Gameguru reviews/specials archive                                        << back to the main page The Thing (hx) 09:33 AM CEST - Sep,09 2002 The Thing is a video game based off of the 1982 horror film, John Carpenter's The Thing (based on John W. Campbell's 1937 short story "Who Goes There?") starring Kurt Russell (MacReady) and Keith David (Childs). I still very like this movie, it's probably one of the best Sci-Fi Horror flicks ever. I bet you still remember the story of a team of scientists doing research in remote Antarctica who discovers an alien who's been frozen in the snow for thousands of years. The alien thaws, comes to life, and the terror begins...oh yeah :) The game thankfully doesn't try to remake the movie but acts as a sequel. The game story is set after the events of the film. After the enigmatic deaths of an American scientific expedition in the uncharted and frozen wastelands of the Antarctic, a military rescue team is sent to investigate their deaths. Who will lead the team in the freezing Arctic? You can guess. You play the role of Blake, whose team is sent in to try and make sense of what happened to the research team that was stationed there, and also try to find any survivors out alive. The Thing mixes survival/horror genre with action/shooter, and adds an innovative Trust/Fear squad-based system. I must say that the team based integration in the game appears to be rather unique. The mentioned Trust/Fear system uses NPCs that react much like real humans (there's panic factor and trust, NPCs even throw up when they see a corpse), so their psychological state determines whether or not these characters will cooperate with you. If so, you can use your NPCs (squad members) to perform specific tasks, such as unlocking doors, the use of heavy fire power, or healing. The panic-factor is also important thing in the game. Sometime your Squad-Members get scared to death, so you must manage their fear in order to keep them stable. They don't like corpses, dark places and _thing_ creatures :) Fortunately you can calm them by taking them away from the area that's causing their fear and by giving them a weapon or some ammo. In addition, you can definitely use the blood test to see exactly who is safe and who's going to be dead :) It's good to know that the game remains win-able even if all of your NPC's have died. However it will take much much longer to complete and be incrementally harder to complete each level without their aid. I bet you will probably hate the save game system in this game. Well, The Thing was clearly designed as a console title first, so you can save your game only trough a recorder device in the levels instead to be able save anywhere. Fortunately you can use this cheats, to allow savegame function anywhere/anytime :) Another real annoyance you will have with this game is that The Thing is played in the third person perspective but switching to a first person perspective for shooting. It would be quite OK, but you can't move yourself during first person mode. Well, nothing is perfect. The Thing features twenty very well designed levels (10-20 hours of gameplay for casual players) featuring various environments from the Antarctic from the original US base seen in the film, the Norwegian base, to a military base, a Gen Inc. research facility, a medical lab, a submersed testing facility, a military air field and more, three classes of NPCs - The Soldier (they have the ability to operate all weapons with great accuracy), The Engineer (fixes Power, Computers and opens doors) and The Medic, well done AI that adds the psychological horror elements, and 10 various weapons - The Stun Gun (Capable of administering a 5000-volt charge), The Pistol (good for killing smaller enemies), The Machine Gun (a rapid-fire weapon), The Shotgun (deadly at close range but inaccurate at long range), The Blowtorch (short-range flame weapon), The Flame Thrower (the only way to kill a large enemy.), The Grenade Launcher, The Sniper Rifle, Standard Grenades ( Regular and High explosive), Flame Grenades (for the larger enemies) and Stun Grenades. In addition, you can also pick up and use an items such as flares (to illuminate the darker areas), flashlight, fire extinguisher, medical kits and blood-tester. If you are The Thing fan, you won't be disappointed because the game has terrific atmosphere. It's definitely one of the best horror-action games I have ever played. I strongly recommend you to play this game in dark room with headphones. hardware requirements: Minimum: PII 400 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 600 MB free space, Video Card with 8 MB VRAM. Recommended: PIII 600, 128 MB RAM, Video Card with 16 MB VRAM. Related Links: homepage, Outpost #31 fansite, Outpost #31 Unofficial walktrough, cheats. snd: 5/5 - chilling sound effects, great music gfx: 4/5 - impressive Antarctic environment - looks cold and uninviting, famous Thing monsters, animation and texture work is top-notch (you can see infected humans morphing into _THING_), level design rocks, decapitated head in the urinal rocks too! :)), you don't need a high-end machine to run the game, a bit clumsy camera playability: 4/5 - excellent atmosphere, scary, claustrophobic and depressive, sometime a bit frustrating and repetitive, great AI, fast load-times, no multiplayer, some of the infections are scripted, you can't move yourself during first person (shooting) mode genre: 3rd-person horror/survival action platform: PC, PS2, Xbox release: August 2002 developer: Computer Artworks publisher: Universal Interactive Overall: 85%

last 10 comments:

