Riz’s Catbine
Here I go again spending way too much time on the strangest ideas for HL2 mods. This time I take full blame on myself. I admit – it’s stupid, it’s weird, but also funy. I made it, and now you have to see it.
This replaces the Civil Protection model with a custom design inspired by a doodle I made like three years ago. I took that doodle, drew it differently, then used this new image as reference for these… creatures. They’re metrocats, or catcops – like civil protection, but stupid, annoying, and a whole lot more questionable in nearly every sense of the word. They have jigglebones on their tails, their eyes and equipment shut off upon death, AND I took the liberty of giving them new voices. Depending on who you are, you’ll either feel BAD about killing them (you know who you are), or you’ll absolutely LOVE massacring these catlike morons. We’ll just have to see what the comments think.
As usual, I hope you enjoy (or hate, I don’t mind).
UPDATE V2:
As of now, the Metrocats are no longer the only cat-ified Combine units, because I went in and added the soldiers too. The new models aren’t particularly interesting, since they are just lightly modified police. Their head and ear shape is a little different to look more menacing, and their outfits have been bulked up a little to show off that they’re armored. The Elites are probably the most different, with completely replaced heads, tails and feet to make them stand out some more. Seems like they’re more machine than cat at this point.
I know the rigging is kind of garbage, and the textures are a little ugly here and there, buuuut… I may or may not fix and improve little things like that whenever I feel like it. Or something like that.
Until then, love/hate these as much as you may have loved/hated the other ones.
FYI, some lore:
– Their gender is meant to be ambiguous.
– It is not totally known just how anthropomorphic they are under the suits, but the fur and tails appear to be organic.
– The metrocats’ rations include a healthy portion of highly processed tuna.
– The metrocats can’t help but chase rollermines around like yarn balls.
– The metrocats aren’t clever enough to tell Barney apart, even though he’s wearing highly outdated uniform.
– The soldiers (especially the elites) are totally brainwashed and mechanically enhanced with pneumatic muscles and digital vision modules.
– The elites’ mechanical tails and legs are designed to provide improved balance and better footwork to perfect their movement and give them some tactical advantage. They are also impervious to headcrabs.
– By hooking directly into the remaining brain tissue, the headcrab can trigger some primal instinct within the brainwashed soldiers, which is why they sometimes make angry cat sounds.
