By Alec Meer on November 9th, 2008 at 7:25 pm.
I’ve not played Dead Space yet (and, to answer Kieron’s open question, I’m also one of those who feels its relative straightness compared to its contemporaries means it’s best saved for a quieter month), but my housemate has. Chatting to him about it, he referenced The Thing, the 2002 videogame spin-off/sequel to John Carpenter’s finest hour.
Which was a shock, as it was the first time I’d heard that curious survival horror/fps-but-with-more-shoulder game mentioned in a good six years. I have fondish memories of it, so back I went, back to Antarctica, back to paranoia and back to jealously saving up shotgun shells.
The first thing to note about The Thing: The Game is that it’s the Aliens to the The Thing: The Movie’s Alien. It’s a direct narrative sequel, and it replaces the tension and slow-burn of the film with an itchy trigger-finger and monsters by the dozen. The simple fact of being a sequel rather than an attempt to retell the movie excuses it from one of the traditional curses of licensed games: the need to insert a legion of enemies that weren’t in the film, in order to ensure the action is sustained. It does insert a legion of enemies, but it’s not contradicting the film by doing so.
Here, the handful of alien infections documented by the movie has, in the 20 off-camera years between film and game, spread to neighbouring bases. That’s excuse enough for there being so many Things prowling around in the game: the real sacrifice is that they’re now more cannon fodder than monstrous, near-unstoppable uber-threat, but again that’s what Aliens did to Alien’s beast.
Remarkably, for all this shift to the adrenal, the game does manage to realise, to a certain extent, what the film did best: that overwhelming sense of paranoia and loneliness. The latter is conveyed by the setting: Antarctica. Hardly a social hot-spot. Wander outside a building and into the snowy desolace and you’ll freeze to death within a couple of minutes.
More recently, the similarly frozen Lost Planet played with a similar idea, though the ability to top up your ‘thermal energy’ with magic goo dropped by slain baddies ripped all the tension out of the concept. In The Thing, it’s portrayed as – what else? – a power gauge, but you’ve absolutely no way to top it up bar finding shelter. With no in-game map to rely on and only sporadic lightpoles as navigational aids, there’s genuine dread to felt from having to make a long, outdoor run. Sometimes you can see your destination, sometimes you can’t, but all the while that blue meter is tick, tick, ticking away. Will you make it on time? Invariably, yes – but the outside is consistently your greatest foe in The Thing.
Well, that and the monsters. The crudity of The Thing’s tech means there’s not much in the way in seeing the horrible transformations from man to flesh-beast that characterised the film: instead the creatures largely turn up pre-monsterised, either scuttling,spider-legged heads and hands or shambling meat-men, steroidal versions of Half-Life’s zombies. In fact, there’s a lot of Half-Life here: the former are highly HeadCrab-like, easily dispatched, more an annoyance than a real threat, but in enough numbers they can spell doom.
The Thing rams this home with an Alamo stand-off against several dozen of ‘em crashing through a broken window in waves, a setpiece that goes on and on and on, past the point where most games fear to tread. It’s a bit like the old comedy standby – repeat until funny, carry on repeating until it’s no longer funny, then carry on some more until finally it becomes funny again. Only here it’s keep spamming the player with mini-Things until it stops being menacing and becomes a chore, then keep going past that – the terror that this may never end becomes curiously overwhelming. Of course it does eventually end, and when it does you’ll feel like you’ve survived the end of the world. Which is when it promptly has a couple of Big Things smash through the door, and you realise the fight’s only just getting started.
It’s just one symptom of the particularly vicious sadistic that streak runs all the way through The Thing. To a point, this is only right – it’s based on a movie that’s very much a downer, so a gung-ho tale of high heroism would never have suited it. Throughout the game, things only ever get worse for you. The fights become harder, the ammo becomes scarcer, the envinroments harsher and, most of all, your allies less reliable.
