After months of teasing (and work), the modders behind The Elder Scrolls: Total War for Medieval II: Kingdoms have released their 2.0 update. It now includes the fourth era of the Elder Scrolls world, the setting for the civil war in Skyrim that defines The Elder Scrolls V. The update also adds the Stormcloaks and the dark elf Great House Sadras as playable factions. This is the “last big update” for the mod, which has been in development since 2015, and therefore uses the objectively superior old Total War naming scheme. It also has a launch trailer: 

We first reported on the 2.0 update earlier this year and, impressively, the modders got it out the door before the year closed. The changes reported there are now in: The Clockwork City, the Tsaesci serpent-men, and the Reachmen are now recruitable mercenary armies. The update isn’t just about the new factions or the fourth era, and includes a bunch of new models and units for old factions. Characters like Mehrunes Dagon and Mannimarco have new, unique models. The Dawnguard have armored trolls. And, perhaps best of all, there is now an all-Khajiit mage unit. It even adds a “Pocket Guide to the Empire” for those less versed in Elder Scrolls lore.

You can check out The Elder Scrolls: Total War on ModDB and read the complete 2.0 changelog here.

The Mortal Kombat universe, now that I'm forced to think about it, is a surprisingly fertile setting for some Total War. You've got memorable factions with lots of distinct traits, constantly shifting allegiances and several realms where the most popular occupation seems to be 'martial artist'. Mortal Kombat Konquest TW should fit right in. 

It's a Mortal Kombat overhaul mod for Medieval 2, from modder Kirukato. They posted some work-in-progress videos last year and this month announced plans for it, along with some new screenshots.  

Here's what Kirukato has planned:

• Huge Campaign map, (including all the realms)
• Scripted events for the campaign (events from some of the MK games)
• Units from many MK games, (mostly Armageddon and Deception)
• Heroes (Kombatants) for all factions, alone in custom battles and as generals in Campaign
• New custom UI

They're working on it along, but if you've got ideas or want to collaborate, give them a holler. 

Across the years, Total War has flung everything from packs of dogs to undead dragons into battle, but Creative Assembly has yet to dabble in an era that lets us finally field the humble tank. Total War: 1942, an overhaul for the original Rome, fixes this omission, adding not just tanks, but planes, battleships and little blokes with rocket launchers. 

V1.0 launched earlier in the month, letting players start a campaign or historic battle as one of 18 playable factions. Not yet playable is the 19th faction, which is the United Nations, confusingly. It wasn't established until after the war, but in this parallel World War 2, it's what holds the Allies together. 

Get a glimpse of the war in the launch trailer below. 

Having animated vehicles duking it out in Rome is a bit of a treat. It is, however, bizarre seeing all the units neatly standing in a row, exchanging fire with the enemy. That style of warfare quickly when out of style with the invention of weapons, like the machine gun, that could wipe out those rows pretty quickly. 

It's possibly one of the reasons that Total War hasn't gone beyond Empire, because the battle system would probably need to be flung out if Creative Assembly wanted to maintain the series' authenticity. It could always get fellow Sega developer Relic to give some advice, though. Total War: Company of Heroes. Gosh.

Authenticity probably isn't a big concern in Total War: 1942, but that's OK. I just want to do terrifying cavalry charges with tanks. Squashing infantry is much more satisfying than shooting them.

Download it here.

Despite the impending launch of Total War: Three Kingdoms, there are still plenty of reasons to return to the older games, especially Medieval 2 and its multitude of total conversion mods. Total War: Dragon Age is the latest attempt to turn BioWare's fantasy realm into grand strategy romp, and so far it looks very promising. 

A recent update from the mod team shows off the campaign map, specifically Ferelden, which you'll know doubt recognise if you've already spent hundreds of hours walking around the RPG version. You'll be able to visit places like the Temple of Andraste and Flemeth's hut, where unique events, items or even a high dragon can spawn. 

These special areas are one of a bunch of changes that the team is promising. Apparently, there won't be any part of Medieval 2 that won't be altered by the overhaul. Expect heroes, magic and scripted events like Blights, the Mage-Templar War and the Breach to crop up while you play.

Along with being able to command one of the nations of Thedas, you'll also be able to play as factions like the Grey Wardens and Templar Order. Playing these smaller factions might be trickier because of their smaller unit sizes and slower recruitment, but they also boast elite armies and regular units that are better than average. 

Total War: Dragon Age doesn't have a release date yet, but the team is aiming to have a beta up and running within a year and a half. In the meantime, check out the ModDB page for more details and screenshots.

