Dino D-Day hasn’t won the Lifetime “Gravity Gun Throwing BFGs” Award for Best Concept Ever, but only because that award doesn’t exist. And the award doesn’t exist only because we never knew that Dino D-Day would be invented, creating an impossible spiral of awesome which risks destroying the laws of logic by being a better concept than our universe was built to withstand.

This isn’t some trash flash web-garbage where the ‘funny’ title took three-quarters of the development time: this is a full Source engine game pitting a lone hero against the entirety of a Jurassic Reich. With a free demo already online you can go download it right now and be blasting dinosaurs within the hour, for free, effectively making the next sixty minutes an intelligence test. Because anyone who doesn’t do that is a fool.

All your old favorites from World at War, MoH, and Day of Defeat servers are present and correct: the Thompson, the stick grenade, and of course the Garand which - as always - musically ‘tings’ as it ejects a spent clip. What isn’t as always is that it tings because you’re desperately pumping those shots into a charging triceratops, which is exactly the sort of shakeup you need to make these weapons fresh after approximately one million World War II titles.

The only time it’s acceptable to NOT shoot a videogame Nazi.

Because this game doesn’t rely on its gimmick: it’s a real shooter, and if the demo level is anything to go by that’s short for “really fantastic shooter”. In a single level there are several modes of play: standard Nazi-plugging; a three-way armed misunderstanding between you, Nazis and a Triceratops; being stalked through a maze of ruins by a swarm of raptors; and a final battle against if-I-even-need-to-tell-you-what-you-won’t-get-it.

Now you tell me

Particularly pleasant is the tightness of the weapons: like Half Life 2 Deathmatch servers before it, the game really rewards accurate shooting instead of spraying. Yes, that does extend to dinosaur headshots. A phrase so incredible we’re going to say it again without even pretending to have an excuse: DINOSAUR HEADSHOTS.

You can also do this! (If you don’t want to do this please leave our site.)

There’s also real humor and skill in developing the brilliant concept. The website is stuffed with great propaganda material (including an announcement that Eisonhower is serious about sending only one man against the entire Dino horde). The full game will be released on Steam later this year, featuring a full multiplayer deathmatch (so you can see Source physics on something other than Counter-Strike servers for once) and all sorts of goodies. But don’t just take our word for it: watch this, and if you’re not excited by the end please check to make sure that you aren’t dead.

3D destroyed dozens of beloved characters back in dark days of the late nineties, now known as the “Plague Of Broken Polygons”, forcing them into a third dimension they weren’t ready for. The N64 Castlevania was a catastrophe of careening cameras and clumsy controls, and we’re going to have to pray our secret NES shrines forgive us for even mentioning the Playstation’s Mega Man Legends. But now we have professional 3D rendering tools, an army of innovative internet fans, and people who still love what made the titles good in the first place. Here we see how they’ve brought the old days onto modern game servers.

1. Super Gordon Bros

An awesome modification that’s half parody, half retrostalgic, showing exactly how things look for the Mario Bros in their flattened world. M0rtanius’s Super Gordon Bros teleports Gordon Freeman into World 1-1 of the greatest platform game ever made and it’s a view like no other.

It’s an incredibly fun little level despite being dangerously close to fan-fiction - but with the HEV suit coming out of the mushroom question block, and even the ability to “use” a pipe to enter the underground coin room, it’s about a minute of incredible joy. You can even load the level into a HL2:DM server for some side-scrolling shooting insanity. Not exactly the most balanced (or even possible) level but an awesome idea for a fun clan-server event.

Watch it here, or download it here.

2. TF2 Mario Kart

I don’t think we’re in Dustbowl any more

Teleporting Team Fortress 2 into a game where Mario was adapted into racing - this map involves more worlds than a Starfleet war. The team deathmatch level thrusts players into a psychedelic world of memes, mario karts and moving vehicles. TF2 servers running the map are usually heavily 4channed (meaning they’re not homes of fine teamplay or even coherent thought) but as long as you’re ready to mute the worst of the micspammers you can derive insane enjoyment from this lunatic level.

In fact, I don’t even want to know where we are

Get the files here, and thank the awesome Xenon for making it.

3. Half-Life Vania

We’re back with the best, with M0rtanius taking us to Transylvania - and giving us a crowbar. The instant you spawn you’re transported back in time, not to the days of Dracula, but the 8-bit eighties. The music immediately engages your grin response and the attention to detail is fantastic: you get power-ups by breaking candles, scanners patrol hallways in the classic sine-wave pattern, and the hidden healthpack is still in the right place for those who know where to smash up the wall.

It’s a Source server fantasy for anyone who’s taken the long road through gaming: if you’ve ever blown on a cartridge to make it work, if you’ve ever sighed and started again from the beginning after dying on the last level, if you remember the first time you saw something in 3D, then these treats are for you. And your friends. And the Garry’s Mod server applications are only limited by your imagination.

Watch it here, get it here.