Theoretically, this is a squad-based shooter. In reality, any of the soldiers you stumble across hiding in the ruined buildings could turn into seven foot of spiky alien meat at the drop of a hat. Sadly, this system is all over the place – the game gives you tools – blood tests and a taser – to check whether your followers are human or not, but just a couple of minutes after supposedly proving they’re what they claim to be, off pop their head and hands and suddenly you’ve got an unexpected Big Thing to deal with. Which entirely renders the tests pointless, but it does mean you never, ever trust the guys you’re with – which is the crux of the film realised beautifully. It also disguises the rudimentary AI and pathfinding and characterisation, as your paranoia means you can’t treat them as real people anyway. The transformations aren’t scary, not even slightly, but they do mean you’ll probably have to go the next half hour alone. And that is unsettling.
Apart from a couple of key characters, the infections are entirely unscripted – anyone could pop at a moment’s notice, but equally the same guy might stay resolutely human for the duration of another play-through. Untrustworthy companions is an idea that really should be investigated on a wider scale, today’s superior technology and production values experimenting with creating characters who toy with your affections and suspicions. It is, after all, a staple of most any action movie – there’s so often mistrust between the lead characters, right until they finally stand shoulder to shoulder against a key evil. But in games, we take our companions’ loyalty for granted, unless it’s A Big Twist. The Thing will probably never get a sequel – unfortunately its developer, Computer Artworks, went under shortly after its release – but hopefully some other game will think to challenge our NPC expectations.
Unhappily, another form of sadism risks all of The Thing’s successes. It’s more Resident Evil than Half-Life, hung up on key-collection and preset savepoints. The gaps between saves are agonising, sometimes creating affecting tension but, all too often, it comes off as sloppy and childish.
On my recent revisit, I ground to halt a few hours in, having wasted about 90 minutes of my life repeating the same 20 minute section. Minor puzzle, big fight, talky bit, little fight, short walk, big fight, little fight, long circumnavigation of an insta-death fall, little fight, short walk, boss fight. All without save or checkpoint, and so many opportunities for death. Some terrible geometry during the ceiling beam tightrope act meant a small bit of wall could unexpectedly knock my character to the fatal floor, and back I’d rewind by a good quarter of an hour. I don’t for the life of me know how that kind of design decision is allowed, or why someone decided sticking a save point in one of the many more or less empty rooms in the area was a bad idea.
It’s a real shame, as most of the rest of the time The Thing has such a fine understanding of how to get in your head. Obtuse, cinematic camera angles lift the cutscenes far above what the engine’s capable of, music is eerily sparing (and borrows the ominous electro-beats of the films when it does occur), and the voice acting… Well, it’s not perfect, but it puts Fallout 3 to shame with (presumably) only a fraction of the budget. Throughout, there’s the cold: the snowy fog and the dread whistle of the wind all building a place that feels remote and deadly. You really don’t need a high concept like an underwater city or a zero-g space station to make a memorable game environment.
So I feel about The Thing today pretty much as I did in 2002. It’s a game with all the right ideas and a remarkable atmosphere, but it falls over a bit too often in its execution of them. Nonetheless, it’s one of so very few film spin-offs to stand proud. Like Riddick, it very much does it own thing rather than just clumsily ape the key beats of its license. Were it made today, I suspect it could be a huge success, given the current vogue for sci-fi horror shooters.
As it is, it suffers somewhat for its olden technology, but most of all for an apparent dearth of playtesting and QA. It’s a mean and unfair game – and it probably should be, because The Thing isn’t made of daisies and sunshine. Mean and unfair can, however, be a lot more fun than simply forcing repetition and instant Game Over. Nonetheless, it’s a better sequel than anyone ever thought such a prince of b-movies could get, videogame or not.
09/11/2008 at 19:34 dishwasherlove says:
You’ll replay The Thing for a few hours but won’t even give the opening of Dead Space a try? I didn’t think Dead Space was that bad, although the thought of playing a console to PC port sends a little shiver up my spine.
09/11/2008 at 19:35 Alec Meer says:
I already have a copy of the Thing. I would have to spend money on Dead Space. Also, hey, we don’t only want to talk about new releases here.
