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Intro
Before John Carpenter lost his mind and found a way to smear crap on film
(re: Vampires), he managed to churn out some fantastic movies. Aside from Assault
on Precinct 13, The Fog, Halloween, and a slew of others, he also directed a re-make
of a 1950's horror classic called, The Thing From Outer Space. The Thing is based
on a tale of scientists in the Antarctic encountering an alien life form that
lives within the human body and eventually takes it over. Starring the incomparable
Kurt Russell, The Thing is a thoroughly enjoyable movie and this latest offering
from Black Label Games is looking to match its movie counterpart with intense
action, excessive gore, and pant-wetting frights.
Gameplay:
6/10
The Thing features the blueprint of a survival-horror classic.
You already have built-in name recognition, a fan base, and some big names behind
it (re: Konami, Vivendi, etc.), so you would think that this would be a champ
from the get-go. Well, unfortunately, I did not find that to be the case as The
Thing just wasn't all that scary, which definitely takes a lot away from the
game. While there certainly were some heart-pounding moments, I found that to
be more from the lackluster controls and trying to not burn my own feet rather
than the gruesome half-mutated human that was closing in on me.
The
biggest selling point for the title is the much touted trust system. As the main
character, you control a small band of initial troops, and some stragglers later
on. The problem is, since The Thing can be anything or anyone, the people
whom you meet throughout your investigation tend to not trust you so much and
they will refuse to follow or help you; the solution - give them a weapon. Now,
I know in the game world this makes sense, but when you think about being stuck
in the Antarctic and there's an alien that can infect anyone and there's a person
who is already agitated, do you really want to give them a weapon? There are methods
of seeing if the person is an alien, but they aren't too keen on letting you poke
them right after you meet them. Giving weapons and ammunition is also helpful
to calm someone down after they see something particularly scary so that they
do not uncontrollably urinate and/or vomit. Throughout the mission there will
be soldiers, medics, and engineers who will join your troupe, though they all
seem to be affected similarly by what they see and all have specific tasks that
make managing them fairly easy. Luckily,
your fellow troops are fairly competent and will hold off incoming aliens or will
heal other soldiers on their own. It would have been nice if they could have gathered
their own ammo as getting it and rationing it out yourself can be a bit of a chore,
but I understand how this was done to ensure that the player had enough as well.
While the troops are generally decent, they do have a tendency to have some annoying
mannerisms. All of them had a nasty tendency to not follow me as ordered, or would
lag so far behind that they were jumped by aliens and killed - and when one dies,
your game ends, which can become a bit frustrating. Another annoying element was
that friendly-fire is indeed present and your buddies tend to not pay attention
to their firearms as they will let their shotguns and machineguns rip whether
you're in the way or not, and since aiming is such a pain on the player's part,
it's quite often that they are near the enemies and in the line of friendly-fire. The
team feature is an interesting aspect, but it didn't really live up to its potential
as it is much more shallow than one would suspect. Leaving that as a nice, if
short-lived, distraction, I would say that the real problem I had throughout The
Thing was that, as stated, it just wasn't very scary. The game's pacing wasn't
bad, but the objectives tended to be simply finding and fixing fuse boxes and
getting to teammates and radios; while none of this was poorly executed, it did
get really old after a while. (Spoiler - skip line to not read) Since all of your
teammates succumb to the alien lifeform, the gameplay follows a pattern after
a while: give them ammo, they do their duties for a few levels, you kill them
once they mutate, repeat. Although the monsters looked rather cool and could have
offered a huge scare, the tension and atmosphere just weren't there. Given, the
outside portions were fairly tense with the snow storms giving a feeling of isolation,
and having your temperature drop - and eventually your health - the longer you
were in the snow gave a sense of urgency and dread. However, once inside, it was
all a generic feeling with just wandering into a room, finding someone scared,
proving yourself, and killing a lot of little monsters and a few big ones. The
creature AI helped to make up for these problems, as seeing a monster flee from
a fire and run upstairs to ambush the pursuer was cool, though it just didn't
have the Resident Evil dog-through-the-window factor going for it. The
Thing wasn't necessarily a bad title; it just felt like it failed to live
up to its potential. It's an adventure I'm sure many will enjoy as it seems to
have been ported fairly well across all platforms, but I just didn't find myself
engrossed in the experience and, in the end, a horror game that isn't scary really
isn't that entertaining. Give it a rental; who knows, the medic might not be the
only person wetting themselves.
Graphics: 7.5/10
The structures were fairly basic, but the character
models looked great, as did the monsters. There were a few unimaginative-looking
baddies that were used excessively, but, for the most part, they looked the part
of a human mutating to an otherworldly life form ready to deliver some pain. The
lighting was also well done as I found it to give the characters a realistic thick
look, making it look like a character wasn't just a person in a jacket, but rather
someone in multiple layers of clothes. I also really enjoyed the outdoors as the
snowstorm was pulled off effectively and small details like snow kicking up after
being stepped in was a nice touch. Sound:
8/10
The voice-overs were average, for the most part. The sound effects weren't
bad, and it definitely sounded great when there were a few squad members blasting
into a room full of monsters, and all that could be heard were rounds being dispensed
and aliens squealing in pain. The howling wind and background music worked well
to get the player to feel like they were in perilous danger in an area outside
of the range of help. In all, a pretty good job was done here. Control:
4.5/10
I really had a problem with the aiming system. While not being able
to jump was highly annoying, seeing as how there were ten to fifteen minute detours
to go through a building when you could have easily hopped over some crates instead,
I found the aiming to be teeth-grindingly irritating. On the very basic level
they're serviceable, but by and far, it's the weakest part of the game. The three
difficulty settings are partly judged on the auto-aiming system, with easy being
the widest and hard being the narrowest, but none of them made the game very enjoyable,
at least in terms of combat. Whenever a monster would come into a room, the target
would auto-lock on and slowly turn red to indicate how deadly the shot would be,
but the problem was that the aliens were generally so fast that they could outmaneuver
the lock and most encounters ended up with me railing off a ton of rounds with
a few eventually hitting when the alien got close enough. The larger beasts require
fire to kill, but fire was my worst enemy. Since fire can also harm you, you'll
need to be extremely careful with it, and while that sounds like common sense,
the default range of fire would shoot the fire right at my feet and harm me instead.
The best way to get around hurting yourself would be to switch to a first-person
view to shoot at the aliens, but this only allows for side-stepping and not for
going forward to pursue or a quick backpedal to escape, both of which make its
use a last-stand, kill-or-be-killed scenario. Overall:
6.5/10
The Thing, while by no means a bad game, just isn't that discernable
when put up against other titles in the genre. While it is more polished than
most, the unique features seem to fall flat and, in doing so, fail to give the
title the originality and longevity that it needs. There were some enjoyable moments,
but overall, I just didn't find myself having much fun. But hell, where else can
you see a grown man run circles around a pool of his own vomit? [
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