What is the most average, middle of the road mod you have ever played?

Playing Nate's Story last week was the inspiration for this post.

 

To jog my memory, I sifted through all the threads in the showcase section for threads I posted in, and it actually shocked me just how many mods have been posted that I haven't bothered to play. These are some mods that I've played that didn't really stand out to me as great, but nonetheless clearly had work put into them and I found somewhat amusing:

Festive Quest - by Eli. Fun little mod that takes a few hours to complete. Clearly some work was put into the character dialogue and scripting, and some new features. Lots of little jokes and gags. A sense of humor that's very obviously influenced by Undertale. Nothing amazing in my opinion, but I enjoyed it.

I Wanna Be The Story - by SeasonsOfDestiny. Interesting mod with some assembly hacks and level design choices that make the game hard, and in a very similar style to "I Wanna Be the Guy." I don't remember it wowing me or feeling like it was super polished, but I remember enjoying it.

Cave - by TnuoccaTla (AKA EnlightenedOne). I don't actually remember much about this mod. I just remember being mildly amused, but not finding it super impressive.

Sue's Story - by BLink. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of people really liked this mod. There was a lot of work put into this mod, and some neat assembly hacks, but ultimately, the gameplay and level design just didn't do much for me. The character dialogue didn't feel very natural, and the story didn't really seem to be building up to anything particularly exciting.

Chocolate Sunday - by Ambient_Malice. This mod felt very polished in terms of scripting and character dialogue. It did a few creative things, and the writing was pretty good. For what the story was, it had good execution; the problem is, the story itself just wasn't all that exciting, and didn't have any meaningful progression. The gameplay was also pretty bland in my opinion, with very little action or exploration.

The Mimiga Army - by sixtyseconds. This mod was before my time, hence why there are no posts in that thread from me. I remember playing this mod before I created my account here and enjoying it. The gameplay and level design were pretty good. Other than that, the story really wasn't anything special, and other than the MyChar sprite edit and the tileset that was borrowed from Xaser, I don't remember there being any fancy graphic or asset changes to the game. The main reason I played this mod was because it was notoriously one of the few mods of any significant length that was finished, which was even more rare back in 2011.

 

Hmm, the most average mods I've ever played... Besides my own and some collabs I was involved with, looking back at them now.

- Lunar Shadow by Cybrill/Kim Tyranto. I will have people jumping on me in real life if I were to say the mod was extremely average. I don't doubt it was a solid metroidvania, and I can respect the following it had, but the graphics just all feel very samey, doesn't help that at least 5 characters have facepics that are all just recolors of Curly's face.

- Misery Story by Doors/Slither. As much as #BringBackMiseryStory was a thing, and it was memed upon to death, they were right on how bad it really was. I wouldn't say it's bad, myself, but it wasn't very good, either.

- Hat Story by JonSpider. JONNNNN, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, I'M SORRY. I know it was cancelled as it was released from the get-go, and I can imagine it was because of how average it was, I would've loved to see more of Jenn's Journey, though, be it based on the mod or based on his plans for a game.

- The Root by Jade. Except its mediocrity was my fault, because it was going to be part of a larger collab between me and her for Modcon 2017. The Cait/Melody meet up room would've been funny tho, with how clashing the two spritestyles were going to be...

EDIT: Atari number.

 

What's sad is the mods listed so far that I actually played were ones I REALLY enjoyed (except Lunar Shadow and Mimiga Army. Mimiga Army is horrible).

 

Really? Why would you go so far as to say The Mimiga Army was horrible? I suppose my memory could be a bit distorted since it was one of the first few mods I played, and it's been almost 10 years since I played it, but still I thought it was okay.

 

Really? Why would you go so far as to say The Mimiga Army was horrible? I suppose my memory could be a bit distorted since it was one of the first few mods I played, and it's been almost 10 years since I played it, but still I thought it was okay.

I also played it as one of my first mods. I played the ZarroTsu remake of Jenka's Nightmare, played Mimiga Army and I felt like there was a noticable drop in the quality of what I was playing (which is subjective since not everybody liked Jenka's Nightmare). That's fine enough, since I could still make my way around and like the idea of it at least. The cutscene with the Doctor definitely fit, but when I got into the meat and potatoes of it, rather than a literal Mimiga Army, dominating the Earth with action everywhere you look, you end up meandering for 20 minutes around some land, a town and then a museum where the main character is just like "AAAAH I HATE GAUDIS!!!" and they're just walking around vibing which actually made me laugh. I should also state that I got past the museum (which was way more challenging than it should've been early game) and ended my playthrough there. I know that means I don't know if the rest of it was any better, but that doesn't mean it didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth. I also got told way later that some of the bosses aren't that good either, but I should probably finished what I started one day.

P.S If I was going to compare JNK and MA side by side in one short sentence it would be that one is Sonic Adventure and the other is Shadow The Hedgehog.

 

So I've been replaying a few Cave Story mods, and got a somewhat fresh perspective.

Festive Quest has a lot of fun stuff, but... yeah, it's far from perfect. The biggest problem is the long stretches where you're just walking on a straightforward path, not doing much. Also, the villain was kinda lame, for obvious reasons.

Lunar Shadow is really cool, and basically complete! It's got a charmingly fanfic-y story, and some pretty good level/boss design. However, it's full of "where the frick do I go" moments, due to the lack of any kind of map, and how the map changes as you complete objectives. You can talk to the NPCs, but for me at least, you can end up traveling through the entire map several times before finally finding the way to progress.