maga posted - Sep, 09 2002 - 12:43 super game, i pissed my pants (from fear :) ) muppetman posted - Sep, 09 2002 - 14:58 mega u must be a 5yr old cos this is about as scary as donald duck nothing posted - Sep, 09 2002 - 16:28 Games based on movies have pretty much failed, however, I'll give it a try since the movie was great. Memorable moments include the doctor keeling over and everyone trying to resucitate him, pounding at his chest and all of a sudden the doctor's chest just caving in and snapping the arms off the poor fellow who was pounding at the doctor's chest. Secondly, the tension when Kurt Russell ties everyone up and begins testing blood samples to see who is The Thing.....then the look of fear and panic for the poor fellow sitting beside the person who was The Thing. Bah, go watch the movie. Cyco posted - Sep, 09 2002 - 18:16 Good game, not quite as scary to play as AvPbut it's up there on my top 5 of most scary games easily. Graphics does the job so I don't complain that it looks alittle outdated (the better it runs on my somewhat outdated system). I don't play senseless multiplayer games, I tend to be drawn to games with a story, senseless multiplaying have no appeal to me so this game fit me like a glow. Give it a try if demo comes out. Lard Ass posted - Sep, 09 2002 - 19:07 Cyco your theory on "senseless multiplayer games" seem weak ! The theory behind multiplayer games is that by being open to the online community it will prolong its longevity thus bring about newbie’s and mods for variations in the game modes ! As for games with a story they're few and far between as they only take around a week or two at the most to complete and then what do u do with it, swap it with a m8 or put it in the bargain pages : ) Cyco posted - Sep, 09 2002 - 22:17 Senseless in the sense of Quake, Unreal Tournament and such (games a chimp could win in by just banging his head against the keyboard). I don't think a game automatically is senseless just because it features multiplayer. hero x posted - Sep, 09 2002 - 22:23 so bad shooting, bad camera, moves are so bad, i dont like it,why are you given too much points?? cunning posted - Sep, 10 2002 - 00:23 the game has it's good and bad points, having the blood tester and testing it on NPC's only for them to change a few minutes later is annoying, as much as you try to save perhaps 3 NPC's you cant :/, you cant save NPC's to next round unless they are needed. the death system on the Things is inacurrate, you can basically shoot em to red, use the flamer and nothing!, you have to shoot em for a lengthy time in red before you can flame em and watch em die. the trust system is great, you have to learn that some characters dont like to be around dead bodies and move them away else they'll crack, and you dont want your NPC's puttin' holes in their own head lol. one disappointment is it felt like i was playing a half life at times, due to the storyline. Erboz posted - Sep, 10 2002 - 03:26 I got so bored from it after only 10 minutes, that I trashed it. CliffZ posted - Sep, 10 2002 - 17:17 yep bored me senseless after a few minutes back to civilisation and MOH I go ;) eBwoy posted - Sep, 10 2002 - 19:40 Good game - but having to press a poxy key to go into 'looking around up and down mode' is shite. Why can't I just look around freely without ponsing about, like other 3D games - kinda spoils it for me. Me posted - Sep, 10 2002 - 21:42 The problem that I have with the game is the 0 replayability. After you finish it there's nothing else to do, no different modes or chalenges. Lard Ass posted - Sep, 11 2002 - 00:27 kiss u read my mind ! thats the problem with single player games once the story ends its DEAD ! As for multiplayer games it brings new life to the single player game , just look at HALF LIFE ! WTF its been going for YEARS !!!! chris posted - Sep, 11 2002 - 05:47 This thing was buggier than a cheap motel in Boca Raton. I had the infamous heartbeats during cutscenes, and that alone made it unplayable. A story-line driven game when the story fails is just a crappy game. The interface is horrid, the shooting was poor at best, and the list goes on. I have no idea why exactly they developed and coded the game the way they did, as all the machines this game was coded for support a movement and a free-look controllers indepentantly of each other. This game is so bad that for only the sedcond time in my life, I took advantage of the ability to return a game for dissatisfaction. Doink posted - Sep, 11 2002 - 08:15 I can't see why games like this get so much bad critique (based on what I hear here I presume it'll get somewhat bad reviews too) here when crap games like Tomb Raider are loved, especially since I really like (still not made it) this game and games of it sort. If you have a job with a fair salary, you can chuck up the money for a game like this despite it's lack of replayability, otherwise all games we'll see in the future will be multiplayer online shooter/rpg games. RedVento posted - Sep, 13 2002 - 19:28 All infections are scripted.. zero replay value, extremely short, can't look up or down in free mode, or can't move in 1st person mode. last half of the game is a Half-Life clone.. yea great game. Piranha posted - Oct, 22 2002 - 16:54 Wow I don't know why so many of you don't like this game. I think its awsome. The AI is great (except at sometimes they are stupid). There are so many details to this game like fear, and interacting with your allies. I think the awsome part is not being able to trust your own team-mates becuase they may be infected so they could turn on you at any second. That makes the game interesting at all times. Another thing I don't like is the weapon selection isen't real big but the weapons you do get are awsome! One of the first games you acctually get to use the auto-shotty. I would recommend that they have a Colt of some sort like a M-16 or M4A1. Well with all the bad compared to the good. Its a fricken awsome game!! TripleX posted - Dec, 13 2002 - 19:30 It's a cool game i like the horror genre.I fink they should creat a second chapter of the. liljegren posted - Feb, 03 2003 - 16:02 How do you defet the 3 boss?? graffix780 posted - Feb, 11 2003 - 19:56 liljegren you have to use the fireextinguisher freeze him then blow him up with a grenade. kiwi posted - Jul, 07 2003 - 08:51 or you can just run to the middle of da room (where da boss cant hit u) and just shoot him, and kill him off finally by burning da floor around him wif da flamethrower.there u go. Maniac posted - Oct, 22 2003 - 05:44 I would just like to point out that there is a patch for freelook in thirdperson, so you don't have to put up with the console style autoaim  write a comment The old comment system has been replaced. 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