It also should be noted that bans seem to occur when on enters GTA Online with the mods installed. While the obvious strategy is to never go into GTA Online and to stay offline while using these mods, remember to install them at your own risk.

Zombie Apocalypse

No, this isn’t quite like Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare but it is an effective way to soak up bullets. The Zombie Apocalypse mod converts your character into an undead creature which resists all kinds of damage and straight up murders cops with a single punch. As if that weren’t enough, the weather changes to a brooding sky to match the horror you cause.

Gravity Gun

Convert the somewhat under-powered Stun Gun into a weapon of true physics defiance with this mod. The mod is intriguing as it allows you to lift up cars, people and other objects much like Half Life 2’s Gravity Gun. You can then fling them across the city, causing mass destruction in your wake. The animation isn’t perfect as objects tend to clip through the environment when lifting them. But at least they interact explosively (or gruesomely if using bodies) with the world.

Flying Mod

Ever wanted to fly and high jump through the skies of Los Santos? Thanks to the Nice Fly mod, you can do just that. You’ll need to have a parachute equipped and unfortunately, there aren’t any super powers per say (you can’t karate kick helicopters a la Prototype). However, it is possible to outright fly to different places as opposed to gliding. If you’ve ever wanted unbridled freedom while navigating through the world, this is the best way to do it.

Pedestrian Riot

Ask anyone what they like the most about Grand Theft Auto. Nine times out of ten, it’ll be the free form nature aka running around, causing havoc, jacking cars and evading the police among many explosions. The Pedestrian Riot mod takes this a step further, turning every able bodied civilian of Los Santos into a maniac out for blood. If you’re looking for an extra dose of mayhem and the five star police chases aren’t cutting it for you, try this mod and open yourself up as a target to the whole world.

Firing Cars from Guns

Bullets kill people. Cars kill people. Combine the two – and not in a drive-by kind of way – and you get maximum havoc. This mod changes your bullets into cars. The best part? These cars are solid objects and blow up as they impact other cars at high speeds. There are still some changes this mod requires, including the ability to fire in to the sky, but there’s nothing like greeting an enemy with a friggin’ semi-truck to his face.

Be a Cop

Suppose you want to clean up Los Santos but on a street level. This mod allows you to become the one thing criminals hate the most as you don the dark blue of LSPD and hunt down the scum and villainy roaming the streets. This mod allows you to spawn different vehivlces including choppers and cruisers along with allies to assist you. You can also respond to different crimes in progress and halt them in the name of the law.

Explore North Yankton

Though Rockstar promised a long time ago that we’d be getting some new story DLC for Grand Theft Auto 5, it’s yet to materialize due to, oh, Heists and every other GTA Online update. One significant single-player update players wanted was the ability to explore North Yankton some more. With the help of this mod, you can do just that. There aren’t any missions or activities but it’s fun to drive through if you want a change of scenery.

Bodyguards mod

As the diametrical opposite of the Pedestrian Riot mod, the Bodyguards mod actually summons several different NPCs to your side to fight with you. You can have normal citizens armed with pistols to fight off the cops or even enlist the help of Fort Zancudo soldiers. There’s also the hilarious sight of NPCs trying to get into the same car as you, bumping into each other in the process. For intentional laughs and heaps of meat shields, the Bodyguards mod is worth checking out.

1. NMC’s Texture pack

NMC’s texture pack  is widely renown in the modding world for being one of the best of its kind. All of this was done by one guy who spent a long time working through each texture, one by one. The mod has been downloaded over 1 million times. The only real downside is that Fallout 3 DLC  isn’t touched by this mod.

You can download NMC’s Texture Pack here.

2. Midharastic ENB

There’s a lot of ENBs, but Midharastic’s ENB seems to really push the boat out in Fallout 3. The wasteland changes from a dull world to one with more vibrant colors. The world is given a whole new feeling and looks with this ENB. It’s almost as if you feel like it’s a brand new game. The mod adds different lighting, a film grain and changes some colours a little.

You can download it here.

3. Realism ENB

The realism ENB does what it says on the tin, makes the game look more realistic. The mod focuses on cloud affects and how they would play in the world. It’s simple but effective; and makes the game more pleasing to roam around. There’s extra detail and attention paid to faces, and the little bits of extra texturing really adds to how the game looks.

You can download it here.

