YES its ture......new m.o.d in clues;

New classes added: 3 for the Aliens, 2 for the Marines, and one each for the Preds and the Corps.

New Alien weapons/attacks.

Some class weapon sets have been altered, particularly for the Preds.

New menu graphics and sounds, the class viewer in the Player Setup screen is more close-up, allowing a more detailed view.

New skins and sounds.

Various gameplay tweaks.





Missions;

Plenty of changes have been made to the game to accommodate the new classes. We'll get to that later, but right now let's get to the real core of this mod-- the classes themselves.



Each new class is extremely well done, such originality in new classes has never before been seen in an AvP 2 mod. While most of our class-mods will introduce a class with a different weapon set, Bastiaan has taken time to make every class unique and fun to play.





Now, the real selling point of the mod is the Acid Spitter class. As the name suggests, it allows the Alien player to "shoot" a spray of acid. People across the community have been crying out for this feature, and surprisingly Bastiaan manages to balance it pretty well.



For a start, players can't spam acid all over the place at a rapid rate. There isn't actually a "spit acid button", you have to press Secondary Fire to toggle Primary from Claw to Acid attack. This slows down the rate at which players can spit. The weapon itself plays out a lot like the sniper rifle does at medium-to-close-range, you need spot-on accuracy, and be able to shoot while on the move.

There's no splash damage, and you have to be very accurate to get a hit-- particularly the incredibly damaging Head Shot. You also have to be fairly close for the acid spit to work, so it's not really something for all you snipers out there. The Acid Spitter class essentially takes the Drone model and re-skins it. Don't worry, this class doesn't replace the drone, and it's very easy to tell the two apart. The skin's a top-class piece of art, and would do very well as a stand-alone Drone skin. The Spitter's weapons are the generic Claw attack, a Pounce attack with about the same distance as the Drone's, and of course the Spit. Secondary fire toggles Primary Fire from claw attack to acid spit. The Spitter's about as fast as the Drone.

Playing as the Spitter gives the player a vast array of options for capping off your prey. You can use the Alien's speed to dodge your enemies' gunfire, while hanging back and burning the poor slow enemy with your projectile acidic vomit. If you get bored of this, or if the opposing player has better aim and a better gun than you (which will happen a lot), you can always use the tried-and-tested Pounce/Claw close-combat method. The pounce does stun for a noticeably more short period than usual, however. Add in being able to wall-walk and headbite, and you get quite a creature. All of it's well balanced though, and a novice Spitter won't be beating anyone with more skill.



And as if that wasn't enough, there's still another two new Alien classes to choose from. One of these is the Stealth Runner. As can be guessed, this class takes the Runner model and re-skins it to be a lot darker, and again it doesn't replace the Runner class. This class is pretty much the same as the Runner in almost all aspects, with the exception of the skin and one of its attacks. The attacks, then. The new one replaces the Claw attack with the Tear attack. No, not crying-tears, but ripping and rending Tear attack. When playing as the Stealth Runner, you always see the little guy's hands on either sides of the HUD-- unless you're charging the tail. When you press Primary Fire, the SR's claws slash down across the screen. This attack is much slower than the regular Claw attack, but does a lot more damage-- if you aim correctly you can sometimes take your enemy's head off in one shot. This attack is adapted from the Tear used in the Alien single-player campaign that is sometimes needed to rip through doors or air vent grates.



The final Alien class is the Facehugger, and it essentially eliminates the need for Lifecycle games. It's been done before in other mods, and basically the player starts out as a quick, weak little Facehugger, and depending on who you "hug", you can change into another class of Alien-- hugging a Pred makes you into a PredAlien. But first you need to survive a short period as a small, almost criminally defenceless chestburster. It's standard for Lifecycle games, you probably all know how it goes. It's a useful class because it allows you to choose which class to become without having to use F1 to change classes and loosing all your points.



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The Synthetic (for the Marines) and the Cyborg (for the Corporates) are basically the same, except for opposing teams. Both classes are very well done. Firstly, the Cyborg has a custom skin, and a very nice one too. The first thing you'll notice upon choosing one of these classes, though, is that you start out with 125 health. This is balanced out by the fact that they can only carry a maximum of 175 armour. The next thing you'll notice is that both classes have a new vision mode replacing the image intensifier. This original and extremely well implemented mode highlights other players. In the readme it states that it only highlights non-human lifeforms, but when I played the mod it highlighted everyone. The downside to this is that it doesn't allow you to see in the dark, so you have to stick with your shoulder lamp in the darker maps. The Synthetic has a nice weapon set, the staple weapon being the Pulse Rifle. The Cyborg has an extremely limited weapon set-- his only really good weapon is the flamethrower. Personally I prefer having more armour to more health, and this is catered for with the next class.



