#androxus

Starting us this time are Steel Forged and Dragon Forged Androxus. I wasn't quite sure what to do about skins that possess recolours at first, but I've decided to review them separately, giving a skin's associated recolour a little section of its own to discuss how i feel about the change in colour choices. Let's begin with Steel Forged!

Like Battlesuit Godslayer, Steel Forged Androxus is part of another recurring skin line. The Steel Forged skins are line dedicated to portraying champions as warriors decorated in flashy armour with a regal flair and featuring draconic and scaly motifs in many of their designs. That aforementioned regality is by far the most abundant in Steel Forged Androxus's design. That sleek black armour, the flashy golden trim, and the brilliant red added to the look by the cape and Androxus's dragon-arm works brilliantly to sell that this guy works directly under royalty. The helm is a particular standout here, managing to thread the line of evoking the shape of a crown, of a dragon's horns, and still managing to stick the landing and give off that protective and menacing flair. There's really not much I can say here that the skin doesn't just say for itself; It excels beautifully at everything it wants to do, and that is to be flashy, regal, and badass...

...Which is why I am devastated that I cannot say the same about the skin's weapon. For one: why on Earth is it purple?! I understand wanting the gun to contrast against the armour without bleeding into the color of Androxus's arm, but this just sticks out like a sore thumb! Somehow even the gold highlights feel mismatched given that they're weirdly tarnished and dirty-looking, a stark contrast to the pristine-looking armour Androxus is wearing. Of course, the gun is trying to immitate the face of a snarling dragon, with the detailing on the cylinder being evocative of a dragon's eye and the detailing on the barrel mimicking the beast's snout and the flaired nostrils at the tip of its nose, but... it just looks silly rather than fierce, and loses a large amount of the shape language that makes a revolver distinct and cool.

Steel Forged Androxus gets an overall 8/10 for me, and honestly I won't lie to you, it's entirely the gun's fault. If the skin's weapon felt more cohesive to the skin's aesthetic and look, it'd easily be another 10/10 in my eyes, it really doesn't have any major standout flaws in my eyes besides the revolver... but the revolver is just so... awkward that it brings the rest of the skin down with it unfortunately.

With that in mind, let's see how it stands up against its Dragon Forged equivalent.

Dragon Forged Androxus acts as a pretty straightforward inverseion of Steel Forged Androxus' colour scheme. The black and gold armour has been changed to white and silver, and the red highlights are now a pale purple colour, with the addition of a standout change to Androxus's right arm, which features glowing yellow spikes which were simply a uniform red on Steel Forged. As a contrast the skin works fine but as a skin all on its own it's... honestly just kinda bland? The silver blends with the white armour way too much and even the purple is bordering on a gentle lavender, too timid to be visually striking against that contrast. That leaves only the glowing yellow spikes to really stand out here and unfortunately their placement just makes them visually jarring, making the skin look messy rather than interesting.

The core design of the weapon in Dragon Forged Androxus's case retains the design issues it had for Steel Forged Androxus, what with it looking so goofy, but this time around it decides to stick with the armour's silver-white colour scheme rather than have its own colours, and honestly I kinda dig it. The whites and silvers really do compliment this design well and make it almost look as though it were carved of bone. Absent of the skin's context it actually does look rather snazzy and I honestly wouldn't mind equipping it on another Androxus skin to be honest. That said, within its skin's context that unity of colour scheme works against the weapon, and is visually blends in against Androxus's white armour and leaves the entire look feeling almost faded in a way.

7/10. I might like the gun a bit more but it's overall just a downgrade of the original.

Moving on from Steel Forged and Dragon Forged, let's embrace the radically different visual design of Avatar and Modded Androxus, starting with Avatar!

Avatar Androxus once again completely recasts Androxus's role, now being a digital robot girl that takes pretty heavy design cues from the Xbox 360's general aesthetic. it is a very cohesive design that pulls together nicely, I especially like the pixelated-looking cape and the pauldron that resembles the bumper and trigger buttons from an xbox controller. (Though the two segments are confusingly labeled as L and R as if they were suppose to be opposite bumpers or triggers shoved together?) The prominent repeating O design that shows up on Andro's feet, chest, arm, and face is a neat touch and manages to invoke the classic Xbox X insignia quite nicely. The green detailing is nice and never ends up overwhelming, it's overall just a very appealing skin to look at, it's nice and lacks any more flaws for me to point out.

The gun is similarly quite fun, featuring even heavier controller motifs with a D-Pad behind the cylinder and face buttons plus even a tiny start or select button just in front of the trigger and heck, even the grip of the pistol resembles the grip of an Xbox controller! The gun parts of the gun aren't slacking either, with the barrel finally giving us that truly cool-looking sci-fi laser gun for Androxus that Battlesuit Godslayer failed to give us and the cylinder with that interesting glowing triangle pattern really ties the look together into one sleek sci-fi package.

