I don’t think I ever saw a game with such a strong contrast of opinions as I did with The Thing. When I first heard of this game years ago, the reviewer I was watching called it another dime a dozen third person shooter, so I admit I passed this game up because of said review. But, as the years went on, I started to hear more praise for this game, with some calling it a hidden gem, and it did kinda stir my interests in it but not enough to find a copy for the PS2 or original Xbox. But, thanks to the talented people at Nightdive Studios, we now got a remastering of The Thing with The Thing Remastered and to be honest? I do fall in the camp of calling this a hidden gem, but I also fall in the camp of saying that the game does have some rough spots too.
One thing I like about this game is that while it’s an official sequel to the John Carpenter film, as sanctioned and confirmed by the original devs and John himself, you don’t really have to have seen the film in order to understand what’s going on as the game does a good job at explaining the events of the film and how the Thing works. The basic gist of the game is that you play as Captain Blake, who has been sent to the same arctic base from the film with your team to investigate what happened, only for the mission to go wrong very quickly. Though I personally have never seen the film, I liked how the game, as stated earlier, explains the events of the film in a way that feels natural and in a way to help those who haven’t seen the movie understand what’s going on in the game. It even has a few nods to the film scattered throughout the opening act, like that, admittedly, silly looking UFO Wilford Brimley’s character was building. Granted, I think I would’ve maybe had a bigger reaction if I had seen the film but, still, it’s cool seeing these references.
Graphically, this still looks pretty good for a 2002 game and, I’ll be honest, I do miss this era of graphics. Hear me out, I don’t mind today’s graphics, but there’s just this small part of me that misses the pre-2010 graphics, where everything wasn’t lifelike and using whatever buzzword is popular now, but, instead, they all had this unique feel and look to them that made every game stand out from the rest. Yes, some of the areas do have basic geometry and I will admit the animations are kinda iffy at times, especially when humans transform into the Thing, but it wasn’t enough to detract from the game itself. As for the remastering, Nightdive did an amazing job here, as always, especially with the new lighting system, which gives it this eerie, almost chilling feel to it, like you’re there in the arctic.
The gameplay is where I think The Thing does slightly falter a bit with some of it’s ideas but not enough to hurt the game in any way. Surface level, this is a basic third-person shooter and that aspect works well enough. You get a small selection of weapons like a pistol and a useful SMG, along with a handful of explosives, and these do a good job at handling the smaller Things and human enemies later on in the game, with each weapon actually sounding meaty and chunky. The bigger Thing creatures, however, can’t be taken down with conventional weapons and that’s where the flamethrower comes in. Once you whittle down the health of a Thing, you can whip out the flamethrower and toast the Thing, killing it on the spot. While ammo isn’t too sparse in the game, you still need to watch and gauge your shots so you don’t accidentally shoot your teammates (more on that in a bit) or accidentally shoot an explosive barrel, which I’ve done a few times by accident. There is a rudimentary first person aiming mode and I did find this helped with some encounters and when using the sniper, though the auto-aiming proved much more useful in most cases throughout my gameplay, depending on the situation.
It’s the rest of the gameplay where I do have some minor complaints. The biggest issue I have is the enemy variety or, rather, the lack of variety. Being a creature that can assimilate any living organism, you’d think you’d be seeing some twisted amalgamations of various humans and animals in the arctic like messed up polar bears or penguins straight out of a Hellraiser movie, but no. In fact, a lot of the time, you’re mostly fighting these little head-crab-looking things, which I will give credit and say there are different types you encounter, like one that can shoot a green glob at you which slows you down for a bit until it wears off. Still, outside of the occasional big creature, and, later on, humans, you’re really just fighting the head-crab-looking things throughout the campaign. Speaking of humans, there is one feature in this game I want to mention: The Blood Test. How it works is that, once you find these massive blood testers (I mean it, these suckers are huge), you go up to your friendly AI and interact with them, testing them to see if they are infected or not, with the test exploding if they are the thing. On paper, this is an interesting idea and could lead to some interesting gameplay situations but, in execution, it doesn’t seem to work, which was apparently a problem in the original title as well. There were times where I would test someone and it’d come back negative, only for them to suddenly transform into the thing and I have to burn them, making the test kinda pointless at times. You can also test yourself, though I don’t see the point outside of one area as you don’t really transform if you do get infected, though that would’ve been some cool gameplay if that did happen.
Actually, speaking of the AI, they are surprisingly competent at their jobs and they do have some good survival tactics, being able to hold their own in many situations and I also like the Trust mechanic the game uses. So, when you first encounter a NPC, they won’t trust you at first and, in order to gain their trust, you either have to heal them or give them one of your weapons to use, while making sure they are stocked with ammo, then they’ll trust you. However, you can easily break this trust if you do something stupid like, say, shoot them. They also have little audio cues to let you know something is stressing them out, like some may be afraid of fire or others a dead body, and you can either move them away from the stressful area or give them an adrenaline shot to calm them down. It’s very basic but surprisingly intuitive and I really enjoyed this mechanic. Outside of combat, they can also aid you in other ways, like a mechanic can repair specific junction boxes and medics can heal you up.
Outside of that, I really only have some small little gripes I want to mention, like, for instance, sometimes it was kinda hard trying to figure out where exactly I needed to go, especially near the end in the lab sections. Also? There are way too many junction boxes in this game. It felt like, in nearly every room, either I or a teammate was fixing a junction box to restore power to an area in order to progress and it actually got a bit funny as I began keeping a mental count of how many were in the game, which turned out to be a lot. Lastly and this one is subjective and you may disagree with it, but I find the lack of music, not even a soundscape, is kinda disappointing. Heck, not even that iconic theme from the movie makes it into the game, which really surprised me as I thought that would’ve made it in. Otherwise, I really don’t have much in the way of major issues with the game, outside of what I just mentioned.
Overall, The Thing Remastered, I feel, is another great remastered entry into Nightdive’s library, but it’s one that you can tell the original developers were a bit too ambitious with. I feel like if the original game had just a bit more time in the oven and they managed to get some aspects working, like the blood tests, I feel like this could’ve been one of the great horror games of its time. Now? It’s still a great game and I do find it to be one of my favorite horror games, the shortcomings do kinda hurt the game in the long run. Still, I do recommend this title and, if you’re a fan of the film and never really subscribed to certain theories I won’t spoil in case you never saw it, then, by all means, check this out!