09/11/2008 at 19:42 qrter says:
If I remember correctly I gave up playing The Thing after about 2 hours, exactly because of that stupid savepoint system and because that whole teammates-turning-into-monsters deal wasn’t frightening at all, just more of a nuisance, of the “oh god, here we go again“-kind.
09/11/2008 at 19:42 Matt Kemp says:
Take a look at the Spoony Experiment review of The Thing.
It’s fantastic.
09/11/2008 at 19:43 Noc says:
Tangentially related: The “Retro: Sacrifice” link at the top of the RPS main page redirects you to the Far Cry 2 articles.
I am working on the assumption that this is a complex and subtle bit of meta-commentary masquerading as mislabeled link. Well done, RPS.
09/11/2008 at 19:45 Lim-Dul says:
I second Matt Kemp’s opinion about Spoony One’s review – even Yahtzee mentioned it as one of his favorite reviews in an interview. =)
09/11/2008 at 20:01 Pace says:
Is this youtube review what you guys are talking about? I gave up on it when he said that the game “gargles balls.” One of the reasons I come to RPS is to avoid being treated like a 12 year old. I suppose Yahtzee says similar things, but somehow I feel better about it when he does it.
09/11/2008 at 20:04 AlexW says:
Spoony is awesome, hilarious, and completely opposite in opinion to Alec here.
How do you manage to make words combine such that this game comes off as decent despite video evidence to the contrary?
09/11/2008 at 20:17 Alec Meer says:
I couldn’t make it far through that painful Spoony video either. It’s just bile.
09/11/2008 at 20:24 vordhosbn says:
Here’s a shocking plot twist: by editing a registry entry you can turn on free saving/loading in The Thing. Why you have to jump through this minor hurdle is anyone’s guess but here’s the first google hit I got:
http://www.cheatscodesguides.com/pc-cheats/the-thing/
I should point out that having never played the game I haven’t actually tried this out but I do remember reading about this back when the game was released.
09/11/2008 at 20:41 StalinsGhost says:
I was thinking of playing the Thing through again myself recently… but I can’t find the bastard anywhere.
09/11/2008 at 20:47 Andrew says:
The paranoia/mistrust mechanic sounds pretty intriguing. Love to see it in a game these days. ‘The Faculty’ did something similar too. Anyway, ‘The Thing’ is it worth searching out for someone without any nostalgia towards it?
09/11/2008 at 20:52 Gorgeras says:
Excuse me, Big Trouble in Little China was John Carpenter’s finest hour. It was on last night.
09/11/2008 at 21:00 EyeMessiah says:
Both the The Thing movie and The Thing game are dodgy and awesome in equal measure. Each is a personal favourite of mine that despite my enthusiasm for them I’d struggle to defend them against criticism.
The game is certainly broken (I’ve never finished it, despite enjoying much of it quite a bit) but then again its not quite as broken as say, Hidden and Dangerous.
Actually Alec, I think one or two of the transformations are scripted and not randomised. The only way they can be avoided is if the person in question is dead when the transformation is triggered. Many are random though, and yes the bloodtest system is sadly worthless! As you say though this uncertainty does add to the oppressive atmosphere of paranoia.
So its like a H&D with the stealth and strategy ripped out and replaced with action and monsters. In the freezing cold, at night, forever. Its a one note game certainly but I think there is definitely something bleakly resonant about it.
I can’t think of another squad based game that I’ve played when I have asked one of my squadmates to guard a particular location in a “hold the fort” type scenario while I defended some other spot in an adjoining room, and then upon hearing a lot of intense gunfire I run back to where he was just in time to see him shoot himself because he got so freaked out. Similarly, its also weirdly stunning when your squad mates decide they have had enough and just run off into the freezing darkness.
That said, its easy to understand why its a hard sell, given that you are asking players to accept that the game’s atmosphere of unrelenting hopelessness is its best feature and what for some counterbalances the weight of its flaws.