Video games are all about living the dream, about doing the impossible and the awesome and everything you ever wanted to.  Never was that truer than with Eternal Silence: not only is it the absolute image of sci-fi space combat (intership dogfightining leading to boarding the enemy ship and sabotaging systems) but people wanted it so much they built it themselves.

Lock S-Foils in attack position! Go in for strafing run!  Shout “WOOOHOOO I’M FIGHTING IN SPACE!”

It’s a Source engine mod and they’re not messing around: the entire thing has been utterly reinvented and also shot into space.  You’ve never played anything like it: a unique multi-staged combat with everything from Interceptors to Bombers to running around with a flamethrower.  That sentence either convinced you to play it or made you realise you’re on the wrong site.  The two-level combat creates brand new tactical situations for even the most experienced FPSer.

Flame helps with ANY pest

Both red and blue have Capital Ships, protected by three Corvettes (unmanned, auto-firing heavy ships).  When one team loses those defenders the game switches to an Attack/Defend strategy: the corvetteless side must defend their capital ship against attack, either getting into space to intercept incoming ships or running around in first person defending critical systems.  The attacking enemy can either stay in space, hammering the ship, or board to try to turn off critical systems to make attacking easier.  Weapons, Shields and the Hangar are all capture points which affect the space battle.

This dual-level combat means that the game massively rewards teamwork, especially with ship classes like Bombers requiring fighter escorts to get into range.  The game can bewilder at first glance, but with plenty of loading instructions and a supportive forum, it’s easy to get up to speed.  A couple of points for the first-time player

1.  Use targeting

If you just charge out and start firing into space, well, space is pretty big.  You’re not going to hit anything.  Use the targeting controls to select who you’re shooting at - this will give you the “leading” indicator, telling you where to aim to hit a distant enemy, and allow you to lock-on with missiles by holding your cursor over the target.

2.  Don’t panic

Don’t panic, most of those Giant Death Beams will miss!

3-D combat confers control complexity but you don’t need to worry about yaw, pitch or roll at the beginning.  The mouse and forward/back will give you more than enough maneuverability until you get an idea of what’s going on.

3.  Defend the Hangar

Point capture is determined by numbers, and if you’re a Hacker or Combat class

If you’re boarded you should defend everything, of course, but when the enemy takes the hangar you lose the ability to launch ships at all.  Meaning the entire space aspect stops being “Exciting combat” and starts being “Their entire team just killing you.”  Don’t let that happen.

Eternal Silence, even more than any other mod yet, really rewards playing with a good team of friends on a solid server.  It’s truly a scifi fantasy come to videogame life, and a small amount of learning is well worth the fun rewards - and official Steam support means that you (or your Eternal Silence server) doesn’t have to worry about patches, files, or other awkward install issues which plague third-party programs.  Oh, and did we mention it’s free?  You’re either playing it, or you don’t like cool new things.

The internet is awesome: only a few weeks ago, a Counter-Strike/Ghost In The Shell crossover would have been the worst fan-fiction in the world. Now it’s a fantastic free mod for any Half-Life 2 Deathmatch server, and one you should really be playing.

If you don’t know what Ghost In The Shell is, don’t worry: you’ll still appreciate the excellent Blade-Runner stylings, texture rich multi-level locations and brutal combat of NeoTokyo servers (which, unlike many mods, actually have an active population.)  Think “near-future cyberpunk” with cyborgs, cloaking devices and high-level governmental shenanigans - usually resolved by gunfire.

The game has a real Counter-Strike brutality - it only takes a couple of bullets to put you down, and keep you there until the end of the round. The twist is the unique “Capture The Ghost” gameplay, a Capture The Flag variant where both teams are trying to take the same object back to their own exits. The “Ghost” is a piece of a cyborg shell, and also a giant flashing neon sign shouting “Yes This Is Totally Ghost In The Shell In Everything But Name, Isn’t It Awesome?”

Carrying the Ghost gives you information instead of ammunition

Picking up the Ghost means dropping your primary weapon, giving the game a real VIP-mode feel. There’s also an intelligence aspect - you can switch to your pistol, or “use” the ghost to detect enemies and relay the information to your team-mates by voicechat. The central nature of the ghost defines a whole new style of play. Players can choose to make an end-run with the ghost, rely on their comrades to defend them, or simply camp the objective and wait for the enemy to show up.

Another addition to the Counter-Strike core is classes and levels. Levels are simple: the more points you score on the server, the more XP you gain and the more weapons you unlock. There are three classes:

1. Recon

Recon have unlimited running, can use an “Aux power” bar to make incredible jumps (very nice for landing behind entrenched enemies) and have a fair bit of thermoptic camoflague. And by “thermoptic camoflague” we mean “cloak”, except you can actually fire while half-invisible - something of a shock for anyone coming over from a TF2 server, adding a real “Was that all of them?” element to any firefight.

2. Assault

Less cloaking, and they have to use their aux power for running, but more health and heavier weapons. The Assault class support the spearhead of recons out for the ghost (or the enemy) while maintaining the ability to make a few surprise sprints of their own. They can also counter cloaking with “motion vision”, at the expense of missing camped enemies.

