In the beginning, God, er…Valve, bestowed upon man a most wonderous gift: Half-Life. The people rejoiced and scuttled to their homes to install this divine piece of software. How they treasured the moments they spent playing.

A mere few weeks later came news of the development of the ‘mods’. An abbreviation for modification, a mod is simply that - a modification of the game that uses the same engine while incorporating new maps and weapons and perhaps different styles of gameplay.

Unfortunately, things got out of hand as little kiddies who had no idea how to make a mod tried to…well…make a mod. This resulted in hundreds, no thousands, of mods apparently being created.

The kiddies got excited once they got their mod’s website up and, in their ecstatic state, attempted to impress the public through petty little drawings (sometimes referred to as concept art). Even models are made and public interest grows.

Time goes by and more concept art and more models are displayed. Combined with a flashy looking website, the public remains confident that the mod’s release is just around the corner.

The useless ‘nub’ of a leader, however, has not yet realised that a freelance modeller and some prick who can make pretty drawings is not the makings of a proper team.

Then the ‘Age of Deathly Silence’ dawns upon the mod. No news is heard from it or its team for quite a while. And the reason is because the modellers are bloody fed up, the drawing prick has nothing else to draw, and the supposed leader is crying in the corner of his room trying to come to terms with his piss-poor attempt at a mod.

http://www.moddb.com is a good site for browsing the many potential mods that are of the nature described above. Let me just pick a few from Half-Life 2 that look like good candidates:

KiddyWars - last updated 20 months ago. The description of this pathetic project is ‘It is about kids running around with spades and hitting eachother, throwing buckets, uses slingshots, BIG waterguns, etc.’ - haven’t heard of a more bollocks idea.

Urban Cowboys - last updated 21 months ago. Description: ‘An hi-speed racing/gritty first person shooter combination. Innovative, fun, unique. Read the info and you will not be turned down.’ - neither innovative nor unique and i’m already turned down after reading that shite.

National Crisis - last updated 19 months ago. Description: ‘National Crisis is a first-person shooter modification for Valve’s Half Life 2 in which players take part in a full-scale modern world war in which all Europe has collaborated against American forces in a quest for the last remaining oil fields. The player can choose to side with either team as the European army go to war with America with their finest soldiers and weaponry from all nations.’ - what a wonderfully creative and imaginative story. I wonder how the gameplay would have been like. In the immortal words of Pablo Francisco this is the ’same shit we’ve seen over and over again’.