Black mesa articles

There are some classic PC games – some old enough to buy their own alcohol – that are as good today as the day they were released. You may not have heard of all of them. After all, when a game has been out for a while, people generally stop talking about it. They are still out there though, waiting patiently for someone to pick them up and play.

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.