The modders behind Medieval 2: Total War + The Elder Scrolls mashup The Elder Scrolls: Total War are going ever deeper into the lore of Tamriel, adding mercenary armies to represent minor factions and races across the map. The upcoming 2.0 update will introduce three new armies after nearly four years of development on the mod. (PC Gamer first reported on the mod in March 2015.) This new patch will add Skyrim’s infamous Reachmen, the Tsaesci serpent-men, and the Clockwork City of Sotha Sil as factions that you can recruit to your cause by fulfilling certain quests on the strategic map. To recruit the Reachmen, for example, you have to unite their territories in southwest Skyrim and then release their leader, Madanach, from the Sidna mines where he’s being held prisoner. It’ll earn you the enmity of Ulfric Stormcloak, however. 

More than anything, this preview of the upcoming update shows how much blood, sweat, and tears these modders have put into their work. Even with a year or more between major updates, work has never ceased. Every one of the 20+ factions in this thing has custom models, including all these mercenary factions, and many of the cities are modeled after the ones in Elder Scrolls games. (Which aren’t the first ones: The Wild Hunt, Maormer, Mannimarco’s undead, a Vampire clan, and the Dawnguard have all been in the game for a while.) Previous updates, like the 1.4 update, have been called the last update for the mod, but it does look like this 2.0 update may well be the last. And that’s okay, because these modders have given you the Elder Scrolls strategy game that Bethesda may never make.

You can read the full update preview here or download the mod here on ModDB. 

If you haven't played Binary Domain, now's the time to do so: you can get it for a mere buck in the latest Humble Bundle sale, which supports the charity SpecialEffect. That dollar also gets you Streets of Rage, Crazy Taxi and Olli Olli 2. Frankly, even if you're not a fan of third-person shooters (I'm not), I reckon Binary Domain is worth a look.

If you donate more than the average (which at the time of writing, is $6.52), you'll also get Surgeon Simulator, Grid 2, Operation Flashpoint: Red River and Alpha Protocol. You're probably sick of hearing it, but it bears repeating: Alpha Protocol is an underrated gem. 

If you pay more than $9 there are two other games: Stronghold Crusader 2 and the Guardians of the Galaxy Telltale series. Check out the bundle over here.

The third and final round of Sega's weirdly generous Make War Not Love promotion is here, which means a new bunch of games has been made available for free. If you already have Gunstar Heroes, Viking: Battle for Asgard, and Renegade Ops in your Steam library, then there are zero reasons for you to be excited, but if you don't, well, I have some good news.

Gunstar Heroes, Viking: Battle for Asgard, and Renegade Ops are free for the next few hours, though it will probably take a little while for you to receive the keys. Unlike the first round of Make War Not Love 3, you have to visit this site and sign up for Sega's newsletter, though it should be easy enough to unsubscribe afterwards. It's the same procedure as round two, meaning you'll need to input your email address and wait for Sega to email you a Steam key, something that could take up to three days. (If, like me, you already signed up for round two of the promo a couple of days ago, you should automatically receive round three's games without having to do anything.)

So yes, if all goes to plan your Steam library will soon devour another trio of old/classic games. There's also some Dawn of War II: Retribution DLC available for free from the same link.

If you want even more free Sega games, consider booking tickets for the PC Gamer Weekender in a couple of weeks.

Stories in Total War appear without warning, like aunts on damp Sunday afternoons. Attila and Rome 2 deliberately construct these stories, letting you make decisions that nudge the narrative in whichever direction you choose, but I prefer the accidental drama of Medieval 2. 

I m drawn back to Medieval 2: Kingdoms after reading about the Crusades: a compelling period of history, rich in tales of dashing Norman princes, religious fervour and the taut diplomacy of the Byzantine Empire. Specifically, the battle of Manzikert, in which the once-supreme imperial army was crushed by the Turks. It makes me sad, because the Byzantines were always my favourite faction, which is a bit like picking the least-worst racist in an inner-city chain pub, but also: I don t care. Compared to the frothing barbarians of the West, Constantinople had guile and romance. I decide to make myself feel better by changing history, because games let me do that. 

I start a new Crusades campaign, 100 years after Manzikert. My empire is diminished but capable—although huge chunks of Anatolia belong to the Turks, it s still possible to fight back. Soon, purple fingers begin stretching across the map, gradually reclaiming lost lands which were probably taken from someone else in the first place. I construct mines and grow crops. I send emissaries into enemy lands to spread religious dissent. On the faction rankings graph, my purple line creeps upwards while Turkish forces diminish. 