The combat, munitions\squad management and exploration are all quite good fun, and despite the problems with a few particularly punishing sections coinciding with a inexplicable lack of save points, imho its worth a look if you can get if for next to nothing (I’m sure its been up as a free download on gametap at one point).
09/11/2008 at 21:06 EyeMessiah says:
@vordhosbn
That is awesome!
I might have another go at finishing this if I still have my old saves kicking around.
Also, you are a great song.
09/11/2008 at 21:17 SlappyBag says:
I remember The Thing and went to re-play it recently unit I got to that never ending window jobby and just got bored.
I as well loved the whole not completely being able to trust your team-mates thing and think it would be great to see it realized in todays standards. Having to rely on your team-mates due to the scenario and gameplay but always being that worry that you cannot trust them.
Good times.
09/11/2008 at 21:22 MaxNormal says:
The patch that gives mouse aiming is well worth using. Makes control much better. I got 2/3 rds of the way through this game, mainly because I am such a big fan of the film. I liked how the game started but it did get very repetitive later on.
This is not a bad game.
The best “thing like” game out there is Extermination on the PS2. Pretty much the same setup but there is some much better gameplay.
09/11/2008 at 21:45 qrter says:
It didn’t for me, quite the opposite, exactly because it seems so absolutely random and has no real effect – just another alien you need to shoot. That just makes it annoying.
09/11/2008 at 21:59 sbs says:
“The first thing to note about The Thing: The Game is that it’s the Aliens to the The Thing: The Movie’s Alien.”
Man, my headache just got worse. I had to re-read that sentence 5 times.
The Thing, The Movie, is on TV here tonight, I think I’m gonna rewatch it :)
09/11/2008 at 22:30 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
Blood tests were worthless in the movie, too.
09/11/2008 at 22:37 Bhazor says:
I’m a big fan of Spoony but i do think he’s a bit harsh on the Thing and I don’t think it’s his funniest review. My opinion of The Thing is that some very good ideas were let down by glitches, bad design and an engine that couldn’t do fire. With decent Farcry 2 fire the combat would be something really special as opposed to the circle strafing jamboree that it is.
Watch the “Johnny Mnemonic” review or “X-Files Resist or Serve” before you dismiss Spoony.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5cIUrx_ttg&feature=related (FMV Hell: Starring Johnny Mnemonic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lsHE3IQKKg&feature=related (X-Files Resist or Serve)
09/11/2008 at 23:21 EyeMessiah says:
@qrter
Personally I don’t find elements of unreliability always annoying in games. I *really* like the weapon malfunctions in FC2 for instance. I enjoy the way they sometimes force you to think on your feet, suddenly turning trivial encounters into genuinely dangerous situations.
09/11/2008 at 23:25 redrain85 says:
Spoony ripped this game to shreds, and I thought his review of it was quite funny. That being said: I didn’t agree with him.
The Thing isn’t going to win any awards, but it’s a decent and rather fun game. Maybe at the time of release it wasn’t worth the $40 or whatever it cost, but now you can probably pick it up for $5-$10 and for that it’s worth the price of admission.
Spoony’s review of Dead Space is also a little over the top. He’s overly analytical about the game. I understand where he’s coming from, and agree with a lot of his points. For example, Isaac being able to buy all his weapons in a store is a bit silly. But overall, the gameplay triumphs over little nuisances like that.
09/11/2008 at 23:27 mister k says:
Yeah, I kind of enjoyed the thing review by the spoony experiment, but a lot of his vidoes seem kind of tiresome to me, over long and a bit too impressed with their own cleverness.
10/11/2008 at 00:06 Carra says:
B-movie, pfff.
More like one of the best Scifi movies ever!
10/11/2008 at 00:25 malkav11 says:
If nothing else, I will always be grateful to this game for making me go watch the movie. Carpenter’s more miss than hit in my opinion, but The Thing is a horror masterpiece.
The game’s not terrible but the tech kind of hinders it.