3. Support

Defending the ghost-carrier with a support class.

No aux power, no cloak, just a great big health bar and a great big gun. The Heavy of the NeoTokyo rooftops, the extremely 3D nature of maps means a well-placed Support player can really change the course of the game. Thermal vision means they have the best view of the battlefield.

On top of all the innovations, NeoTokyo servers are beautiful. Detailed maps making great use of the Source engine, where even the lighting effects have tactical considerations (the act of cloaking causes a bright flash, advertising your location before you become invisible). With everything from rust-stained walls to Metal Gear-memorializing “Calorie Mate” advertisements, you really feel you’re engaged in urban combat in the middle of a major city or governmental facility. A lot more interesting than de_dust, and just as much fun.

You’ve seen some sweet sights on your Source server - a fully-charged medic dropping to your headshot, the blind side of a terrorist on Bomb Site B, the UDamage when you’ve got a full rocket clip - but some people take it to the next level.  The “Somebody who isn’t actually playing would watch it, repeatedly” level, even though watching someone else play is usually the most frustrating thing outside a Chinese finger trap at the urinal.

1.  Combine Nation

Pretty much the only good thing about reality TV is the parodies - and what’s a better parody of real life than video gaming?  We’ll tell you what: video gaming with the Metrocops of City 17 as they deal with barnacles, insurance fraud, and their own idiotic members.

Combine Nation gets bonus points for resisting all the obvious gags - there’s no silent Gordon Freeman, no “From the nameless grunt’s point of view” killings by the player, there isn’t even a gravity gun.  They do include the “What happens if a Metrocop sneezes” bit, but it’s thrown in as an aside - not a single joke forming the focus of an excruciating five minute scene, as with so many fan-made creations.  Take time off from your HL2: DM server to go see.

2.  Ignis Solus

It also features somebody actually winning on 2Fort, and we think that’s an amazing enough to deserve mention all by itself.

3.  Maintenance Man

The story of an unlikely hero thrown into circumstances far beyond him, struggling against impossible odds (and heavily armed enemies) to save his world.  Who cares if he’s a bad guy?  Maintenance Man is about a gravity-gun-equipped janitor out to clean up Gordon Freeman’s mess, and since Gordon blew off the entire Dark Energy Reactor assembly and fatally destabilised the Citadel core, that’s a “mess” on par with the Death Star explosion.  Yes, he’s the guy who has to fix the results of Half Life 2.

Maintenance Man features incredibly skilled camerawork - they manage realistically gritty camera shakes, despite using virtual cameras on virtual actors.  These guys make something so pretend look so real they could probably sell you unicorn insurance.  They’ve also got perfect timing (the weak point of all wannabe Source server directors) adding wonderful little moments of humor and character in the midst of a serious story.

4.  Freeman’s Mind

You may have noticed that all three of the above were made by Lit Fuse Films.  We’re not going to lie to you: that’s because Lit Fuse are simply the best outside of Valve, and any list of the best Source machinima will always just be “Lit Fuse + a couple others”.  If they don’t get hired to do some serious (and well paid) production then there is no justice in this world.  Now, on to the “couple of others”.

If Lit Fuse are the cinema, Freeman’s Mind is the stand-up.  It’s at the opposite end of the technical spectrum - it’s just the someone talking while playing Half Life with the HUD off, and if watching that sounds like the seventh circle of Hell it’s because you haven’t heard him.  Gordon Freeman’s muteness is the most overplayed joke in gaming history, slightly less original than Seinfeld asking “So what’s up with airline food?”, but Ross Scott gives a genius reason: he’s an idiot.  A brilliant, ridiculous, idiot who’s massively entertaining for everyone but downright hilarious for those who’ve played through Black Mesa’s “unique” architecture.  If you’ve ever even heard of crowbars, go check it out.

5.  Escape From City 17

Ultimately, and we do truly mean “ultimately” because it ends everything you ever thought you knew about the genre, there’s Escape From City 17.  Which is quite frankly unbelievable, as in the-first-cowboys-to-see-a-motor-car-, witnessing the start of a new technological era ,-unbelievable.  Merging the Source SDK, Half Life 2 sound effects and real actors in a way that would make major production companies jealous, its insane quality propelled it to the top of the internet so fast it made Zero Punctuation look like a livejournal.  Released one day, an official Steam update announcement the next - and that’s about as high as you can go, Valve-wise, short of owning a crowbar and joining the BLU team.

The makers, the awesomely talented Purchase Brothers, claim that the whole thing cost about $500 - and if that’s within even a factor of a thousand of being true, you’re watching the next generation of film right here.  The first episode alone kicks the hell out of most of the starting series, online or off, and they’re just getting started.  It remains to be seen whether the headcrabs will be the undoing of their limited budget (zombies are harder to recreate than metrocops), but they deserve every click and comment the community can give them.