Let's face facts, your Mac games rock, but your Windows PC-using friends have pointed out some pretty cool mods and expansion packs for their games over the years.
And they WERE pretty cool.
Moving beyond the fact that both Boot Camp and virtualization programs are out there and you could readily switch over to the Windows partition on your Mac or boot a program like Parallels, Fusion or CrossOver and work with game mods that way, we'd like to offer the following five native Mac OS X games with accessible expansions and downloadable levels, the expansion installations ranging from least to most technical.
Without further ado, here we go:
Perhaps the easiest to expand upon, simply load the game, choose "Multiplayer", enter the server browser and locate a game with a new or unfamiliar level or game mode. At this point the application will notice it lacks the levels and simply begin downloading the resources it needs, install them and allow you to enter the game to compete against other players.
While it may take a few minutes for your Mac to haul down all the graphic and sound files a certain level may require, these files will be there if you decide to play that map or game mode again and there's no faster way to go from conventional Counter-Strike: Source to blasting away at a team of zombies that are happily trying to eat you.
It may be seven years since Doom 3 hit, but the game still remains as vivid, creepy and amazing as it ever was. Even so, there are times where you want either a single player or co-op challenge against waves of demons that are more than happy to hurl fireballs and missiles at your head as well as rip you apart as they see fit.
With that in mind come Last Man Standing 4.0, a killer open source mod that can be downloaded from cnet, readily installed and played to your heart's content.
Once the Last Man Standing 4.0 mod has been installed, simply open Doom 3, select "Mods", load the Last Man Standing 4.0 mod, choose single player or multiplayer and you're off to the races, fighting the forces of evil with amazing weapons, a short supply of ammunition and a flashlight to keep you company.
As of this writing, there is one word of caution: Despite various bug fixes, ending a game of Last Man Standing 4.0 will crash the Doom 3 application. While this doesn't affect anything on your Mac, it's a little weird and somewhat disconcerting the first time you see it. Still, this is a fun mod, easy to install and work with and you'll definitely get your free's worth out of it.
In the midst of modern gaming, you can't forget Minecraft. And as strange and obsessive as the players who build absolutely massive structures in the game can be, you have to admit that they created some amazing stuff.
Which isn't to say you shouldn't be able to reap the benefits of the things they've spent dozens of hours on by adding texture and expansion packs to your copy of Minecraft. The process is pretty simple and is covered well in this how-to video, the user showing you how to download a texture pack as well as how to load this file into Minecraft and begin playing around with it:
For the anime fans out there, I'd like to offer a full Studio Ghibli texture pack that can be found here, the texture pack offering the full world created by Studio Ghibli for Minecraft. No, Studio Ghibli's worlds don't always make sense, but it's a cool environment to play with and build on and where texture maps for Minecraft are concerned, this is just the tip of the iceberg...
In spite of several years having passed since a native version of Unreal Tournament appeared for Mac OS X, Unreal Tournament 2004 still has something cool to offer to first-person shooter fans.
The good news: Level expansion in this game is pretty easy to boot.
Like Counter-Strike: Source, entering the multiplayer browser and choosing to play in a game you don't have the map for will push the server to distribute the map files to you. Once installed, you'll enter the game and can begin blowing your opponents to tiny bits, complete with whatever additional weapons or game modifications the server might support.
For those of you looking to play with community-created maps, things are just that simple. Simply open the Unreal Tournament 2004 application, enter the main menu, click on "Community", then click on "Ownage Maps" to see a current list of community-created maps available to download and install (note: as of this writing, the Faster Files web server being used to distribute these maps was returning errors when maps were ordered to download. This should be resolved before too long and there are plenty of maps that can be reliably snagged via the server browser to keep you occupied...
The good news is that someone created a level editor for Valve's best-selling Portal title that runs natively on Mac OS X and can be downloaded from here.
The bad news is that this is a weird, obscure thing with almost no instruction manual whatsoever, albeit various discussion groups like this one discuss the best way to use it to build the level of your dreams.
Perhaps the best part is this: you use a gun to build your levels with this editor:
Once the editor has been launched, you'll happily use a handgun to shoot certain panels, arrows, tiles and icons to create the perfect Portal level, the friendly spirit of Charlton Heston guiding you and handing you additional ammo throughout your journey...
So that's it for us--our favorite free game expansions for some of our favorite games. Got any we didn't mention? Or more importantly, know how to use that Portal 2 editor? Let us know in the comments.