10/11/2008 at 00:35 Larington says:
The ideas were interesting but not realised to their full potential. The games biggest weakness was its save system, there was one sequence involving a set of metal catwalks square-spiralling up or down I can’t remember which, with bits and pieces exploding and so on – At which point I hit a severe stumbling block. There was no save during the entire long sequence which was quite hard even on a relatively low difficulty but the rest of the game I had no issues with in terms of hardness.
10/11/2008 at 00:41 Brokenbroll says:
Read Roger Ebert’s review of the The Thing film, its hilarious. Hilariously bad. He accuses the film of falling back on certain archetypes, the problem is that the archetypes he lists aren’t actually in the film.
Another “good” review of his is on “Predator”, in which he displays mystification as to why the alien is on the planet killing people. Really, Ebert? Even as a 8-year old watching half of the movie with my eyes shut, I picked up on the all but stated fact that he was hunting people as trophies.
10/11/2008 at 01:30 Caiman says:
The movie remains one of my favourites, and still scares me half to death, so the game was purchased with eagerness back in the day. But I gave up in frustration with the control system – it ruined it for me. If there’s a mouselook patch for aiming I’m going to dig out the dusty box and give it another go. I respect what Computer Artworks tried to do with this game (and their earlier game Evolva) – they didn’t fit the mold, but paid the price for it as most do.
10/11/2008 at 02:11 I don't understand this comment system says:
“Apart from a couple of key characters, the infections are entirely unscripted ”
Alec, I have to correct you on this point. I played through this game a few times back in the day and revisited a few months ago. If you are good at keeping your allies alive, they will always turn into the thing at the EXACT same point every time. There are literally invisible lines in the game, that if you cross, turn certain allies. You can even test them right before you cross the line, they will test human, walk two paces, and suddenly you have a pissed off alien on your hands. So essentially the trust system is all smoke and mirrors. I suspect at one point the plan was to have a much more ambitious system, which was most likely abandoned to the game out before a deadline.
10/11/2008 at 02:20 Arathain says:
Hmm. The case of this is sitting on my case, staring at me. I bought it cheap a few years ago, and never played past the opening. I’ve always meant to have another go at it. Perhaps I shall, although L4D is filling my fairly limited horror needs at the moment.
10/11/2008 at 03:44 BeamSplashX says:
I think Extermination is more interesting than the game, but then again you can’t advertise to fans of The Thing on the box if you’re not the official game. Extermination also reminds me of Spy Fiction for some reason, which also began on a cold and snowy night.
Did snow somehow get more shockingly more impressive in the 128-bit era and I just never realized it?
10/11/2008 at 03:45 BeamSplashX says:
Remove that first “more” in the last sentence.
10/11/2008 at 07:42 Joq says:
So I read this story before going to bed last night. And I happened to see a dream where my cat turned into a thing.
Of course, at the exact moment of transformation my cat actually jumps into the bed and wakes me up by licking my face.
Later on my girlfriend had the nerve to call my scream ‘girlish’, and wondered why I had suddenly ran to the bathroom.
10/11/2008 at 08:25 Larington says:
Funnily enough Joq, I found myself wondering about the wisdom of reading this article not long before going to bed. I was more fortunate in that regard it seems.
10/11/2008 at 09:19 MaxNormal says:
Larington – the catwalks were spiralling down and I gave up at that part too. I remember spending 2 hours trying to get through that part. If I’d known how to make quicksave work back then I’d probably have finished it.
The best part of the game for me was the great fun to be had with the flamethrower. Everything is better with a flamethrower.
10/11/2008 at 09:22 Dreamhacker says:
The Thing: Carpenters finest hour? Seriously?
Have you even seen “Big Trouble in Little China”?
10/11/2008 at 09:52 Jochen Scheisse says:
Or “Escape from New York”?
10/11/2008 at 10:07 Jim Rossignol says:
The Thing is the best Carpenter film. It says right here on my Objective Gauge Of Film Quality.
10/11/2008 at 10:22 Raven185 says:
Indeed, scenario-wise those are better(more entertaining maybe?) movies. The Things is a better directed movie, therefore it’s Carpenter’s best.
