It was pretty slim pickings on the mods front last month, which led to me wittering on about Dennis Tito and mutant time-warping canines to pad things out. This month is a whole other story: files have been uploading to the Strategy Informer Downloads sections so fast I’m surprised the servers haven’t melted.
So let’s jump straight into the No Filler, All Killer edition of TBIFPCGAM - hmm, not sure that acronym is going to catch on…
Shameless self-promotion time
As regular SI readers will have spotted, I’ve been chatting to several of the good folks at Paradox Interactive over the last few weeks. So what better way to sneak in some links to those interviews than by discussing a selection of mods for their historical grand strategy games?
It helps that Paradox and their titles are super mod-friendly, and that they have a community who are ultra-passionate about historical gaming. That’s how you get things like Project Balance for Crusader Kings II, which tweaks an insane amount of elements (seriously, check out the Read Me that accompanies it), all with the aim of ensuring each game plays out in as historically plausible manner as possible. And if you like CKII, you really should read my interview with project lead Henrik Fahraeus about upcoming expansion The Old Gods.
Victoria II also gets some rejigging loving from the community thanks to the APD mod, now up to version 3.2.7, which, as well as adjusting the economic and migration mechanics, makes tweaks in a whole host of other areas to help guide the game down a historically realistic path. You’ll need the A House Divided DLC installed for this one, and you can find out about the next expansion Heart of Darkness from my chat with Paradox’s resident historical wunderkind Chris King.
While we’re on a Paradox tip, and just to show it’s not all shameless self-pluggery around here, there’s also a new release of the 1792 mod for their Napoleonic era strategy-’em-up March of the Eagles, which I have not interviewed anyone about. Yet.
Grand Theft Webslinging
I’ve been a sucker for completely-out-of-place model replacements in games ever since my Quake III Arena days. Watching a bunnyhopping Dalek with Railgun attachment fragging Mr Burns just never got old.
So you can imagine the giant smile I sported when I came across the valiant efforts of Faizan Alim to repopulate the mean streets of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas with pretty much the entire cast of Marvel’s Spider-Man comics. So get ready for a whole lot of linkage, because we have character models for:
The only one we’re missing is Aunt May, and who secretly doesn’t want to drive a stolen car over her?
Aliens: Colonial Marines: ‘Nuff said
I’ve promised that I will not crack any more jokes at the expense of Aliens: Colonial Marines, despite it being a game so broken it needed a 3.8 GB(!) patch. And is still absolute rubbish. Anyway, after downloading said patch it’s a good idea to also install the Cilitbäng Pack for A:CM, which as well as being possibly the best name for a mod EVER does a whole lot of tweaky stuff and bundles in the Sweet FX 1.3 mod as well.
For those looking for a more atmospheric and less CoD-like A:CM experience - which is probably everyone - the Survival Mod is worth checking out too, as it rejigs damage across the board to make the xenomorphic beasties a genuine threat.
In other news
Battlefield 4 may have been announced with a snazzy trailer showing off a single-player campaign that no one will give a flying monkeys about when it comes out, but that hasn’t stopped the production line of Battlefield 2 mods - not least because that game was released back when DICE supported the creativity of their community instead of trying to flog DLC subscriptions at them. CSTO-American War is now in beta, a chunky download (770.77 MB to be precise) that posits near-future tit for tat invasions of the Ukraine and the United States as an excuse for lots of man-shooting with a load of new weapons and vehicles. You’ll need BF2: Special Forces to join in the fun.
Mafia gets the total retexturing treatment thanks to this mod, which makes a life of crime that much more attractive now that virtually 100% of the game’s city and countryside has had a fresh lick of paint.
They come from a land down-under: after years of surprising neglect, Australia finally claims a place at the top table of human civilisations with this mod for Civ V: Gods & Kings. Something to bring a smile to our Antipodean friends’ faces ahead of them getting absolutely walloped in the Ashes this summer.
Men of War: World at War 1.1 adds a whole heap of actual historical WWII scenarios to 1C Company’s really rather good RTS, with new FX, textures and weapons thrown in for good measure.
RAGE Rebalance Mod 1.1.2 takes a giant rebalancing tool to id Software’s technically impressive yet dull as dishwater shooter, with an emphasis on smart, tactical play styles. It’s designed for the Ultra-Nightmare difficulty setting where health regen goes out the window to provide players with a proper challenge second time around.
It’s back: Bonkers Doom III Mod of the Month
Talking of Mr Carmack and colleagues, it’s been far too long since we had a mad-as-badgers upload for Doom III on the Strategy Informer servers, but fortunately that has been rectified by the appearance of Benpulido’s Nazi Zombie Mod - translated into Italian. If you need me to tell you how awesome that is, then there’s no hope for you. Props to Sharkl96 for the translation work.
Also: Doom III Duct Tape, because the internet is never ever going to let Carmack forget the whole flashlight fiasco in that game.
And that’s me out of here for another month. I’ll be back in thirty or so days time with hopefully another fit-to-burst grab bag of modding goodies, but in the meantime keep an eye of the Strategy Informer Downloads section for all your patching, mapping, modding and free gaming needs.