I reach that moment that comes in every Total War game, where armies fight to determine the future of each faction. It s an event where the lines on the graph converge; one faction falls, another ascends. Our forces clash at Amorium, and it s butchery. My general is killed, and the future of my campaign is left dangling from thin gristle like a hacked arm. A wave of green threatens to wash my forces away, leaving the path to Constantinople unguarded Unexpectedly, a young Byzantine warrior steps forward. Instead of fleeing, my troops rally to him. He charges the vulnerable flanks of the Turkish army, presumably screaming something really inspirational, and one by one, the enemy forces rout. Being a true hero, he hacks them down as they flee.

The Doge is captured, I ransom him for 28,000 gold, capture him again, then execute him.

Brilliantly, my hero s name is Modestos Bringas. I reinforce his army and send him after the remnants of the shattered Turkish forces. He pursues them relentlessly, menacing the fringes of the Seljuk empire for years, and I almost forget about him. Back in the West, a Venetian crusader force appears, intent on reclaiming Jerusalem. They re dangerously close to my capital, but being fellow Christians, they ll definitely pass by harmlessly. 

The Venetians take Constantinople. Only one person is near enough to save the city: Modestos. I march him back to the capital. The Venetian force is led by the Doge. (That s their leader, not the smug dog.) Modestos pushes forward to Constantinople, marches through the same holes the crusaders made in my city walls, and expels them. The Doge is captured, I ransom him for 28,000 gold, capture him again, then execute him. Modestos Bringas, once nothing more a humble soldier, has saved the greatest city in Christendom. If only he d been at the battle of Manzikert.

Few things make me as happy as modders taking one game and stitching it to another. As Troy and Abed said, it only makes them more awesome.

Medieval 2: Total War is getting pretty old in the tooth, but modders are still working hard to find us some new ways to play it. The Elder Scrolls: Total War mod means you can now pit the various factions of Tamriel against each other in a war that can only be described as, well, total.

There are 20 factions to choose from, including The Kingdoms of Skyrim, Daggerfall, and Wayrest, the Clan of Blackmarsh and the Clan of Crowns, and the Great House of Hlaalu, Telvanni, and Dagoth, just to name a few. You can play as monsters too, like the hordes of Oblivion or an army of undead warriors. They're all custom skinned, so if you choose to side with Oblivion you'll really be marching around an army of Daedra.

There's a full map as well, based on The Elder Scrolls games, and appropriate custom banners will snap in the wind as you march your armies into battle. 

The mod is not yet complete, but from my play session I'd say it's off to a good start. The campaign isn't finished yet, and there are some bugs, but I played a few custom battles and they worked just fine. It's also entirely in Russian, so in addition to the mod, which you can find a link for on this page, you may also need the English language patch. Even with it, some of the text still appears untranslated, though they're working on a better one.

Installing Medieval 2 mods isn't always easy, but there's a nice guide here on Reddit.

Welcome to our roundup of the best total conversion mods ever. Presented in no particular order, these are the mods that radically transform our favorite games into something different, with new and improved art, gameplay systems, locations, and adventures. Crafted through years of work, sometimes by large teams of volunteer modders, many of these mods have gone on to become PC gaming classics in their own right.

Here are the best total conversion mods ever made. 

Link: Sven Co-op on Steam

First released way back in 1999, Sven Co-op is still being both updated and played today. A cooperative mod for the original Half-Life, the mod allows groups of players to battle their way through the Half-Life campaign, where they'll find increased challenges and far more enemies, as well as new maps filled with puzzles and challenges. Over the years hundreds of new levels have been added along with new weapons, improved AI, and lots of customization options. Even if you don't own Half-Life, you can play it for free on Steam.

Link: A Game of Thrones mod site

For Game of Thrones fans, this mod is already at the top of your personal list or will be the moment you try it. It transforms CK II’s medieval Europe into the beautifully realised continents of Westeros and Essos and populates them with characters and events straight from the source material. Marry, mingle, or murder your way through the Starks, Lannisters and many other notable dynasties. Best of all, random game events will quickly spin the world into an enjoyable alt-reality of the fiction we’re so familiar with. This is an absolute must-have for gamers who are fans of the George RR Martin novels and the HBO series.

Link: Aliens TC ModDB page

Way back in 1994, this pioneer of full-conversion mods successfully recreated the 1986 sci-fi action film Aliens in Doom. It didn’t settle for just plopping face-huggers and aliens on a map, either: its custom levels mirror familiar locations and story beats from the film and even provide sound effects and voice clips lifted straight from the movie. Hearing Sergeant Apone through your headset reminding you to “Check those corners... check those corners!” not to mention Ripley furiously shouting “COME ON!” when climbing into her signature loader to do battle with the alien queen genuinely made me feel like I was part of the Aliens universe.

