core experience if something is felt to be missing.

Whether that results in a schooling on how to get a PC port done right in Dark Souls' case, or a nuanced but extensive new mode à la The Witcher 3's Ghost Mode, the dedication on show here is a testament to the devotion some have to their favourite franchises.

You may think you've milked all the entertainment value there is out of gamedom's best and brightest, but hold off on hitting the uninstall button so hastily. There's a world of fan-made, quality content out there that deserves your attention, and it doesn't cost a dime to play.

9. DOOM - Brutal Doom

Doomguy's blood-soaked journey through Hell and back in the original DOOM was enough to cause a storm of controversy in 1993, so just imagine what sort of response a gorier, more visceral version would have elicited.

Marcos "Sergeant Mark IV" Abenante's mod, which continues to see updates even now, takes id Software' provocative shooter and turns the dial way past 11 on the carnage scale, earning its moniker and then some.

Besides drenching the demon-filled corridors of Phobos and Deimos in several-thousand additional buckets of the red stuff, Abenante's spruce job includes superior lighting, dismemberment, executions, screen-shattering explosions and, well, everything else you'd expect to fall under the textbook definition of brutal.

Put simply, Abenante's efforts make the original DOOM appear as if it were family-friendly entertainment intended to keep the kids occupied at Sunday church.

Excessive, visceral and comically violent; everything one would expect of id's classic.

Contributor
Contributor

Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.