The
skins in this mod are pretty straight forward. Nothing really
new here. Marines, predators, and corporates all have their
original skins, but the aliens are a bit different. The
first noticeable change is that the regular drone now has
stripes of yellow running along his back and sides. While
this looks very nice in the character selection screen,
you can’t see it at all in the game. I’ll go into
more detail in the bug report below.
The
next noticeable difference is that the praetorian is completely
gone. Gone? What do you mean, gone? Well, I’ll tell
you. The old praetor has been replaced with a new queen
skin. No more queen-molting-kills; you start off as a queen
automatically. There is also a facehugger skin, which is
the classic one from the game.
Two
new marine/corporate skins made it into the mod, one is
the synthetic, the other is one of those red-suited heavy
armor guys from the beginning of the alien missions. (You
know, the ones that have flamers and try to kill you.) The
skins are very well done, though they look kind of squashed
from the alien’s POV.
The
weapon changes are what make this mod. All characters except
the predators got an upgrade. The aliens have the major
upgrade, with all their characters getting an upgrade, the
praetorian being removed, and two new character classes
being added.
The
new facehugger class consists of one small alien with one
huge leap. Now, I can see why the new facehugger would require
a bit of leaping range, but the range on this particular
character is extremely unrealistic. With the facehugger,
I could leap eighty feet straight up into the air in Fate
and land on the farthest ledge on the other side of the
level. Without breaking a sweat. On the ground, the facehugger
can leap at what I guessed was one hundred eighty miles
per hour. I can’t be sure, my radar gun exploded as
it was reading.
The
next character to get an upgrade was the predalien. The
predalien now has a cool “tearing” attack as its
main attack (basically, the smash you use with the alien
to open vents, grates, and doors). This attach is powerful,
yet slow, and very cool looking.
The
queen is next up on the upgrade list. With a twenty foot
tall body and a jump that would put Nintendo’s Mario
to shame, the queen is one bad mother (pun intended). However,
she has no wall-walk or pounce, is now fair game for small
weapons fire, and has an insanely short tail swing and claw
swipe. I do believe the praetorian had a longer tail swing
and claw swipe, and he was smaller. Other then those faults,
the queen is very well done and makes a nice addition.
The
drone is next up, and boy was he modified. The drone has
two attacks, pounce and acid spit. That’s it. No headbite,
no tail swipe, no claw swipe, just those two. The acid spit
has a ten- or fifteen-foot-range, and is a tad bit weak.
The pounce has been shrunk to near-nothing but still does
the same amount of damage. Other then that, the alien has
a new crosshair, and that’s it.
The
runner is the last alien class. It now has a new “bite”
attack, which is a bit weak and obscures your vision horribly.
The tail swipe and pounce are still there, and the runner
moves a bit faster when not wall-walking. (For some odd
reason, wall-walk seems to actually slow it down.)
The
marines are next up on the modification list. The good old
marines now have one new character class and a whole slew
of new weapon sounds. All the weapons except the shotgun
have the sounds from the original AvP: GE. Some of the sounds
work pretty well, but a few sound rather unrealistic. To
make up for the lack of a knife sound, the author took the
original predator wristblade sounds. The knife now has that
odd “cha-ching” sound that reminds me of a cash
register, only a bit more wimpy. The pistol, pulse rifle,
pulse grenade, grenade launcher, flame thrower, minigun,
smartgun, and SADAR sounds all go well with the weapons,
though there are a few glitches here and there.
The
new marine character class is the synthetic. While the synthetic
is slow, ugly, and loaded with weapons, it is also the largest
character class. The synth is loaded to the brim with heavy
weapons, meaning that the other character classes have been
redesigned to carry the lighter weapons. Specialists now
carry knife, pistol, shotgun, and pulse rifle. Demolitions
carries knife, pistol, grenade launcher, and flamer. The
minigun, smartgun, and SADAR are only available with the
synthetic, so unless you want to stroll along at two feet
a minute, stick to the smaller stuff.
The
corporates got a few upgrades as well. There is a new character
class called “human”, which is one of those guys
in the red suit from the single player game. Like the synthetic,
this class has only heavy weapons, meaning it is slow, ugly,
and an easy target. Dunya got an upgrade, giving her rifle
thirty rounds, and allowing her to only carry the sniper
rifle, pistol, and knife. The other classes have been limited
to smaller weapons, with Rykov’s smartgun being the
only heavy weapon allowed for the old classes.
The
predators got one insignificant upgrade. The combi-stick
now has a nifty sound it makes when it unfolds.
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