Games and their developers get their own award show, but the mod community's efforts are sometimes just as impressive, so it should only be fitting that mods themselves should get an award show as well. And, if anything, 2009 was a great year for game mods, as some very impressive ones have been put together. ModDB is the one organizing the event, and even it agrees that the year has brought some pretty impressive mods to gamers.

"For the first time since the awards launched in 2002, it is hard to argue or be upset with the top 10 mods picked by the players in 2009," the ModDB organizer said. "After 133,000 votes, we have an assortment of mods spanning many games and genres. It was particularly heart-warming to see that even mods made for classic games (Deus Ex and Diablo 2) were able to make the top 10, and deservedly so as The Nameless Mod and Median XL are brilliant and have been in development for years."

Now, if Black Mesa had been finally finished, maybe it too would have been a part of the list, but alas, it will have to wait until next year, that is, if it will be ready by then.

As for the actual mods that made it to the top ten, the list is made up of Resistance & Liberation, a Half-Life2 mod, C&C Shockwave for Command and Conquer: Generals Zero Hours, The Nameless Mod for the good-old Deus Ex, the Third Age – Total War a Medieval 2: Total War Mod, Median XL for Diablo 2, Renegade X for Unreal Tournament 3, the Star Wars Mod Galactic Warfare for CoD: Modern Warfare and NEOTOKYO and Research and Development that were made with the ever-versatile engine of HL2.

The last mod of the list is the winner, MechWarrior: Living Legends being the one that took home the gold. The Crysis mod proved to be an incredible depiction of the old, empowering MechWarrior feeling, offering the same, confusing at first, combat experience, with the elaborate mechs fighting for dominion, but truly addictive once you got past your first carnage.