Avatar Androxus is another 10/10 in my eyes. The degree to which the skin manages to keep a coherent robotic sci-fi look without over-indulging in the video game console motifs is honestly impressive, and the whole look just radiates with charm. I have no nostalgia for the Xbox 360, having grown up with a Playstation 2 and later a Playstation 3 myself, but if I did, I imagine I'd be fawning over this skin, it really does nail that look and feel just perfectly.

But of course, we can't forget the skin's pallet swap: Modded!

Like Dragon Forged Androxus, Modded Androxus takes the approach of inverting its counterpart's base colour scheme, this time choosing to turning all of the white parts black and vice aversa. Immediately this chafes against the aforementioned Xbox aesthetic, and well, those white shoulder buttons do look a bit goofy I won't lie. In fact the whole skin ends up looking a bit clunky, white detailing on a black body just doesn't really work well for this design, and ends up making the whole thing look busy rather than sleek, and the added purple details on Androxus's chest and fingertips don't do much to save it. At the very least, the animated RGB rainbow highlights reminiscent of stereotypical Gamer PC rig are charming. They're gaudy, but honestly that's kinda the point, and I won't hold that against them, it's fun.

Thankfully, the gun gets off a lot better with the inverted colour scheme then the skin itself did and still manages to look as high-tech as ever. The purple face buttons and D-Pad are a bit of an odd choice, but I cannot say the same for that lovely amethyst-colored cylinder, and the RGB detailing on the barrel really adds a nice touch of spice to the weapon without looking too shamelessly flashy.

I'd have to give Modded Androxus a 9/10 for just barely falling short of the original. That colour scheme change really did not work out for the best, and while I do find the RGB design elements charming and fun, they do not manage to pull the skin together enough to look quite as good as Avatar does. I honestly might have even dropped it to an 8 if it weren't for the gun managing to look just as good as the original if not a little bit better, so I'll let it off lightly.

That brings us handily to the most baffling skin Androxus has ever received, Eliminate.

Now if you're not familiar with American electronic dance musician Eliminate, you're probably looking at this guy and thinking to yourself "what the fuck?" and of course if you are familiar with Eliminate and his work, you're probably looking at this guy and thinking "no seriously, what the fuck?" To that I have to say that I have no idea. I honestly intended to skip this skin and pretend it never happened as I plan to do with most of the RWBY skins, but seeing as this design seems to be entirely original to Paladins, I think it makes more sense to cover it than it does to sweep it under the rug.

With the "what the fuck?"s out of the way, we can now actually cover the skin itself and... well... where do I begin? The baggy green outfit manages to convey the military-esque vibe I think the skin is going for, complimented well enough but some dark grey accents but is inexplicably paired with garish yellow bits which look more like cheap plastic than they do metal or anything protective. The worst part hars to be Eliminate's dominant right arm, which is just covered in orange plastic-y looking material which I think is supposed to look high tech but instead just adds the the cheap vibe of the whole skin. In lieu of a mask or helmet, Eliminate also possesses a bizarre chain guard and your standard fair targeting aim assist scanner thingy over one of his eyes. I'll be blunt here: I cannot decide whether this skin looks more like a cheap knockoff GI Joe action figure or the protagonist of a PS3 exclusive first-person shooter that advertises itself as a Halo killer.

As for the weapon, it's... fine. It's a very standard futuristic-looking laser pistol most reminiscent of Deus Ex to me but other than that it's just kinda.. whatever. I can't say it looks *ugly,* I think the orange colour and the splashes of green really do work for the weapon and Eliminate's logo is integrated well into the design, but, well, it just looks like every other laser pistol I've ever seen in any basic sci-fi action movie or FPS. The most interesting part about this thing is that the game refers to it as "Eliminate's Eliminator."

It might be a bit harsh, but I'm gonna just be upfront and drop a 1/10 on Eliminate Androxus. I genuinely cannot see who this skin is for unless you actively want to look like a cheap action figure or you're just obsessed with Eliminate for whatever reason.

That leaves us with Androxus's final skin, thankfully, Grave Danger. Sorry for the inconsistent image, it apparent;y got removed from the wiki at some point and I had to improvise.

Grave Danger is a skin that answers the question that none of us were asking: "What if Androxus was a cool-as-fuck skeleton with a gun?" The skin is an exercise in shameless excess, not only making Androxus himself a skeleton but draping him head to tone in clothes that feature various skull motifs, exposing his ribcage, and decorating his armour with sharp teeth. What it lacks in subtlety, though, it makes up with flair. The dark, muted colours of most of Androxus's clothes make the off-white bones pop really well and add to the sinister vibe the skin is going for, and even the bizarre horned viking helmet manages to feel appropriate despite how silly it is. That said, I unfortunately find myself with very little to say about it beyond that; It's a silly skeleton skin that just piles on as many edgy-looking details as it can possibly muster and revels in that absurdity.

