Top Mods - Max Payne and F.E.A.R.

One of the most impressive features of the Co-Op Warfare modification is that it supports up to 32 players. This is just sick (though in the very best sense of the word) and while it is naturally going to be rare if not impossible to find a game with that many players on it, the idea of outnumbering the enemy to that extent is definitely appealing.

Finding games for the Co-Op Warfare mod is one of the trickier aspects to it as there are very few populated public servers out there at the moment. However just rounding up a few friends from your clan for a pre-arranged game or setting up a group at a small LAN is ideal.

The second mod for F.E.A.R. is a more traditional one. Trojan's Gore Mod is simply a change to the configuration file of F.E.A.R. which requires tweaking the target line of the shortcut to work. There are a handful of modifications to the configuration of F.E.A.R. but Trojan's Mod is perhaps the best as rather than making the gore and explosions and carnage even more excessive, Trojan has instead opted to tone things down a bit and make things feel slightly more real. Gone is the rather silly way that enemies would sometimes burst when hit by a close range shotgun blast, replaced by the more convincing and just as joyfully savage dismemberment.

Also, the rate of fire for the sub machine gun is increased. In the original game it fires at about the same speed as the assault rifle, despite sounding and looking to fire faster due to its sound effect and the higher ratio of tracers it shoots. Lastly there are some improvements in how the breathing and heartbeat effects caused by severe wounding are implemented, in the original game you really only encountered them when you were so close to death's door that you were probably going to die if somebody even looked sideways at you. Now they occur at half health, which means those playing the game on the more substantial difficulty settings won't be missing out.

And finally, not so much a mod as a program for those of you who were creeped out by that nasty little Alma ghost, or for those of you who know somebody who was and can install a program on their PC without their knowledge, there is the Alma programme. This little application runs in the background and is like having a little piece of that malevolent evil inhabiting your PC. For those people who found that F.E.A.R. really got into their heads this is definitely creepy as hell, for everybody else it's an ideal prank to pull on those of a nervous disposition. Just install and let her wreak havoc. Remember, though, that you don't want her running around when gaming.

While nobody seems to have really embraced the idea of building a substantial conversion based on the F.E.A.R. engine there is still enough mileage in the Co-Operative Warfare mod and the procession of custom maps being released for multiplayer to keep F.E.A.R. junkies happily dosed up until the Extraction Point expansion, with its yummy looking mini gun, is released in October.