4. F3 Project Reality

This mod is actually different to what you’d probably expect. This graphic mod actually aims to focus on the weather. They offer an interesting cycle; pleasant, rainy, cloudy, foggy, windy and Nuclear Winter. The cycle can be flicked off, but I feel this is probably one of the best features of the mod. There’s also a bunch of lightning storms, which are pretty atmospheric.

You can download it here.

5. Flora Overhaul

This mod makes replaces the trees with a fresh, lively look. It also comes in four forms, forested, dead, total devastation and lite. Each one does something a little different.

Forested: This version has the most amounts of plants and trees; it changes the world from a desert wasteland to a lush forested area.

Dead: This version changes 7 of the default trees to huge dead ones, which makes the world stay in its dead state of misery.There are a couple of alive trees though.

Total devastation: This version changes the world into what you’d expect, a completely destroyed world.

Lite: This version changes two of the default trees to lusher ones, but obviously, is a much smaller version.

You can download it here.

6. Fallout 3 Street Lights

What was Fallout 3 missing? Street lights. It seems really trivial, but pictures this: You’re in the wasteland, with a broken limb and you’re climbing through a town in the middle of the night, and you hear the screech of something – but you don’t know what. As the strange object approaches, you can just about make out the shape before the light flickers off.

That’s the glory that something simple like a flickering street light can bring. And that’s why this is one of my preferred mods.

You can download it here.

7. Terrain Pack

This swaps the default textures in the world to real world photographic versions. The textures by default have a resolution of 512 x 512, and this pack offers a few resolutions: 1024 x 1024, 2048 x 2048, with the standard 512 amped up. It’s not the greatest pack out there, but it really lightens up the world.

You can download it here.

8. Director’s Chair – Total Visual Control

This mod allows the user to easily take control of visual modification; it utilizes three other mods to give the user control. They are:

DYNAVISION – Dynamic Lens Effect
The IMAGINATOR – Visual Control Device
CINEMATECH – Film Grains and Styles

You can download The Director’s Chair here.

9. Megaton lighting overhaul:

Megaton is one of the best places on Fallout 3, so making it feel more homey is always good. Apparently the original default version of Megaton only shoots light beams but doesn’t actually generate light. It’s a very simple mod and only affects one town. But seeing the town light up in the night is great, especially if it’s mixed with extra-darkness mods.

You can download the mod here.

10. Pure water

Pure Water makes the water much more transparent and blue. It’s a great little extra but it doesn’t just make the water look more like water; it also makes the player able to “read” the water. You can look at the water and work out if it has any radiation in it or not.

You can download the Pure Water mod here.

11. Clean-Deluxe

Tired of unsightly dust devils floating around and ruining your experience of the apocalypse? Well now you can say goodbye to that pesky nose irritating dust bits with Clean-Deluxe. It’ll also remove ugly dark mists, blinding fog and dark clouds. And now they’ve even added paper-shredder, so we don’t need to worry about newspapers being around.

You can start cleaning up that horrible wasteland right now.

12. Vandr HD creatures

This mod adds HD graphics to some creatures, but not all. Here’s a list of affected creatures: Centaur, Deathclaw, Wild Ghoul, Ghoul Wanderer, Glow Ghoul, Giantant, Giantant Queen, Giant Fire Ant, Giant Fire Ant Queen, Molerat, Radroach, Rad-Scorpion, Super-Mutant, and Yaoguai.

You can make your monsters look more intimidating by downloading Vandr HD here.

13. Energy Visuals Enhanced

Those splats and pews from energy weapons looked pretty good before, but now they look better than ever with Weijiesen’s Energy Visuals Enhanced. The mod offers custom muzzle flashes, custom enhanced projectiles, new critical hit effects, high quality textures for all energy weapons and a whole damn lot more.

You can download it, and read about all the great extras that this mod offers here.

14. Earth from Space

Nothing too fancy here, but nice none the less. During the Mothership Zeta DLC you can view Earth from the spacecraft. But, starwarsguy9875 thought that the Earth lacked the intricate details. So he took it upon himself to make a better looking one. And to be honest, it’s quite nice to look at! Obviously, you need the Mothership Zeta DLC to see this in action.

You can download the mod here.

15. What’s Your Brand – Cigarette texture megapack

We’re ending with a bit of a giggle here. This pack adds detail to cigarette packs.  There’s actually also a mod that makes cigarette’s usable. This goes hand in hand with this mod. All the packs you can find in the mod are actually ones from the time that Fallout is set, or at least when the bombs hit.

You can find the mod here.

