Delta Particles

Game: Half-Life
Release date: 2023-12-31

Delta Particles is a solid total conversion for the original Half-Life.

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, doesn’t go too crazy with new features, but still manages to keep the experience relatively fresh by slightly adjusting the core gameplay loop.

Weapons have holstering animations, combat is generally a little slower, and you’ll find yourself scavenging for ammo and health more often than the base game.

The environments and atmosphere are the highlight here; every area has a distinct style, and each consecutive chapter has it’s own overarching color scheme and vibe.

The mod features new characters, plenty of new or revamped weapons, an atmospheric soundtrack and an original storyline (still vaguely taking place in the Half-Life universe).

If nothing else, it’s a fun few-hour-long romp through some new environments with slightly refreshed gameplay.

Highly recommended.

Note: The mod was originally released under the title Half-Life: Delta, but was renamed, updated and re-released as Delta Particles following legal issues with a future Steam release.

Doom 3 Redux

Game: Doom 3
Release date: 2016-04-15

Most old games eventually receive the “redux” or “remaster” treatment. Usually this entails AI upscaled textures, pushing old engines to the brink, random crashes, misaligned textures, or extremely ugly and out of place assets.

Doom 3 Redux has none of these problems.

Nearly every single texture lovingly touched up or entirely recreated by hand, higher quality sounds, bugfixes, localization tweaks, a reworked UI, improved lighting, map tweaks, and more.

Combined with the excellent dhewm 3 source port (which this mod officially supports), this might just be the definitive way to play Doom 3 these days.

Doom Delta

Game: Doom
Release date: 2017-03-28

Doom Delta is a mod for the GZDoom source port, which aims to refine and implement concepts, gameplay elements and stray assets from the many different development builds of the original Doom (as well as Tom Hall’s Doom Bible).

Unlike your average “beta mod”, Doom Delta doesn’t attempt to slavishly recreate everything, down to every last piece of broken code; instead, it takes a good, long look at everything left on the cutting room floor, asks “why was it cut?”, and attempts to make it work.

Revamped weapons, player classes, a new UI, new and reworked monsters, collectibles, a score system, different types of temporary shields, and more!

A great way to re-experience the original Doom, its sequel(s), or one of the countless community-made WADs with a “fresh” coat of paint.

Half-Payne

Game: Half-Life
Release date: 2016-06-12

Source code

“What if you combine Half-Life with the pill-chugging, bullet-time-diving, internal-monologue-filled action of Max Payne?” - said modder suXinjke, apparently.

And so Half-Payne was born.

This mod packs more features, both on a technical and gameplay level, than I can be bothered to get into the details of here.

Here are just a few things worth mentioning:
Most weapons were tweaked or overhauled in one way or another
Actual projectile bullets
Bullet time / slow motion (obviously, it’s Max Payne after all)
Max’s commentary (…obviously, it’s Max Payne after all!)
A custom gamemode system which works off of external script files
A brand new audio engine using the BASS audio library
Subtitles
Twitch integration, which allows your stream chat to apply modifiers to your game in real-time
Easter eggs
Great addon support, allowing you to make your favorite custom maps compatible with ease
…and a lot more!

I think everyone should try this mod at least once; it’s packed full of fun features and has a lot of replayability, thanks to the custom gamemodes.

And Max’s quotes.
And, in all honesty, it’s just plain stupid.
Which makes it so much better.

Note: Half-Life’s 25th anniversary update broke this mod, causing it to crash on boot. You’ll need to either set your Half-Life install in Steam to the steam_legacy beta branch, or download BlueNightHawk’s patch for it to work.

Poke646

Game: Half-Life
Release date: 2001-12-21

An instant classic. I can’t imagine a “best Half-Life mods” list without this one.

13 months after the events of Half-Life, the Black Mesa Research Facility has been shut down, and the US government has a new playground for anything related to aliens; Poke646.

Eventually, the conglomerate’s scientists pick up alarming signals from Xen; something big is about to happen, and we all know what that means.

Nation City is at risk, but Poke646 was prepared this time. Multiple generators around the edges of the city are on standby, waiting to close as many Xen portals as possible.

Your task is simple: get to each generator, power them on, and stop the invasion.
But things never are quite that simple in these mods, are they?

Unlike most Half-Life mods, this doesn’t take place in a sci-fi lab, doesn’t involve experiments on alien crystals, or really anything from the base game except for the Xen wildlife.

You get to explore a city, read notes to uncover bits of lore and means to progress, use brand new weapons, and jam out to an amazing original soundtrack.

This mod became kind of legendary in the Half-Life modding scene, with countless other projects, knowingly or unknowingly, using many of its assets (mostly the great original textures) over the years.

For the mod’s 15th anniversary, the original developers released an updated version which is more compatible with the current build of Half-Life.
The linked website is where you can get said version, which contains the full duology.

Poke646: Vendetta

Game: Half-Life
Release date: 2006-12-21

A direct continuation of the previous mod, featuring an equal, if not higher level of attention to detail, great soundtrack, immersive and detailed environments, as well as lore, lore, and even more lore!

In terms of gameplay, this is very much more of the same, save for the addition of a new weapon, and a larger focus on combat with the Poke646 military forces.
But more of the same isn’t always a bad thing, is it?

The environments here are mostly similar; you’ll still be going through city streets, sewers, different residential buildings and a familiar underground bunker, but you’ll also get to explore a space station, and see Poke646’s true colors.

If you enjoyed the first mod, you’ll definitely enjoy this one.

For the first mod’s 15th anniversary, the original developers released an updated version which is more compatible with the current build of Half-Life.
The linked website is where you can get said version, which contains the full duology.