Skinjob



The Skinjob is an enemy in Ion Fury. It has the appearance of a flayed humanoid topped with a skull surrounded by a blue flame. Its cybernetically enhanced fibrous muscles are visible but its blurry face hidden behind the flame. It's a complete exo-skeleton with metal plating, observed to be assembled artificially. Skinjobs are capable of ranged attacks with large radius splash damage, remaining invisible and teleport through unknown means.

To teleport, they throw themselves into air vertically then phase shift towards the target leaving after images behind with their ankles crossed and remain momentarily invisible upon landing on the ground. While invisible after their phase shifting step, they will keep their collision with the player and other enemies but unable to attack as they have to break their invisibility first to land their devastating blows. When they need to attack, they take a stance for balance, raise their arms and huff their light blue skull fire towards the player to scorch an area around the impact. Their damage and attack frequency increases also reaction time for breaking invisibility becomes shorter with higher difficulties.

Boasting a really high health pool, Skinjobs can endure lots of punishment from low firepower weapons. At close up, one of the best way to get rid of a Skinjob is opening burst fire with Penetrator to its head and Ion bow charged shots when you have distance to take cover. They are immune to afterburn damage by flechettes, nor can be tazed by Ion bolts or Electrifryer but they are also the highest burst damage options against it.

Bowling bombs and Disperser grenades can be spared for the moments when you have a long distance or height advantage to weaken him. Seeing them teleport into a cover or blind spot, can be an opportunity to volley your shots to corner it. When encountered between a crowd use his invisibility frames after teleport as a chance for positioning to charge up your Ion bow or Chain gun, unleashing a brutalizing attack on the Skinjob and anything around and behind it. Just like Penetrator, Chain gun is also capable of flinching and pinning it at the spot forcing it out of invisibility if it's cloaked and awaiting.

When a Skinjob is fatally damaged, it will flash entirely in white-blue flames, enter a crouching pose, and explode with dealing splash damage in a small radius. Shooting the Skinjob several more times before it detonates will kill it and prevent the explosion (useful if the player is trapped in a confined space) or the player can simply let it self-destruct.

They're rare to come by in the single player campaign at crowded numbers but they seem to like ambushing at small confined spaces in conjunction with other enemies. Their first appearance happen in the secret level Grand Slam, if skipped they will be introduced at the next zone's first level Off the Rails.

Trivia

 * Upon her first encounter with a Skinjob in a containment tube in the The Six Underground chapter, Shelly humourously remarks how horrified she is that the Skinjob has no genitalia.
 * Skinjob parts can be seen advertised as prosthetics for lethal injuries at various places along the game. Their parts appear at different places as a showcase as well.
 * It can be theoretized Skinjobs are sentient exoskeletons as Shelly were set to create one from the corpse of a presumably fully human GDF member at one point in the campaign.