But, vigilante as ever, PC gamers have created some wonderful presets to bring the game up to par. So here’s our  top Watch Dogs presets and tweaks.  Please note, all presets require some level of fine tuning to get best results.

SweetFX:

SweetFX is the base unit used for pretty much all mods and presets, and works on all games. It allows for tweaking and image enhancement. SweetFX has been picked up by a lot of users, and you can probably use it yourself! Or, you can download a readymade preset and apply it.

You can download SweetFX from here.

Realistic Preset:

Easily one of my favourite presets is the Realistic preset, this preset sharpens the game so much. It’s almost as if the creator has breathed in fresh air to the game. It holds a near perfect contrast in all areas, never too dark or too bright in any one of them.

It also adds a great amount of colour depth and shadowing effects. The lighting casts down on the world in such a realistic way, It’s almost a sight to applaud at.

You can download the Realistic Preset from here.

CineFX:

The CineFX does what you’d expect, it makes the world look more cinematic. The preset adds glows to the right places, such as bus signs, and makes all the little details pop. It puts Chicago into an almost mafia film style setting, and really sets the mood of the whole game.

You can download CineFX from here.

Real Vision SweetFX Preset:

The RealVision preset pushes the game to the graphics we’d expect from the E3 2012 video. It really adds depth to the map and makes the trees seem super detailed.

The water looks absolutely stunning on this preset.  When night falls it all becomes just a little nicer, the shading around all the objects is really well shaped, and the lighting is almost warming.

You can download RealVision from here. [See the video’s description]

Lon3r:

The Lon3r mod is another one of those presets that makes the world become darker. I feel that this one focuses too much on darkness, compared to the style that CineFX gives.

The Lon3r makes the whole world feel as though it’s Gotham City, which is pretty damn cool. But it’s simply a little cut and dry.

You can download The Lon3r from here.

New Game + Saves:

Watch Dogs doesn’t have a new game plus; so it’s good to see that some modders are working on a makeshift mod; these files have everything you’d likely get at the end of the Watch Dogs campaign. The only issue with this mod is that the game allows you to continue playing after the campaign, so it seems slightly pointless; but I can see its appeal.

You can download New Game Plus Saves from here.

The Worse:

Despite what the name suggests, The Worse mod isn’t that bad at all. It does a variety of things, including several small lighting fixes, LoD changes, add 3 new camera angles, LensFlares, Civilians density changes and much more. In short it almost nails the effects we saw in the E3 2012 trailer.

You can download The Worse from here.

Stutter fix 2.0:

This is a simple mod, it stops the game from suffering, that hideous issue that a lot of PC players reported. This mod also works with “The Worse”, a mod we looked at earlier. It also amps up the graphics a bit, but this causes a slight aliasing issue.

You can download Stutter Fix 2.0 from here.

Kadzait24’s Watch_Dogs E3 Mod:

Although the mod is still in beta, it does improve the graphics by a substantial amount. Most of the E3 effects like wind and fog is unlocked to give users the original E3 experience.  The mod brings improvements to depth of field, cloth physics, reflection, texturing and wet system.

You can download the mod from here.

It’s been a struggle as some of you know, Steam have a strong anti-cheat policy in place for this game, which means there aren’t a huge amount of mods. We suggest you play the game offline if you do use any mod:

WARNING: MODS MAY TRIGGER A VAC (VALVE ANTI CHEAT) BAN IT’S UNCLEAR WHICH DO. GAMING BOLT HOLDs NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR USERS WHO SUFFER A VAC DUE TO ANY MODS USED.

1. GeDoSaTo

GeDoSaTo is a must have for any PC user playing Dark Souls 2, it allows for texture modding which results in this:

GeDoSaTo is required for pretty much every single mod, and was created by the now somewhat famousDurante. His mod allows for downsampling, texture modding, and a whole lot more. We strongly suggest you read his PC gamer article especially if you’re a beginner at modding.

As we mentioned, Steam has some pretty heavy VAC in place for this game, and even a well-known mod like GeDoSaTo isn’t one hundred percent safe, some users have reported they’ve been hit with a VAC after using it.

You can get it from here.

2. Zelda Skin Pack

I’m a big Zelda fan. So when I found this skin pack to make my guy look like he hopped out of Hyrule  I was practically jumping for joy. Although the pack doesn’t make your character look like Link or Ganondorf, it makes me feel just a little bit happier playing in some Zelda armour. It came with a nifty trailer too!

You can get it from here.