Link: Counter-strike ModDB page

You may have heard of it? The multiplayer Half-Life mod featured such team-based missions as hostage rescue and bomb defusal, each team with its own equipment and goals. With its quick rounds and exciting gunplay, Counter-Strike became an instant hit, and the community began creating maps of its own. Counter-Strike’s emphasis on teamwork and communication helped define a new genre of shooters, and the modders behind it were quickly hired by Valve.

Link: Nehrim site

Every full-conversion mod comes with a high degree of ambition, but it’s a truly special situation when the mod’s creators have the talent to match. Nehrim: At Fate’s Edge, created by German modding team SureAI over four years, does what the best full conversion mods do: reshapes the features that are lacking in the original game and provide hours of exciting new content. With original voice work by dozens of actors, big changes to several of the game’s familiar systems, and its own quests, story, lore, playable races, and a massive and beautifully designed new map to explore, Nehrim transforms The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion into an entirely new experience.

Link: Garry's Mod ModDB page

Plenty of games have a god mode accessible through console commands, but Garry’s Mod takes the idea to an entirely new level. A multiplayer sandbox limited only by your creativity, the mod has proven to be the ultimate tool for creating webcomics, videos and custom game modes, as it enables players to spawn objects and entities and pose them however they like. You can even play Half- Life 2 using all of the mod’s tools, turning Gordon Freeman from a simple gun-toting scientist into the ultimate expression of your will.

Link: Long War at Nexus Mods

Harder, longer, and with hundreds of changes to the base game, Long War extends XCOM's campaign, lets you play with up to 12 squad members at a time, adds new soldier classes, voice packs, weapons and technology, and lots of improved and completely overhauled systems. Long War wasn't just a hit with players but with XCOM's developers, who brought the mod team in to work on launch-day mods for XCOM 2, as well as create Long War 2.

Link: The Dark Mod site

This mod isn’t simply a celebration of the acclaimed Thief series using Doom 3’s engine, but actually an improvement on some of its features, especially the wonderful and engaging new lockpicking system. The open-ended stealth adventure lets you slink through a gorgeous, highly-detailed gothic steampunk world as you fill your pantaloons with loot and try to avoid detection. Most importantly, the mod comes with its own mission editor, enabling members of the community to create and submit their own custom levels and stories. The Dark Mod was released as a standalone game in 2013.

Link: Black Mesa site

It sounded like an impossible project: building the entirety of the celebrated FPS Half-Life in Half-Life 2’s Source engine, but after eight years of work by a large volunteer team of modders it finally became a reality. While it stops short of recreating the entire game (Gordon Freeman’s leap into Xen is the mod’s endpoint), it’s still a remarkable accomplishment. For Half-Life veterans it contains a mix of new design elements and familiar confrontations, and it’s a also great way to experience the ground-breaking adventure for those turned off by the dated graphics of the original.

Link: DayZ mod on Steam

In a game featuring starvation, sickness, and swarms of growling zombies, it still falls to other human players to provide most of the horror. While the standalone version of DayZ became a big hit in Early Access, the original open-world multiplayer survival mod is perfectly playable. The vast map and lack of global chat provide a feeling of intense loneliness, but the prospect of actually meeting someone else is a constant threat.

Link: Complex mod site

The name is certainly apt: this mod takes the real-time space strategy game and adds an almost absurd amount of complexity to nearly every single aspect. Alongside improvements to the AI, physics and graphics, the mod adds scores of new units and maps, constructible subsystems, deeper tech and research trees, and a diplomacy system. It even adds an actual calendar so gametime can be marked in years as in the Civilization series.

Link: Dota Allstars, a recent iteration of the original mod, worked on by IceFrog, who now works for Valve on Dota 2.

An exciting combination of RTS and RPG, the multiplayer battle arena mod for Warcraft III (based on a modded map from StarCraft) is a lot of things: simple to understand, difficult to master, and most of all, utterly addictive. In its early days DotA was a project that was passed from modder to modder, and like an unending stream of creeps it eventually spread through the gaming world to become a massive hit, as well as the first lanepushing game to have sponsored tournaments.

Link: NeoTokyo site

This team-based multiplayer mod for Half-Life 2 is set in a slick, futuristic cyberpunk city and features three different classes to choose from, each with their own distinct weapons and strengths. With lethally realistic gunfire and cloaking abilities available to some classes, NeoTokyo requires more stealthy and tactical play than many online shooters demand. Inspired by anime classics Ghost in the Shell and Akira, NeoTokyo also features an amazing and engrossing custom soundtrack that you’ll want to listen to even when you’re not playing the game. The mod was released as a standalone title in 2009.

