Games That Totally Suck Unless You Install Mods

In the old days, if a game sucked, you were stuck with it. Not any more. These days, when an internet connection is practically a requirement for any dedicated video game player, titles can be improved on a whim — and they are. Sometimes, publishers work overtime to salvage titles that aren't up to snuff at launch — No Man's Sky and The Division, we're looking your way — while other times, fans pick up the slack and breath new life into heavily flawed favorites.

We're not just talking about modernizing older classics that haven't aged well or community-made improvements for lackluster PC ports. We're talking about some of the worst games ever made. Straight out of the box, the following titles absolutely stink. With a few modifications helpfully provided by your fellow gamers, on the other hand, they're not just playable, they're actually fun. It takes a lot of work to transform a bad game into a good one, but these people have done it — and they've unearthed a few minor classics in the process.

Most games don't suffer from one high-profile lawsuit, to say nothing of two, but Aliens: Colonial Marines isn't like most games. During production, the developer, Gearbox, allegedly funneled money and resources from Aliens to projects like Borderlands, effectively "stealing" from Sega, the game's publisher (Gearbox disputes those claims). The game was rushed to market and released it in an unfinished state. Post-launch, fans noticed that Aliens: Colonial Marines didn't look much like Sega's marketing materials, and a couple of them sued the publisher for false advertising, netting a cool $1.25 million in the settlement.

That's not just bad. That's historically terrible. While Colonial Marines is easy to ignore now, some fans weren't willing to let it go. Naturally, "Templar GFX's ACM Overhaul" makes Colonial Marines look more like the next-gen title that Sega promised, with improved textures, better shadows, permanent blood and acid stains, and much more, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The mod improves weapon balance and beefs up the overall artificial intelligence.

Most crucially, however, the mod also makes the titular aliens as terrifying as they should be, upping their reaction time to make them smarter and implementing all kinds of tweaks to make them faster, more athletic, and deadlier. Or, to put it another way, Templar GFX's fix basically makes Colonial Marines feel more like Alien: Isolation. If you've played Isolation, then you know: that's a very, very good thing.

Lara Croft is too iconic to kill off for good, but Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness certainly tried its best. Originally designed as a fresh start for a series that was growing increasingly stale, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness instead almost tanked the entire franchise. The game is notoriously difficult to control, uncharacteristically dark, and takes place in an urban setting — instead of, y'know, actual tombs — and fans reacted accordingly.

So did everyone else. Paramount blamed Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life's poor box office showing on Angel of Darkness' lackluster reception. Tomb Raider's co-creator Jeremy Heath-Smith resigned following the game's launch. In the aftermath, Tomb Raider's publisher Eidos took the franchise away from Core Design, the company that created the series, and handed it over to Crystal Dynamics, which ended up pushing Lara in an entirely different and brand new direction.

And yet, some Tomb Raider die-hards saw Angel of Darkness' potential, and they want to share it with the world. After all, things like branching dialogue trees, RPG-inspired progression systems, stealth-based action sequences, and multiple protagonists were all controversial ideas back in 2003, but they're commonplace now. That's why modders like Sasho648 work so hard to improve Angel of Darkness' controls and touch up its textures. As their results show, if Core Dynamics had received more time to perfect their vision, the game would be remembered as a triumph, not a tragedy. And Lara Croft might still be with Core.

Pitfall! is a classic. Super Pitfall is not. The original Atari 2600 game more or less invented the side-scrolling platformer; without Pitfall Harry, Super Mario would be little more than a pipe dream. The Nintendo Entertainment System's Super Pitfall, on the other hand, is a garbled mess that mixes lackluster platforming with maddeningly vague goals (the special items that you need to collect in Super Pitfall's underground maze are invisible, for goodness' sake). Sprinkle a whole bunch of glitches on top, because every bad game needs some of those, and you wind up with one of the very worst NES games ever made.

Still, there are some good ideas lurking in Super Pitfall's subterranean depths. As Gamasutra notes, the core idea concept behind Super Pitfall — a side-scrolling sandbox that encourages open exploration — is a good one. Hardcore NES fans know it, too, which is why one decided to give Super Pitfall an extreme makeover for its 30th anniversary. The invisible objects, random death pits, and knock-off Mario graphics are gone, leaving a pretty solid Metroid-like platformer in its wake.