Mimiga Army wasn't horrible, but certainly frustrating. Sure, it's complete, but the level design has a lot of cheap pixel-perfect jumps in a row with minimal saves, the story takes its cool premise in the most uninteresting direction possible, and it ends with you fighting a Ballos reskin three times in a row. A Lost Land is kinda similar to me, in that it's complete, but rough around the edges. Except instead of being frustrating, it's very basic.

Dreams of Reality 2 was ruined by the lack of save points. Like... why...?

Ordeal Pillar has so many fun gameplay ideas that IIRC were mostly done really well. But there's so much waiting, dialogue, and slow-paced story that I just can't bring myself to replay it for the gameplay.

Okay uh this might be incredibly mean, but...
King: Strife and Sacrifice
Maybe I should've been there for the mod's development and Sexy Beast Noxid's charisma. But KSS feels like it cuts off before it truly gets going. The Mimiga Village massacre is crazy and just the right amount of edgy, but that's kinda it. It's the sort of "incomplete mod" where you can tell it would be amazing if it was finished, but as of now, it's just "that was cool, I guess." Schism and Ama also fit the bill here.

I just noticed that nearly all the mods in this post (and most of the mods you all mentioned) have mostly-unedited graphics & music, as well as long stretches where not much happens-- long stretches of uneventful platforming, wandering around with no idea where to go, or dying and spending 15 minutes trying to get back to where you were.

also noob story

 

Dreams of Reality 2 was ruined by the lack of save points. Like... why...?

You can technically create save points with the debug feature, but the ability to load them is gone. I am a bit curious in what you saw as good in the mod tho, because nearly nobody got to the Musuko battle, and stuff like Sonic.exe and @Goerge Bobicles' face have become heavily outdated over the years.

 

I also played it as one of my first mods. I played the ZarroTsu remake of Jenka's Nightmare, played Mimiga Army and I felt like there was a noticable drop in the quality of what I was playing (which is subjective since not everybody liked Jenka's Nightmare). That's fine enough, since I could still make my way around and like the idea of it at least. The cutscene with the Doctor definitely fit, but when I got into the meat and potatoes of it, rather than a literal Mimiga Army, dominating the Earth with action everywhere you look, you end up meandering for 20 minutes around some land, a town and then a museum where the main character is just like "AAAAH I HATE GAUDIS!!!" and they're just walking around vibing which actually made me laugh. I should also state that I got past the museum (which was way more challenging than it should've been early game) and ended my playthrough there. I know that means I don't know if the rest of it was any better, but that doesn't mean it didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth. I also got told way later that some of the bosses aren't that good either, but I should probably finished what I started one day.

P.S If I was going to compare JNK and MA side by side in one short sentence it would be that one is Sonic Adventure and the other is Shadow The Hedgehog.

Okay, I guess that's understandable.

A Lost Land is kinda similar [to Mimiga Army] to me, in that it's complete, but rough around the edges. Except instead of being frustrating, it's very basic.

I thought about including A Lost Land in this list, but I eventually decided it's a little bit above average in my book. Admittedly, a lot of this is likely due to some biases that I have of the circumstances under which I played it. First and foremost, it was the very first mod I ever played, so any deviation in content from the original CS felt like a novelty to me, and I hadn't grown weary of any typical CS modding tropes. And as a new mod player, a direct Cave Story sequel kind of hit the spot in terms of what I was looking for. I thought the level design was really good, and while there were a few areas the dialogue could have been just a little bit better, I think Carrotlord did a pretty good job overall of representing the characters, and the mod was pretty polished. The mod's main weaknesses were that it didn't really introduce any new or creative mechanics or features, the entire premise for everyone being back on the island and in trouble again felt pretty contrived, and many of the conflicts faced felt like a rehash of Cave Story. This really showed during the final boss, where it was pretty much just a repeat of the final bosses from Cave Story.

Dreams of Reality 2 was ruined by the lack of save points. Like... why...?

I also thought about including DoR2 on my list of middle-of-the-road mods, but then I looked back at the review I gave in the thread, and thought back to how that mod made me feel when I first played it. It didn't really have any meaningful story progression and the level design wasn't great, but it did introduce some really creative mechanics and creepypasta elements that had a lot of work (including some heavy assembly) put into it. In terms of a gaming experience, it wasn't anything special, but since these elements were so uncommon in CS mods and took a lot of assembly work to pull off (since this was before the CSE2 days), it earns a mark of "above average" in my book. What holds it back from really standing out is that these new gameplay mechanics were haphazardly thrown into the game with a "just to show that it can be done" type of attitude, unlike some of the best mods that smoothly weave their hacks into the game in a way that feels natural.

Okay uh this might be incredibly mean, but...
King: Strife and Sacrifice
Maybe I should've been there for the mod's development and Sexy Beast Noxid's charisma. But KSS feels like it cuts off before it truly gets going. The Mimiga Village massacre is crazy and just the right amount of edgy, but that's kinda it. It's the sort of "incomplete mod" where you can tell it would be amazing if it was finished, but as of now, it's just "that was cool, I guess."

Yeah, that's understandable. The version of KSS I remember playing most vividly was an early demo from back before he made it 2X res. It makes me sad that Noxid put so much effort into re-working his mod and making the 2X res hack along with GIR, and then poured a bunch of time into re-working it once again by making his own game engine (which basically turned it from a mod into a fangame), and then poured a bunch of time into making an editor that would make development of his fangame easier on himself down the road, and then ended up barely making any more tangible content for his own mod/fangame. Thinking back on it, it's kind of funny how Noxid had such a tremendous influence on the modding community, and yet never really made much of a lengthy mod himself.