Turn Monster Hunter's cat pals into man's true best friend with the Canine Palico mod

I love Monster Hunter World's Palicos. My feline companion rides with me into battle, heals me when I need healing (sometimes), and occasionally even puts a monster to sleep. He looks like kind of a smarmy wise-ass, as most cats are. But I still know in my heart of hearts that dogs are the superior pets, and I love that someone went to great lengths to replace Monster Hunter's palicos with pups in the Canine Palico mod "for those who prefer dogs. Now with sounds!"

There are three things I love about this mod.

1. I can't stop laughing at this picture of a bunch of dogs in armor. Adorable.

2. The earnestness with which modder UberGrainy explains this mod's creation: "I'm not particularly a cat or dog fan, but I know some people wanted a dog partner instead of a cat, so I wanted to see if this kind of MOD is possible. I was trying to make it look like a Shiba dog, but I think the neck needs to be a lot fatter, which causes clipping with most armor. So I reverted the neck to a thinner version."

3. The fact that the dogs still kind of look like cats, which just makes the whole thing even funnier.

Check out our full guide to the best Monster Hunter World mods here, which are mostly more practical additions. (But also less cute.)

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).