10/11/2008 at 10:58 Flubb says:
The original short story was much better!
10/11/2008 at 11:10 Heliocentric says:
I stopped playing this due to horrible design choices and regretted it whenever i see the box.
I’d gotten it cheaply but i knew that there was a truely incredible game in there i was too novice a game player to finish. I’d love to boot up some old school memory state management software, like you get in emulators to turn even wretched nes era platformer into something you can quick save.
10/11/2008 at 11:14 Schadenfreude says:
In The Mouth of Madness is my favourite…
What?
10/11/2008 at 11:24 Dreamhacker says:
I hope this makes it into the next podcast.
10/11/2008 at 11:37 cHeal says:
Got pretty far through this originally but lost my save games. Tried replaying it a few months ago and just currently get far, it feels a little clunky and I got stuck on a puzzle pretty quickly.
10/11/2008 at 11:50 R. says:
I’d have to opt for Big Trouble too, it’s just too much fun. The Thing is probably the more accomplished bit of filmmaking but it doesn’t have Six Demon Bags, seven foot tall roadblocks and a hero who’s about as much use in a scrap as I am.
As for the game, I’m just amazed it’s been six years already. Time’s flying too fast, we’re getting old.
:(
10/11/2008 at 12:43 Jochen Scheisse says:
And by the way, the first episode Carpenter did for Masters of Horror is by far the best of the whole lot. Called “Cigarette Burns”.
10/11/2008 at 12:44 Bozzley says:
My vote is with Assault on Precinct 13. The original one, not the (surprisingly decent but nothing like the original, who the hell let Ethan Hawke near this one) remake.
10/11/2008 at 12:47 Crispy says:
Strange that I just introduced The Thing to a friend of mine just two nights ago (that’s the excellent film, not the mixed-bag game).
SpoonyOne’s review makes plenty of good points about the design albeit in a fairly unappetising format. His complaints mainly revolve about gameplay decisions that take away from the realism/plausibility that serves as the foundation of the horror genre. Concepts of reality and normality must first be built if they are to be subverted, in the same way that challenges must retain a sense of authenticity in ‘progression’ games for them to be rewarding.
He also comments on some design elements that are completely pointless. The junction boxes requiring a timer is spot on: if there’s absolutely no threat while fixing these, why have a ‘hold-to-fix’ bar?
But I think the main fallback the game has is its decision to try to make The Thing an action game. The beauty of the original film is that at any one time there is no more than one (or two at most) Things on the go. This reduces the Thing’s screentime since it cannot always be attacking, it must bide its time and wait for the right moment, or until it’s provoked. Less is more, which the game spin-off seems to have failed to realise.
So the game fails at Horror, and the poor AI means it fails at Action. The repetitive and uninspired puzzles mean it fails at Puzzle, and the dialogue surely means it fails at anything resembling Adventure. If the game designers/producers had really made a stronger effort to stick to one core genre the new (at the time) gameplay features wouldn’t have been marred by the weak progression gameplay. As it is I think the game seems caught mid-metamorphosis just like the main protagonist of its forebear: its face is a mish-mash of ideas unceremoniously squashed into eachother with the resulting gameplay grotesque in design terms, but still a source of irrefutable interest.
10/11/2008 at 14:53 Calabi says:
@crispy: I’d like to see a game that has only one or two monsters, and how you would think that would work?
What else could they make it into? They could have done a hell of a lot worse than they did. Just made a straight, corridor shooting game, where you shoot the things that come at you.
As it is they tried something different, they made NPCs that are decent, and better than most of the NPCs in even games now.
The core of the game is solid and original, whilst the overall game does have its flaws. Its nowhere near as bad as spoony or you are making out.
10/11/2008 at 14:55 Tom Camfield says:
I think the closing lines of The Thing are pretty awesome, but the film is not better than Assault on Presinct 13, Escape from New York or Dark Star. That this fact is established appears to be very important to me.
