6 Marvelous Mods That Combine Games In Glorious Ways

6 Portal-Life: Gordon's Revenge

The last playable chapter of Half-Life 2, the confusingly titled Half-Life 2: Episode 2, left players hanging after teasing a future crossover with Portal, another fan favorite blessed by Valve's seal of quality -- you know, the one that comes in the shape of a lack of a third installment. That sucks, as players longed to see Gordon Freeman killing the combine through the use of made-up science, but it was not meant to be -- at least not in an official capacity. Eager modders found a way to bring the Portal Gun into Gordon Freeman's hands, and it results in slapstick comeuppance. 

Remember that douche guard who forces you to pick up a can at the start of the game? Not anymore:

Actually, wait a minute. That guy deserves way worse than that.

... and so do all the others.

Nowhere is safe.

And good thing fans found a way to break the game like that because even Half-Life: Alyx, the closest we've gotten to Half-Life 3 in 15 years, completely scrapped the portal mechanics in favor of VR. Which, to be honest, is pretty cool and also gave us ...

5 Bio-Life Let's You Return To Rapture

Half-Life: Alyx is such a great title that its biggest problem is not straight-up being Half-Life 3. On the other hand, BioShock Infinite, the third game in the BioShock series, is mainly plagued by not being like the previous entries in the series. While we won't be the ones to make Half-Life 3 or to buy you the original BioShock that you can now get for like 10 dollars, we have the third-best thing. 

Return to Rapture is a fan creation that does both games a service by continuing the gameplay of Half-Life while ignoring the weird story of BioShock Infinite. What it doesn't ignore, however, are the locations from earlier BioShock games. Instead of taking the easy route of bringing a character from BioShock to the already rendered world of Alyx, Return to Rapture takes the titular Alyx to a rapturous looking version of, well, Rapture from the original BioShock.

Not only does it feature a surprisingly decent story (for the bonkers mashup genre, at least), it also looks and plays great:

While Return to Rapture might not be Half-Life 3, its surprisingly successful mishmash of elements sure gets us one step closer to getting an M-rated Kingdom Hearts.

4 Grand Theft Auto Jacks Dark Souls Assets

Medieval gangsters are probably the last crossover you'd expect, but here we are.

The unlikely clash between worlds began when modders found out that the models from Dark Souls and GTA were surprisingly compatible, so they created a tool that Space Jam-ed CJ from GTA San Andreas into the magical world of Dark Souls.

And because the basis of modding is doing anything you can, but especially if you shouldn't, getting one character from GTA over to Dark Souls was just the first step of a series that culminated in bringing an entire goddamn building from the Souls series to GTA V. Witness how somehow managed to drop a whole-ass cathedral hidden inside GTA V's code:

3 Fans Doom Sonic To Live In The World Of Persona

The Sonic and Persona series don't have much in common. Which is good since that might have given a modder enough reason to smash both of their worlds together. The result is Sonic Robo Blast 2: Persona. Sure, that's not the most original name he could have picked, but maybe that's because he saved all the originality in his heart for other things. 

Case in point: how this mishmash isn't even a Sonic game, but actually DOOM -- or, a mod for the original DOOM, to be more precise. Oh yeah, you thought you were dealing with a weird two-way crossover, but you just found yourself in the midst of a threesome. Robo Blast 2: Persona is an ultra-weird experiment combining Persona's RPG battles and Sonic's sugar rush-powered gameplay with the hellish plains of Mars from DOOM. And somehow, it all works: 

2 How About A Jurassic Outbreak Amid A Zombie Outbreak?

Dino Crisis was such a faithful representation of the dino times that at some point, it also went extinct for mysterious reasons. But, one interesting aspect of Capcom games is their interchangeability.

Devil May Cry began development as a Resident Evil title, with Resident Evil 3 even original featuring a costume belonging to Regina (the main character from the Dino Crisis series). Then, fan Darkness Valtier connected the dots and created a mod that would probably make Capcom proud. (Hopefully, to the point of not suing.)

Dino Evil 3 picks up the Resident Evil 3 remake from 2020, turns RE's Jill into Regina from Dino Crisis, and replaces all enemies with goddamn T-Rexes. It's brutal.

Well, maybe it doesn't replace the zombie dogs. There's just not enough room.

Or at least much better than Dino Crisis 3, the game that killed the series not for mysterious reasons like we've led you to believe, but by taking the Dinosaurs (and the sales) to space. Here's some completely insane but completely honest box art that may have helped the franchise fossilized.

1 Super Mario 64 Goldeneye

What's the best game in the Nintendo 64 library? There are various fair contenders, such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye 007, and Superman 64 -- wait, sorry, Super Mario 64. In case you're split between Mario and Goldeneye, a mod by the deceptively smart StupidMarioBros1Fan facilitates the choice by giving us both.

StupidMarioBros1Fan didn't just bring the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom into the "maps" of Goldeneye; he integrated Mario's characters in the 007 world, and wrote a wild script that inserts them in the lore.

Nintendo seemingly tried to bury it as the videos from 2018 when it was first announced are nowhere to be seen, but StupidMarioBros1Fan then brought it back with a vengeance. The game now features a playable Peach's castle that showcases an original boss showdown with Bowse.

The cherry on top is how StupidMarioBros1Fan accidentally solved one of the few criticisms hurled at the original Goldeneye 007: Oddjob. Remember the pain in the ass character in the multiplayer, whose smaller and weirdly shaped model turned him into a nearly impossible-to-hit killing machine that still gives us eye-twitches to this very day? Say goodbye to that:

Top Image: Valve, 2K games