Games That Matter ~ PC ~ The Thing

The Thing

The classic John Carpenter movie, âThe Thing,â was terrifying beyond belief. The special effects and animatronics were amazing for its time, and the dark atmosphere that Carpenter created made you jump out of your seat whenever something appeared onscreen. Especially good was the atmosphere of mistrust that was present not only through the actors, but was also instilled into the audience by the magnificent direction. All of these aspects are faithfully recreated, making for a magnificently terrifying game, which you will be scared to play, even outside during bright sunlight.

GRAPHICS:
One of the best aspects of the thing is the low system requirements, making it possible to turn up the graphics to maximum detail even on low end systems, allowing for a truly terrifying experience, no matter what your set up at home is. (The recommended is a 400 MHz Processor, 64 MB Ram, 8 MB 3D Accelerator.) These maximum details allow for realistic lighting, which makes environments appear utterly terrifying and realistic, bringing âThe Thingâ to life like no other survival horror game before it, save Resident Evil for the GameCube. The body and facial animations are all top notch, but especially attention grasping is the effect from the Flamethrower. This animation easily rivals anything that Unreal II brought to the table in terms of kerosene weapons, even enabling the characters to run around and react realistically as they are burning to the ground.

Camera angles also play a significant role, oftentimes placed at dramatic angles, making dynamic shots, such as an alien approaching a man while in the cafeteria during the opening cinematic especially frightening. âSecurity cameraesqueâ shots are also employed, giving you a feeling of helplessness and fear.

Sadly, at some spots, the engine, written solely for the game, and published in July, is starting to show its age, oftentimes leading to jagged edges on the aliens at spots like the arms and face. Overall, however, the graphics still hold up with all of the best survivor horror games, especially those found on the next generation consoles today.
SCORE: 9.5/10

SOUND:
Missing from the game is musical accompaniment. This makes the player subject to ever single whipping of wing against banging shutters, or the clanking of metal when something falls to the floor. Roars from the aliens, as well as the screeches when they die, are also extremely faithful to the movie, making the game believable instead of merely laughable, like the first Resident Evil on the Playstation. Similar to a Hitchcock movie, the lack of soundtrack enhances the experience, making the player jump every time a sharp or even slight sound is heard.
The sound itself is presented in Ogg Vorbis, a relatively new and underused sound codec, which allows for high bit rate, realistic sound, at low space requirements. This presented a problem in Version 1.0 however, due to the fact that codec compatibility was not fully worked out with a lot of NVIDIA cards, making the sound skip during the cinemas, and forcing you to replay a section, simply so you could tell what went on. This problem, however, has been addressed in the later patches and now works beautifully, letting you experience all of the horror that is âThe Thing, in terms of sound.
SCORE: 8.0/10

GAMEPLAY & CONTROL:
âThe Thingâ introduces an especially interesting new game play technique entitled âThe Fear & Trust System.â This system causes all of your squad members to become more and more suspicious of you whenever you perform a peculiar action, which could eventually cause them to go insane and open fire on your squad. Since no one knows if you or the others are infected with Thing bacteria, which would eventually cause them to turn into an alien menace, the only way to regain your squad membersâ trust is to supply them with ammunition and produce blood test results, which show that you are not âThe Thing.â Terrible thing (no pun intended) is though, you yourself do not know whether your own squad members are infected or not, making it necessary for you to continuously observe their actions as well, and open fire on them if you believe that they are in fact infected. Beware, however, because if you are wrong, or have not provided enough information to the rest of your squad that the member which you killed was actually an alien menace, the your teammates will open fire open you, causing you to either reload your game, or kill all of your remaining âfriends,â and progress through the game alone.
This system is solely menu based, making you see their fear on a little bar at the side of the screen. Of course, if your teammates are fearful however, you will also be able to see it in their actions, leading you to make split second decisions of life and death.

The controls themselves are standard first/third person shooter fare, utilizing the W, A, S, and D keys to move, and the mouse to turn and shoot, making sure that the experience will not only be easy to control, but can also be accurately controlled, which leads to less deaths while jumping from platform to platform.
SCORE: 10/10

CONCLUSION:
The problem with survival horror games is that once you have completed the game, which in this case takes approximately 10 to 12 hours, the novelty and terror has worn off, since you now know where everything is. Like in many other games of the type, âThe Thingâ has attempted to counter this by adding harder difficulty modes that place many more aliens in new locations, but unless you are completely enamored by such games, there is no real reason to go back a second time.

All in all though, the game is extremely fun, especially the first time, well worth the $29.99 at EBGames that it costs. Pick this one up without delay, for a frighteningly good time that will keep you at the edge of your seat.

OVERALL SCORE:
First Time: 9.5/10 Repeats: 7.0/10