Welcome to the Editor's Choice awards for the 2018 Mod of the Year Awards, where we show recognition to the mods from the past year that we've found to be personally deserving of attention.
Best Singleplayer
A mod which brings extra depth or significance to an engrossing singleplayer experience.
Fallout: New California
For: Fallout: New Vegas
Fallout: New California adds an all new story around a new player character, an adopted resident of Vault 18, embarking on a journey through the wastelands of the New California Republic's Cajon Pass. An unofficial prequel to New Vegas, FPB adds hours of new gameplay and a fully voiced stand alone campaign.
Best Multiplayer
A mod which offers a new way to play with your friends.
Quake Champions: Doom Edition
For: Doom II
QC: Doom Edition is a mod that brings the weapons from the latest Quake game, into Doom, with delicious pixelated flavor. More than just weapons, it also brings the “Champions” mechanic -- different player classes, each one with unique status, speed, active and passive abilities.
Best Graphical Overhaul
A mod which focuses on beatifying an older game with technical and artistic upgrades.
Doom Slayer Chronicles
For: Doom II
Doom Slayer Chronicles is the most beautiful and technologically advanced mappack for Doom2 singleplayer. Doom Slayer Chronicles (DSC) compatible with all known gameplay mods for Doom2. The DSC takes advantage of the newest features of gzdoom, such as hardware shaders, full-screen post-processing, PBR textures (normals and specular maps, also often called "bump mapping"), high-resolution textures, and of course dynamic lighting.
Best Classic Revival
A mod which takes a previously-existing modification and upgrades and enhances it for 2018.
Black Mesa: Azure Sheep
For: Black Mesa
An unofficial remake of a singleplayer mod "Azure Sheep" for Half-Life 1. With great exclusion, everything that does not correspond to the canons of the original game will be cut out. Demo is OUT!
Best Crossover
A mod which smashes two or more completely separate games together
to make something unique and special.
Year of the Dragon
For: Half-Life
A crossover mod and toolkit featuring the mechanics and play style of Spyro the Dragon ... I thought about several things I could do like making a fan game in a engine like Unity or Unreal, but I've always enjoyed using Goldsrc and Xash3D so I thought about the challenge of getting this purple dragon into Half-Life. And from there the mod pretty much came to life.
Totality Award
This award is for a total conversion that transforms a game into something completely distinct and new
Total Chaos
For: Doom II
Total Chaos is a total conversion mod for Doom 2 that runs on the GZDoom source port. The mod is a survival horror set on a remote island known as Fort Oasis. The island was once run by a community of coal miners which one day suddenly disappeared, leaving behind the abandoned concrete jungle to waste away.
Expansion-worthy Award
This is a mod that we wouldn't be surprised to see as an official expansion,
or be worth paying money for.
SYSTEM SHOCK: ReWired
For: System Shock
System Shock: Rewired is the very first full fan made singleplayer campaign for the original System Shock in over 24 years! 3 brand new levels with branching paths, 4 new cyberspace sections, new puzzles, brand new soundtrack by SpeedySPCFan, new fully voiced audiologs, new on-screen text and so much more awaits in the now dark corridors of the hospital ship UNN Bismarck.
Best Adaptation Award
A mod that uses the story or universe of a film or television properly to
accurately recreate its world and vibe
Star Trek: Armada 3
For: Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Star Trek: Armada III - The Final Frontier begins with the first stirrings of the Dominion War and allows players to take command of five unique factions, the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Star Empire, the Cardassian Union/Dominion Alliance, and the Borg Collective. Explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no one has gone before.
Historical Accuracy Award
A mod that dives into a period of history rarely touched upon by other games,
and does so with great attention to detail
Screaming Steel: 1914-1918
For: Day of Infamy
Fight in the rain soaked trenches or charge over No Man’s Land to battle in the War to End All Wars. Use authentic weaponry to conquer the enemy, call in artillery strikes to take out enemies en masse, and don’t forget that teamwork is essential for the final victory! Screaming Steel: 1914-1918, previously known as WW1: Source is a total-conversion project being developed by devoted modders for the FPS game Day of Infamy.
Continuing Legacy Award
A mod that takes a game from a franchise abandoned or ended by its original
developers and continues the series in a new and interesting direction
Ghost Recon: Heroes Unleashed
Ghost Recon: Heroes Unleashed, the ruthlessly unforgiving tactical shooter experience. True hardcore realism, with nonlinear play, real-world physics, and ultra smart AI. Infinite replayability, with tons of worldwide maps, missions, game types, international special forces units, and a massive arsenal of authentic weapons and equipment.
