Master Chief and Commander: It's Halo 3 but with boats and a naval battle against a Scarab
Who knows where the germ of an idea for some mods comes from but with, ahem, Pimps at Sea I can take a wild guess: "What if Halo 3 but with boats?" Well, what if?
Available now on the Steam workshop, Pimps at Sea lets you get nautical with the Halo 3 toolbox in a co-op mission set across some tropical islands infested with Covenant. The twist of course is that two big 'ol boats are sailing in big lazy loops in and around these islands, and any enterprising Spartan can hop on board.
I mean… it's not complex, but it is a lot of fun. You ride about while a very good Sergeant Johnson impersonator barks out orders, climb the mast and take pot-shots, fire cannons at things, and if you fancy hop off and engage the Covenant forces with a plethora of vehicles. The ship boasts 20 cannons and three turrets, but the piece de resistance is two deployable Boathogs hooked up to either side. As the name suggests, these are Warthogs: But boats.
The Covenant tootle around on the island and some engage you on the waves with Ghosts, which can now float on water, as well as all the land forces. After battling various waves (b'dum tsh) the mod's climax is the emergence of a Scarab: the gigantic purple death machine that's the focus of one of Halo 3's greatest set pieces.
But even a Scarab can't do much against sustained cannon fire reminiscent of the Royal Navy's finest hours. OK, it killed me a few times. But much like the heroic admirals of old, Master Chief re-emerged from the brine and cannoned the big bastard until it exploded.
This is a good mod. It even has ropes on the ships you can climb back up on if you fall off! But the Boathogs are really the making of it: I could bounce these things across the deep all day. The mod's creator InfernoPlus says it began as a Big Team Battle mod where two teams fought across two ships, and the ships could eventually be sunk, before pivoting to this more self-contained and dare I say beautiful form.
You can download Pimps at Sea here, and it supports up to four player co-op. InfernoPlus notes a couple of minor bugs, though the mod does have checkpoints for easy restarts, and to be honest some of them really do sound like features anyway: "Enemies sometimes end up getting yeeted into the ocean and floating around."