Link: Mechwarrior: Living Legends site

Combining FPS action and simulation, this large scale multiplayer-only mod brings wonderfully realised Battletech mechs to life in Cryengine 2, though it began as a mod for Quake Wars. Tanks, jets, mechs and hovercraft strategically battle for territorial control in beautiful, varied, highlydetailed outdoor environments with full day/night cycles. The mod was so impressively made it was even sanctioned by Microsoft, who own the Mechwarrior franchise the mod is based on.

Link: Cry of Fear ModDB page

While it’s a standalone release now, Cry of Fear began as a Half-Life mod. It’s the story of a man who wakes after being hit by a car to discover his city is filled with gruesome monsters and his mind packed with psychological horrors. The mod has some interesting and immersive tweaks, such as an extremely limited inventory—and the fact that the game doesn’t pause while using it—that bring new challenges as you play through a disturbing, winding story with original animated sequences and multiple endings.

Link: Genkokujo ModDB page

The Sengoku period in Japan was a time of turmoil, political intrigue and near-constant warfare. What better time and place for a massive, openworld combat RPG built on the capable framework of Mount & Blade? The mod features actual clans and figures from Japanese history, new skins and armour types, new gunpowder weapons, and dozens of historically accurate locations spread across a map of Japan with twice the playable area of the original game. It also incorporates a number of other excellent M&B mods such as Diplomacy and Freelancer, which add even more great features.

Link: The Stanley Parable on Desura

You’re put in control of a clerk who suddenly finds himself completely alone at the office, but you’ll soon start to reconsider just how much control you actually have. While difficult to describe, the mod quickly proves to be a witty and insightful commentary on videogames, particularly the act of making choices. It’s also wonderfully narrated by a voice so soothing you’d like him to read you bedtime stories – if only you could trust him. It’s now a complete game with a lot more polish and an extended story, but the original mod remains a thoughtful, oddball delight.

Link: The Third Age on TWCenter

Every kid who ever picked up JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novels has longed to step into Middle-earth, and one of the best ways to do it is with this mod for the turn-based strategy game Total War, capable as it is of portraying epic-scale battles. Third Age features over a hundred accurate locations and a dozen factions straight from the fiction. It includes custom units such as ents, trolls, giant spiders and wargs, and lets you play not just as heroes like the men of Gondor and the Silvan Elves, but also as the evil forces of Sauron’s Mordor, Isengard, and even the orcs of the Misty Mountains.

Link: Out of Hell ModDB page

As Donovan Ling, a lone cop investigating a garbled transmission from the industrial town of Grinwood, you quickly find yourself alone and fighting to survive a relentless zombie invasion. This mod is packed with astounding visuals of a city gone to hell, and a chilling original soundtrack accompanies you as you battle your way through more than 20 harrowing and atmospheric maps. Despite an arsenal of deadly weapons and melee attacks, you’ll never really have time to catch your breath.

Link: Natural Selection site

With one team playing marines and the other playing aliens, Natural Selection converts Half-Life into a multiplayer hybrid of first-person shooting and realtime strategy. It brought to life the concept of a commander in an FPS: a sole player who views the map in top-down fashion, giving orders, issuing supply drops, and managing the map in a traditional RTS fashion. The aliens have no overlord or shared resources, so must rely on communication if they want to win. Despite big differences in the two teams’ abilities and tactics, the mod remains a tightly balanced experience.

Link: Team Fortress ModDB page

Long before it evolved into a cartoony hat-trading simulation, Team Fortress was a mod for Quake. It originally featured five classes, later blossoming into the full iconic nine we’re familiar with today, and even provided a tenth class, the civilian, playable during VIP escort missions. Instead of just red and blue teams, certain maps for TF included two additional teams, green and yellow, struggling for map control and engaging in capture the flag games. The mod’s popularity led to a proper release and, much later, the Team Fortress 2 we know today, although the original mod is still played on a few servers.

Link: The Nameless Mod site

With a hundred new skins, sixty maps, custom cinematic sequences,and two storylines providing a hefty thirty hours of playtime, The Nameless Mod grew, over seven years of development, from something of an in-joke to a true mod masterpiece and Deus Ex fan favourite. Part homage and part satire, the mod sports thousands of lines of custom dialogue, tons of tweaks, and dozens of great new music tracks, not to mention books, newspapers and emails.