Re: Brockenbroll & Ebert’s review of The Thing:
Ebert is correct, there is little tension compared to the other movies he names with similar themes (ie Alien & Body Snatchers) and the characterisation is daft (let’s split up at every opportunity!). However, The Thing is a big schlocky mess, which makes it quite good.
10/11/2008 at 18:18 Lucas says:
I loved this game. It really captured the look and feel and COLD of the movie, without totally rehashing the scenario.
Played on the PS2, it required a 3 MB save file on the PS2′s 8 MB ONLY memory card!
The Thing has the best “you just lost all your gear” sequence in any game ever, and the level it takes place in is simply excellent game design.
The teammate mutations were a mixed element, because a couple times it is scripted and they transform even if you JUST tested them and they came up clean (maybe this happens right when they introduce the feature – oops!). The paranoia is certainly heightened when you aren’t sure if you can rely on your allies, and the squad mechanics worked very well for giving your allies orders, weapons and ammo, and healing.
The shooty corridor level it ends with is a letdown, but the pilot’s cameo was cool (if you’ve seen the movie, you know who this is).
The villain was voiced by the X-files Smoking Man guy!
10/11/2008 at 19:18 Crispy says:
@Calabi
1. Yes, games can be made with very few enemies, just look at the Adventure genre.
2. My complaint is that the game needed to decide if it was Action or Horror; combat-oriented or atmospheric. I would say it never really did either as well as it could have if it had been a bit more thoroughbred.
10/11/2008 at 19:28 Alctel says:
I actually liked this game enough to battle all the way through it, but every time I killed the last boss the game would lock up, so I never saw the ending!
10/11/2008 at 20:20 Calabi says:
@crispy I’m not sure what you mean by adventure genre. Do you mean the point and click games. I honestly cannot think of many games that had few enemies and that were good.
There are plenty of games which are both action and horror, Silent Hill, Aliens vs Predator just for two. I dont think its definition is its problem, its just a label for what you want to call it. It did the horror element well enough with, its sub par now obsolete graphics, the sound and atmosphere make up for that. They had to have the action to give you something to do.
The only problems with it are it is damn hard, and the few flaws that have been mentioned. If the flaws were removed or changed, which they easily could be as they are minor, then the game may have sold alot more when it was released and be alot more popular now.
The game is sound as a pound.
11/11/2008 at 01:03 DannyBoy says:
I do remember playing this back in the day, almost bought it despite being broke (to the point where you carefully consider what game you really want to own).
Alas, I rented it, and yay, it was fun, but like you say the save points are too far between. And the design is either genius or madness. But I’m a whore for atmosphere and while the Thing did well, it didn’t capture the mood quite well enough methinks.
Fun game though, I didn’t get to finish it despite wanting to. This would certainly be an awesome remake as a mod on the CryEngine 2 but people are afraid to touch original IP– either fearing a C&D or just telling he who proposes to “be more original”
Shame, as the outlet for this game probably won’t exist again, definitely not like this if it ever does. I found it amazing it was made in the first place.
11/11/2008 at 06:24 malkav11 says:
A horror game that works with just one enemy? Clock Tower. You’re faced with an invincible serial killer that’s attempting to search you out and murder you, so you have to constantly keep on your toes and know exactly where the nearest viable hiding spot is should the killer appear.
There are three sequels (two on PSX, one on PS2) of varied quality and enemy-numbers, but I think they mostly still focus on that style of play. And there’s the spiritual sequel Haunting Ground, also.
11/11/2008 at 08:53 Brokenbroll says:
Re:Tom Camfield
Alien is no more tense in its presentation than The Thing. With the exception of the air vent scene ( a truly great piece of filming) it follows pretty standard monster movie conventions.
As for foolish splitting up:Come now, up until the very end the crew in Alien try their damned hardest to separate as often as possible.
The Thing, to me, was more about watching the men break down and become less trustful of each other, knowing that they had every reason to feel so, as opposed to waiting for the monster to jump out of the closet, as in Alien.
