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.