The Exterminators are those guys you see in the Marine level Betrayal trying to control those facehuggers you set lose-- the ones with the all-round orange body padding wielding flamethrowers. Initially they seem to play out in just the same way as a regular Marine, but when you start collecting Armour pickups, you'll notice that your armour capacity goes right up to 300. This is a very nice feature and gives the Marines an extremely powerful class. For balance, you actually have to collect Armour supplies before you can make use of this advantage. Lastly, I'm sure I've seen the Exterminator class in another mod, can't think which one it is though.



Finally the Preds get a Sniper Predator. This beastie has a custom skin, and a frightening level of zoom. He's fairly weak, and is armed with the Speargun and some Remote Bombs. He's not as fresh or inventive as the other classes, but is a much needed addition, because all the Predator class weapons are changed for this mod. None have the speargun except this guy. All the class weapon sets are logical, meaning that the Heavy Pred isn't stuck with a Disc as his staple weapon. However, the Sniper Pred doesn't have much to show in the way of weapons, with only 3 to choose from it can be very hard to defend yourself as this character.



Other changes: some of the Aliens are faster, most noticeably the crouched Drone speed. Praetorians remain as slow as ever, but now they can jump shockingly high without having to crouch first, and can wall-walk. Personally I never used to play as a Praetorian in regular AvP 2 games, but this mod patches up its flaws and makes it the perfect 'ambusher' Also, the first thing you notice when you start play as an Alien is that your health bar is lower than usual. Don't let this fool you, you've got the same amount of health as you do when you spawn in a regular game. This mod, however, allows you to extend your health bar further after healing up. So go out there and find a corpse to chew on, and you'll be tougher than usual!



Bug Report



While playtesting this mod, I was rather surprised when I was attacked by a pair of arms and legs. After shooting at the space between the malicious appendages, the thing turned into an Acid Spitter and died. Disappointingly, this turned out to be a bug in the Acid Spitter skin rather than a ghostly presence invading my game of AvP 2. On a living Acid Spitter, the skin for the torso and head sometimes doesn't appear, leaving just the limbs running around the level. Upon death, however, the Spitter could be seen for what it was. This is a real shame because it's a very nice skin. I tried extracting the skin and re-skinning it onto the Drone in a regular game of AvP 2, and was once again confronted by the wrathful limbs. This didn't happen all the time though, for some reason, but about 90% of the time the Acid Spitter skin was bugged. Also, there are no 3rd-person animations for either the acid spit attack or the tear attack, but when you charge the acid with Secondary Fire the tail-lash animation is played.



Opinions



You can tell this mod is something special from the custom splash screen image and sound at the start of the game. Everything breaths professionalism, with few aspects of the game left unaltered. Even the Player Setup screen has been changed. With the exception of the poor, weak little Sniper Predator, every class is well balanced and won't tip the odds of the game. I'd give it a higher mark if the changes were also seen in single-player, or if it was entirely bugless. Anyway, skins are nicely done (although bugged in one case..), and I'm pretty sure some are Bastiaan's own work. It's really incredible to think that one person made this mod-- entire teams of modders have come up with less. The author is already at work on a new version, which will probably be out by the time you've read this, he's promising a more finely-balanced plasmacaster and is changing the single-player Drone and Predator to his Acid Spitter and Sniper Predator. Hopefully the Acid Spitter bug will be ironed out too. For LAN games and organised competitions, there really is no excuse for not using this mod. Even players without a LAN should probably keep this mod handy.... for close encounters.



Finally...



My spelling of Armour and Defence aren't typos, I'm just English.





by your little friend SirYawnalot





find out lots more at

PlanetAvP





[ This message was edited by: Huddson on 2002-05-20 15:19 ]

nice one. how advanced is the work??

Huddson you bum-bandit!!!! That's MY Mod Of The Week review from planetavp.com!!! I can't believe you!!



Demi, it's called the Realism Mod, version 1.2 is out now. My review which Huddson has so kindly copied & pasted & taken the credit for, is located here if anyone's bothered (with screenshots) -- http://www.planetavp.com/features/modotw/realismmod10/

Im sorry SirYawnalot

I was going to put your name but i forgot and my computer chrashed (dumb ass windows 95....)I was going to down load music from

WWW.MP3.COM and there was lots of advertisments so it chrased

"It was a bad call SirYawnalot,bad call"

K then... sorry for my harsh words, most of the feedback I've had from the review has been criticisms, so it's a bit of a sore point at the moment.