The characterization is not daft. Keeping with Ebert’s Alien comparison: Are the crew of the Nostromo anymore fleshed out than the Antarctic ice station team? What can you say about Parker’s character that you can’t say about Clark? About Ripley that remains unknown when discussing McCready? Having viewed both films recently, I’d say the characters in Alien are more two dimensional and playing into familiar roles. From their actions and dialog, the crew of the nostromo, with the possible exception of Ripley, all fall comfortably into standard movie characters.
11/11/2008 at 10:55 matte_k says:
I remember thoroughly enjoying this game, until one particular sequence near the end where the two save spots were MILES apart at either end of a big spiral staircase, and I always got obliterated before getting to the next save. Gave up on it for a few weeks, then came back and somehow miraculously made it second try, thus being able to complete it.
Not a bad game, some great ideas, but the criticism here is valid (blood tests pointless, scripted transformations-usually before a boss fight so you’re forced to do it on your own, etc). It could, however, have been a lot worse, so i’m thankful for that.
As far as the film discussion here goes, I love The Thing for the way everybody loses it over the course of the film, but Big Trouble in Little China has Lo-Pan, possibly the funniest villain i’ve ever seen, so that gets my vote :D
11/11/2008 at 11:05 Crispy says:
@Calabi:
I think there are two arguments here: whether The Thing is a good game and whether it is good enough, or appropriate enough to bear the name of the film it’s based on. Even though an attempt has been made to carry the story on, I would say it’s a fairly poor spiritual successor, but as a game it doesn’t do terribly badly. I just think that as a game if it had focused on doing one thing very, very well and not got drawn into ticking off the ‘shopping list of features for a profitable movie tie-in’ it would have been a lot better and worthy to wear the name it does. It is way, way better than most movie tie-ins, but I don’t think it goes far enough to be a truly good game. And whether you agree the whole spiritual successor thing is even an issue, the game still has some horrible design points that shouldn’t be forgiven just because it introduced some novel features and did okay with creating an atmosphere.
@Tom Camfield:
The Thing is better than Dark Star. Can’t really comment on the other two, but I’d be happy to debate just that argument alone on the forums. I’ve made a thread, so put your arguments in here ;)
@Brokenbroll:
The tension in the Alien crew is very present, I watched it just two nights ago as part of my improv horrorfest (The Thing on Friday night, Alien and Aliens back to back on Saturday night!). In Alien the tension is manifested much like in The Thing in terms of how the crew act towards one another, but with more muttering and behind-the-back retaliatory insults.
To compare the two as horror films, I’ll give you an account of the girl watching all three for the first time, but I’ll do it on the forums to keep this post on topic.
11/11/2008 at 11:10 Bobsy says:
So surely it should have been called “The Things”?
11/11/2008 at 12:47 Rob says:
“So surely it should have been called “The Things”?”
That was the porn remake.
11/11/2008 at 14:50 Bobsy says:
The Thinglie-Dinglies? Better? Worse?
11/11/2008 at 18:52 Alarik says:
Regarding scripted change into Thing – I think it is mixed – sometime it is scripted and sometimes it is not (I got the impression people can get ‘infected’ – or maybe turn into Thing when heavily injured – or maybe it is really random).
Good example is the game’s most difficult level (that descending spiral pathway with medic companion – sometimes he would turn into Thing right almost right away, sometimes he would last till the – rather bitter – end of pathway).
12/11/2008 at 04:29 Daniel Purvis says:
One of my old University Professor’s wrote his a thesis on The Thing. Can’t remember much of it, but then again I can’t remember much of my days at University. Shall have to dig up a link for it.
19/11/2008 at 09:10 BoltingTurtle02 says:
I think the game that most gets to me with as few enemies as it has is Penumbra: Overture. I think bioshock took a lot of cues from it and would have done well to imitate it more closely. The combat was agreeably terrible, but I think that it works to discourage you from standing and fighting. I mean, you’re a physicist- not Gordon Freeman… errr…
03/09/2009 at 03:24 Late comer says:
Alec, you really need to go back and play Dead Space. It’s been year, now you can get it for cheap and do a new retro piece.
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