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Star Review: The Thing (PC)
by A. Joseph
The Thing was a great movie, with a good mix of suspense, action and horror that still stands up well today. When I heard that there was a game being made set after the film I was ecstatic (especially after its uncertain ending).
At first everything seems promising, we return to the research facility in the Antarctic and everything is in chaos. You are accompanied by an engineer, medic and soldier. One of the game's innovative features is that they all have varying levels of trust and if they get too scared or lose faith in you they will start going ballistic. So you have to manage their fear in order to keep them alive. This has some major problems, first of all they all die eventually from something or another so what's the point? Second you are given no incentive to keep them alive, they don't communicate with you in any way so you don't feel any attachment to them. You only have to keep them alive when they are an integral part of the mission. Third they are useless at fighting and in most cases I found it easier to do it myself.
Which brings us to the combat. You are given a generic assortment of weapons and in most cases liberal use of firearms followed by a good torching (ala the flamethrower) will vanquish your foe. The auto-aim and first-person view work well enough. The AI is incredibly stupid however and in one particularly unfair portion of the game literally hundreds of 'Things' come flying at you making the experience more like a poor man's Serious Sam. This is nothing like the movie and it just shows poor use of the licence. The story is poorly told mostly through computer logs and is paper-thin. The only slightly redeeming thing is that there is a cameo from one of the original characters toward the end.