It's a Mod, Mod, Mod World

One of the biggest differences between playing first-person shooters on your PC and enjoying them on your Xbox is the fact that you've generally got a lot more control over the multiplayer aspects of the game when you're on the computer. Thanks to a much better vehicle for input (read: a keyboard) and the ease with which you can meticulously sort and store files, it's far easier to modify games in a variety of ways, from something simple like setting custom gametypes to more complex actions like altering the very look and feel of the game. Using a controller to input data feels clunky and unresponsive when compared to a mouse and keyboard, as anyone who's ever filled out an Xbox Live account form surely knows.

While it's certainly easy to feel jealous of our modding friends, there are a few reasons to feel good about the situation, namely that you don't have to deal with sorting through dozens of crappy mods to find the good ones. We all know about the successes of Half-Life mods like Counterstrike and Day of Defeat, as they're both played to this day. However, for every successful mod that hit the web, there were plenty that featured unrealistic textures, terrible player models, and wonky controls. This was mainly because creating a good mod requires a lot of time and energy, with a strong eye for design thrown in for for good measure.


Realizing this, companies that wanted to include mod tools in their Xbox games had to ensure that they'd be powerful enough to help the users bring their visions to life, without allowing them to ruin the online experience. Soon, we'll be seeing the first baby steps toward a full blown user-created mod experience on Live: multiplayer map editors. The latest game to ship with an editor is Digital Extremes' Pariah, a title that utilizes the powerful (and flexible) Unreal engine to tell the story of a future gone mad, as you must take control of Dr. Jack Mason in a quest to find out the truth behind a missing woman and a shadowy conspiracy, as well as a cure for the deadly virus that's coursing through your veins. While the single player game is pretty standard (albeit nice looking) stuff, the multiplayer side of things is great for one reason: the ability to share your created maps. This a feature shared by the Ubisoft's upcoming Far Cry Instincts, although we haven't really had a chance to check out the powerful map editor in that one.

The map editors in both titles are fairly similar. You begin by choosing a starter map from a range of templates, then use the controller to raise or lower the terrain. This usually involves highlighting the area to be altered and using the buttons to change it. It's a pretty fast process and, like the rest of the elements of the editors, is a breeze to use. After you've got the layout just the way you want it, you can drag and drop areas of grass or other vegatation, as well as building, objects, weapons, vehicles, or whatever else you'd like to play with.