3. Kalicolas Enhanced Graphics ENB

This is a simple graphics mod, but it works so well. It adds a little crispness to the world and adds some screen space ambient occlusion, giving the game’s graphics some excellent depth.

This sets a high standard for graphic mods and really makes the world look as though you can walk into the background rather than the background just sitting there.

You can get it from here.

4. WickfutENB

This is probably one of the best loved mods, it amps up the graphics and brings back the lighting we saw in pre-release, creating the world we all hoped to see when we bought Dark Souls 2. There’s also a few different versions that allows the user to remove various effects.

There’s an issue with AO flickering in some places, but nowhere near enough to consider it a major issue.

You can get it here. 

5. GEM – Graphics Enhancement Mod

GEM, that is Graphics Enhancement Mod does what it says on the tin, it makes the graphics slightly more enhanced. Creator neme0 uses SweetFX Stack Shader to give the darker areas of the game a deeper black feel, so it really feels as though the darkness is causing you a problem.

That being said this mod isn’t quite as effective in the darker areas as the Real Darkness ENB is, but due to it enhancing all around graphics, I feel this mod is just a little cut above the Real Darkness ENB, due to the balance it offers.

The mod supports both ENB and GeDoSaTo.

You can get it here. 

6. Darth Maul Skin

Let’s just be blunt, Darth Maul is awesome.  So think about this: slaying monsters, as Darth Maul. I’m still a little sore that we didn’t get our Darth Maul game, so this is the next best thing. It even gives you a double sided lightsaber!

You’ll need these items:

1. Dark Mask
2. Twinblade
3. Leydia White Robe

My only gripe with this mod is that Duel of the Fates doesn’t automatically play when you get into every  battle.

You can get it here.

7. Real Darkness ENB

This mod seems pretty simple “Real darkness”, but it makes the game so much more atmospheric. The point isn’t that the screen is simply darker, otherwise you’d just take the brightness down. It makes the areas that should need a torch actually need a torch. The caves suddenly become almost like a survival horror game rather than an adventure game.

You can get it here.

8. Soul Edge

In the late ‘90s one of my favourite games was released, Soul Blade. The game revolved around a sword called the Soul Edge, so when I saw that Rizaunreleased a mod to add the legendary sword into the game, I had to have it.

The mod is a paint for the Smelter sword, but keeps the glowing effect. Like most mods, this requires GeDoSaTo.

Get it here.

9. Oil painting mod

This texture mod makes the game look out right bizarre. And, as the subtitle suggests like an oil painting, it makes the game a whole lot more enjoyable playing the same area more than once because it looks so different.

This mod is an acquired taste, of course. And actually I’m not hugely keen which is why it’s so low on the list. But it changes the looks so much, that it has to be mentioned. But it brings a new and unique feel to the game.

Get it here.

10. Fleshly Hollow

This mod makes your character slowly lose his/her features everytime you die. They also start to lose skin and fat, by the end you look like Skeletor from He-Man. The key issue with the mod is that there seems to be no way of preserving the original skin tone.

You can get the mod from here.

11. Death Alt text mods:

These mods are pretty straight forward, they change the text from “You died” to “You died like a bitch” or “Thanks Obama”. They add a little dash of humour to the game, but not much else. I’m surprised that there’s been no custom text mod, that allows a player to easily change the text.

You can get it from here.

12. KBAM interface icons

This is a pretty simple little mod, all it does is change the interface icons from the default Xbox 360 icons into familiar PC buttons. Obviously, this isn’t a huge leap for the game.

You can get it from here.

13. Kitty HD mod

I like this mod so much because it sums up the internet so well, sweet  Shalquoir of Majula was a very adorable kitty, but some users simply didn’t find him adorable enough and so ToadR took it upon himself to release a HD mod for Shalquoir, the textures are twice as large, resulting in a white chested tabby.

You can get it from here.

14. Bill Murray mask 

I hear you, “how can a Bill Murray mask be so low?” Well, the mask looks nothing like Bill Murray, but that’s part of the charm.The mask is a reskin of the Manikin Mask, which has seen a couple of retextures, there’s a cool Chatter Cenobite mask too.

You can get it from here and here.

15. Traditional Moonlight Great Sword

This mod will bring the Moonlight Great Sword to its former glory and then some. In Dark Souls 2 the Moonlight Great Sword doesn’t look as spectacular as it should.  But luckily, Nephutis stepped in and pumped the sword with awesome juice.

Here’s a before and after shot above.

You can get it from here.