And honestly, most of what I said about Grave Danger as a skin also applies to the weapon. Why is the barrel of the revolver a messed-up looking skull with oversized teeth? Because it's cool as hell, stop asking questions. Why does the gun look barely-functional as an actual firearm? It doesn't have to look like a revolver, it's just cool as hell, stop asking questions. The glowing green eye in the skull, the weird glowing pattern on the barrel, the grip mimicking the appear of sinew clinging onto bone, it all just adds to that shameless rule-of-cool aesthetic Grave Danger pursues with shameless glee.

That all said, though, I'm still not confident the skin deserves anything more than an 8/10 overall. For all the needless edginess the skin lavishes itself with, it fails to have the one thing most truly exceptional skins have, I think: a point. I've been mostly letting the designs speak for themselves because, really, that's all they can do. They're fun to look at, but they're really not saying anything beyond "look at this awesome skeleton with a gun that is also a skeleton" and while the awesome skeleton with a gun that is also a skeleton is fun, it's also just... shallow. There's nothing else to explore there, and Androxus at base is already such an exercise in edgy badassery that it doesn't even contrast against the base champion. But really, it doesn't need to, and not every skin needs to or wants to be a 10/10. Some of them just want to be a dope skeleton, and that's okay.

Androxus is the edgy cool-boy anti-hero archetype in a nutshell. He's the face on all of the promotional art, a portrait of him serves as the game's icon on the console versions, and his splash art is the game's steam banner, and as a mascot he certainly is visually striking. The distinct horns on Androxus's mask, the green glow in his eyes and on his weapon, and of course, his prominent fucked-up looking arm make it clear that this man is twisted, corrupted by something, and he is drenched in sinister energy. Simultaneously, though, the dark bandages he wears, his torn sleeve and the weathered cape make it clear that he is not invincible, he's taken wounds in battle, and he's still alive regardless. It's not a perfect design, mind you, and it's certainly not treading any revolutionary new ground, Androxus does not reinvent the wheel of a badass anti-hero, but it serves the purpose of selling you on this amoral lone wolf killer exceedingly well.

Androxus's gun, on the other hand, is comparatively more inventive. The barrel of the gun is the top jaw of a very prominent mouth with sharp, gnarled-looking teeth built into the weapon, as if the gun itself is gritting its teeth with malice. If Androxus himself didn't sell you on the idea that this guy is fucked up and evil, the revolver certainly will. The revolver has a break action reload and when you reload it in-game, the unspent casings drift away before disappearing, as if they were simply the ghosts of the bullets you fired, which is a really fun touch. My only issue with it is that it maybe doesn't look rough enough? Besides some scratches, the weapon itself looks to be mostly pristine which conflicts with Androxus's otherwise very war-torn design. Maybe if it looked a little more beaten-up it'd fit a tiny bit more.

Overall I'd probably give my boy Andro an 8/10 rating. He's very effective at what he does, but what he does is admittedly not super special all things considered, and I can't say he sticks in my head anywhere near as much as some other antihero designs.

This leads me into Steam Demon, the first skin Androxus ever got back in 2017, and boy what a start it was. Steam Demon completely reimagines Androxus as a steampunk/chempunk gentleman scientist using his experiments as weaponry, his mask turned into something of a protective gas mask and his cursed arm turned into a brass metal prosthetic. The vials of mysterious green goo in Steam Demon's weapon and arm, as well as the capsule he wears on his belt is immediately recognizable as a dangerous, further reinforcing the fact that he is a man of science and proposing the idea that he might just be a little bit reckless in pursuit of his research. This adventurous scientist-explorer angle is further reinforced by the fact that Steam Demon's trousers and his boots are caked in mud, and together with the prosthetic arm and hand cannon, overall builds a cohesive image of a man who's unafraid to get his hands dirty in the name of science, literally or metaphorically

Steam Demon's weapon is also quite the interesting piece of work. The razor-sharp teeth resembling that of a demon or a beast are gone, instead replaced with the teeth of, fittingly, a clockwork mechanism, leaning further into the steampunk aesthetic. The weapon itself is also notably not a traditional revolver, instead being a bizarre chemical apparatus of some kind, and the cylinder is instead a small vial of mysterious green goop that is almost certainly highly toxic. When used in-game this weapon actually has a unique reload animation where Androxus will fold the weapon and let steam out of the vial before closing it again, a neat twist on the formula and keeping the weapon recognizably break action.

All in all, I'd have to give Steam Demon Androxus a solid 10/10 rating, honestly. While there are a couple things I'd change here or there, the horns kinda look a little silly on this skin without any real demon iconography to pull from for one, I think this skin accomplishes everything it sets out to do with flying colors, using the tropes of steampunk and chempunk to make a design that just truly sells the concept without ever feeling like it's trying too hard or not hard enough. Paladins actually doesn't have any other steampunk skins or iconography anywhere else in the game, which is really unfortunate in my opinion as they really knocked it out of the ballpark on the first try. Oh well.