They are, beyond control schemes and visuals, the single best reason to play games on a PC. Mods can, at their laziest, tweak a game so its settings or features behave more to your liking. At their most ambitious, they can transform your entire experience, leaving you with something that feels like an all-new game.

This year was a big one for PC mods, with two - DayZ and Black Mesa - rivalling commercial products for public awareness and, perhaps more importantly, quality. But they weren't the only great mods released this year, here's a shortlist of the best mods released during 2012.

Ilya Zhitomirskiy, one of Diaspora's four founders, died over the weekend at just 22 years of age. Sources close the company confirmed the death was a suicide but it may take weeks for an official determination. Billed as an open alternative to Facebook...