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When I first saw that The Thing was shipping
something this month, the first idea that popped in my head was, "Cool! Time to
go smashing stuff!" Then I looked at the box cover, and realized that it was
something else entirely. It's not the Thing from the Fantastic Four, but instead
is a video game based off of the 1981 horror film, John Carpenter's The Thing.
While I'd never heard of the movie before the game (come on, I was like, 5.) it
was playing on the Sci-Fi Channel today and I figured if it was good enough for
the revered Sci-Fi Channel, I might as well give the game a look.
If you
followed the movie (and some people really, really follow the movie...check out
Outpost 31) you'd know that "The
Thing" is an alien creature. It crash landed on Earth a long time ago, and hit
Antarctica. What it really wants to do is take over the planet by assimilating
everything it can, but seeing as how it lives in Antarctica, all it mostly does
is stay frozen, like an Evil Popsicle. (You know...the Lemon ones.) So, what
happens is a Norwegian exploration group finds the alien's ship, and ends up
thawing The Thing out. It promptly eats and assimilates most of them.
In the
movie, Kurt Russell and crew try and clean up Norway's mistake, and that's where
you come in...just a bit after the events of the movie take place. You haven't
heard anything from the guys at Outpost 31 for a while, so you're dispatched to
find out what's up. You land to find their radio tower down, and once you take
an initial once over, you go looking for the members of Alpha team, who haven't
made any type of radio contact. So, that being said, if you're not into survival
horror, this probably isn't for you. The game is mainly done reasonably well in
third person. Exploring and stuff is done pretty well, and there are a lot of
little in-game camera tricks to play with your head. (The "stretchy hallway"
effect.) A big part of the game, just like in the movie, is trying to figure out
which of your team members are team members, and which ones are just waiting to
eat you. Since nobody can tell the difference just by looking at them, nobody
trusts anybody. Including you. Your teammates will turn on you in a heartbeat if
they suspect that you're an alien.
Doing things like taking a blood test in
front of them will allay their fears, and giving them a weapon so that they can
cap you if you're an alien also will calm them down. Your teammates will also
start to go cuckoo if they seen one too many things they can't handle. A
decapitated body or a blood stained hallway and they'll curl up into a little
ball on the floor. If they happen to be holding a weapon, they'll start shooting
wildly...at anything that moves. These are all interesting little tweaks to the
standard game that make the game fun, unfortunately, they're mostly negated,
since there are scripted events that will cause your teammates to suddenly
become infected, despite having no alien contact, and despite having been tested
seconds earlier. I mean, hell, you might as well just shoot everyone, then.
Granted, every once in a while, you have to have an Engineer character around,
but for the most part, executing everyone would just solve a lot of your
problems.
Another real annoyance I have with this game is that you can't jump.
What the heck's up with that? I realize that you're wearing a lot of equipment,
and it's really cold outside, but come on... Finally, my biggest gripe is with
the controls. Fortunately there isn't any vomit inducing head bob like there is
in Battlefield 1942, and like there is in Jedi Knight II.
 But since the game operates in 3rd person, and
doesn't give you a cursor when you're using important weapons like the
flamethrower, you can't aim. This totally sucks. I waste so much ammo trying to
shoot things that I would normally be hitting. Sure you can switch into
first-person mode, but that's a bit useless because you can't MOVE while you're
in that mode. If I wanted to be a turret, I'd play BeachHead 2000.
This brings up an important question. If I can
see the target I want to aim the flamethrower at, and if there is auto-aim in
the game...then why is my character so stupid that he's busy setting his shoes
on fire unless I crouch? I thought I'd be able to overcome the control issues
with the game to still get the full enjoyment of the game, but sadly, this does
not appear to be the case anymore. Early on in the game, I was doing a good job,
keeping my teammates alive, and carefully fighting the battle
strategically...getting overlapping fields of fire, using combined arms...all
that good stuff. But then scripted events killed off my teammates, and I can't
use my strategic advantages anymore. Once I hit a boss it's all helter skelter...the
game starts arbitrarily switching view modes for me, and the days when I used to
have bullets to shoot off are now just a fond memory.
So, as it turns out, I
have to recommend against buying this game unless you've got a serious
attachment to the film. The game does do a good job to stay accurate with the
film, it just doesn't do a good job incorporating the film into a really good
game. If you could play this multiplayer...trying to figure out who "The Thing"
was...this would probably be a smash hit. As it is...I think it'll probably have
to settle for being nothing more than a cult classic, especially considering how
buggy the game is. Look on the board and check out the unhappy patchers. I had a
problem with mind where dialogue just suddenly cut out, and I missed a chunk of
the story.
So, Vivendi, looks like it's been a bad month for you guys...only
Warcraft III to look upon as a high note...everything else hasn't been doing so
hot.
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