Most Anticipated
A mod which, though not yet released, has spent 2018 building incredible anticipation for it
Lordbound
A massive story expansion for Skyrim with 30+ hours of original content. Visit the valley of Druadach and embark on an epic quest to bring peace to this war-torn region. The mod adds a new region, three faction questlines, non-linear quests, dungeons, new weapons/armor and more. Your actions will determine the fate of Druadach Valley. For better... or for much worse.
Sponsor Award
Special award presented by mod.io, for a game that has embraced modding,
is growing a great community and we look forward to seeing what's to come in 2019.
Aground
By: Fancy Fish Games
One of the last human survivors, you find yourself stranded on an uninhabited island. With a few other victims of the crash, can you craft, mine, and build your way to survival? Aground was designed around the theme of Progression, and inspired by Utopian Mining and other mining/crafting games. You start out with almost nothing, and you can eventually build your way up to a thriving settlement.
Congratulations to our 2018 Editors Choice winners!
Thank you for hosting New California for the past decade! :D And sorry for taxing your servers to the limits last October, haha!
We've got two more builds before 1.0, then it's off to IndieDB to start full time on our new IP. We'll see you on the green side next year.
Really happy to make the editors choice!!! Thanks a bunch!!!
(buried)
sorry, but a mod that just copy content from other games is the winner of best MULTIPLAYER mod? WTF was that?!?! with all the respect to the modders involved there's NOTHING NEW there to win such category, specially when have so many AMAZING MP mods in the TOP 100 to choose! the "winner" didn't even was listed in the highlights of the year??? there's 20-30 a lot better options such as @[Sins of the Prophets](mods:halo-sins-of-the-prophets:11043) & @[Frontlines FOREVER](mods:frontlines:10677) (my winner for sure!), should be better give again to @[Forgotten Hope 2](mods:forgotten-hope-2:5480), which is still amazing. was für ein witz
QC:DE has been developed for around a year now and with such a short amount of time it has been able to bring a gameplay similar to the one from Quake Champions and been able to port this gameplay into Coop/SinglePlayer with support for thousands of campaigns, easy support for custom monster packs (I know nothing about programming and I was able to make two monsters packs for this mod), it also has his own original soundtrack.
QC:DE is a mod built under a really limited sourceport called Zandronum and even with these limitations it brings a lot of fun with original content as well: original champions with their well written and amazingly done lore for each champion, upgrades for the weapons on PVE, custom monster packs, original deathmatch maps and remakes of Quake's maps, excellent artwork and all this done and directed by only a handful of people that are making all this without making money from this.
Even at Cacoward 2018, this MOD was selected as a subject of MPMOD, and in that review it was valued that performing this ambitious attempt not to end with this MP MOD as a mod MOD.
In order to be selected as MPChoice, we need SQUAD as a derivative work, an attempt not to end with just MOD like Project Reality.
That's the point he state, really nothing new, you just signed what vnx said. I know was a great work with lots of work without making any money, but was also to everybody else no? but it doesn't matter now, the results will not change even if everyone agree with him. Congrats for your mod.
My batt is burning like Hell. You claim, but just didn't even try QC:DE and Quake Champions!
Thanks for the spot! Feels very good to finally bag an award after working for so many years on WW1: Source and Screaming Steel, and a pretty unique award at that!
Half Life Echoes?
probably in player choice
Total Chaos deserved to receive such prize 🏆 congratulations 🎊
Thank You so much for having ReWired in the Editors Choice!
Half-Life Echoes?
graaats!
Really, no Half Life Echoes? Ah, well. Its still great that QC:DE, Total Chaos, Year of the Dragon and Black Mesa: Azure Sheep are winners! Congrats!
This is just the editors choice, and not the vote based one. It could be in the top 10 for the "voters choice" one.
(buried)
This contest is a joke... BFHD was around top 60 for the whole year, was top 65 in the day of the top 100 and where is it?
you recognise that this is the editors choice and not the player's choice right?
(buried)
that is even worse
Congratulations on the win Thaiauxn. You and your team deserve it.
Article is fixed, sorry about the hassle!
The only thing i respect about this "editor's choice" is the fact that finally ReWired got some well deserved resounding love.