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Eeeeeeeek! Oh no! Another game based on a Sci-Fi / Horror
flick! Now that’s scary. It’s certainly scarier than this
multiplatform survival horror game. The hype surrounding the
release of The Thing was intense. Among other aggressive
promotions, the Sci-Fi Channel dedicated an entire night to
it. They premiered the John Carpenter classic, based on Howard
Hawk’s 1951 original. During the movie an evolving series of
The Thing game commercials revealed the story line and
offered the viewer increasingly in depth glimpses of the game
play. Truth be told, the campaign worked on this PC Game
consumer. Being a huge fan of John Carpenter films, I
immediately pre-ordered the PC version of the game.
One of the big
incentives to buy the game is the fact that it is not
a rehash of the
movie. Instead, |
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the game picks up exactly where the
film ended. You and your team are sent to find out what
happened to the two incommunicado Antarctic Research
Facilities. An element that made the film so tense, the
location, also works on some level in the game. When outside
and exposed to the harsh sub zero temperatures, you’re slowly
but surely freezing to death. A meter tracks your decreasing
warmth level and when it runs out you die. This added more
intensity and survival anxiety to the game play than the
actual Things. Finding and getting to the next warm building
always makes you breath a cold sigh of relief.
The “freeze to death” feature is the most successful but not
the only innovation The Thing has to offer. During your
adventures, you’ll run across various survivors and fellow team
members. You can ask up to three of them to follow you. A
command menu allows you to give them weapons, heal them, and
issue simple commands. For instance, numerous doors require
the help of an Engineer to open. You’ll find yourself
commanding many Engineers to fix many fried circuits. Tied
closely to the command structure is a fear / trust system.
Since the Things are a parasitic virus that take over and
control their hosts, you have to constantly be worried about
your companions. At the same time, your companions are
constantly worried about you. If a team member does not trust
you, he will not follow your commands. In order to earn their
trust, you have to do things such as heal them and give them
weapons / ammo.
If trust wasn’t enough to distract you from the core game, you
also have to worry about your companions fear level. Similar
to their trust level, if you don’t keep them calm they’ll be
too afraid to follow your commands. This turns out to be one
of the most annoying features of the game. Isn’t the point of
the game for you the player to be afraid? For example, at one
point during the game I was stuck outside desperately trying
to get my Engineer to open a door to safety and warmth. As I
slowly but surely froze to death he stood right next to the
door, trembling in terror. After giving him everything I had
on me and healing him to full health he proceeded to throw up
in the snow. “Open the damn door your freaking moron!” He
ended up dying from the cold before I did. Ironically, while
mistrust and fear are supposed to add to the horror of the
game, the feature is so frustratingly distracting that you
forget you’re the one who’s supposed to be afraid.
Alone in the Dark is widely credited as the creator of the
“Survival Horror” genre. Although the game is incredibly dated
by today’s standards, The Thing could learn a lot from its
predecessor. The most import lesson being the concept of
being “Alone”. The primary elements that make a Survival Horror game
frightening are being alone and being trapped. The Thing does
trap you in a hostile environment, but you have
far too many
non-enemies to chum around with. The Thing attempts to up the
fear quotient by making you fear your friends, but
unfortunately the concept backfires.
The Thing’s obvious console roots add to it’s problems. The
controls are completely geared towards a console game pad.
Most of the game is viewed from the 3rd person. Aiming is
automatic, unless you hold down the free look key. Free look
puts you into a 1st person perspective letting you aim much
more accurately, but you can’t move while in free look mode. I
don’t know about you but when I’m being attacked by an alien
mutant, I usually want to be running and firing at the same
time. Being a multiplatform game also means that you can only
save at certain “tape recorder” points scattered throughout
the game. Of course this leads to the old "Play
for 15 Minutes-Die-Repeat Endlessly" style of game play, which is every
PC Gamers version of Dante’s Hell.
Is there anything good about the game? Actually, the graphics
and sound are both excellent. Blowing snow and limited vision
make you feel as if you’re truly in an arctic wasteland. All
of the human characters have a unique look and the Things
themselves, while not very scary, do look impressively
mutated. However, these pluses only serve to make you wish that the
rest of the game was more playable.
You have to give kudos to Black Label Games for at least
getting the isolated environment right and for trying to
duplicate the mistrust and suspicion from the film. But, unfortunately, the
game would’ve been much more horrifying and therefore
successful, if it had been a solitary endeavor. If you’re
looking for a virtual scare this Halloween season,
you’re better off replaying
Resident Evil on your PS One
or finding an old copy of the original
Alone in the Dark for
the PC.
Gamer42 Rating:
2.5 out of 5 Planets
Talk about
The Thing>> |
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Buy It @
amazon.com |
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