The Thing Review

|Tap-Repeatedly|FFC Archives

           

The Thing

Review by Old RoosterOctober 2002

“Who Goes There?”

One of the classic novellas of science-fiction literature was penned in 1938 by John Campbell, Jr. The fairly innocuous-sounding title, Who Goes There, led stunned readers into one of the most horrifying and original scares they had ever experienced. Set in the Antarctic, the original tale centers on the ability of the awakened alien “Thing” to change form, shape-shift, and assume new identities. The tension, then, revolves as much around wondering who can be trusted as it does directly encountering and trying to destroy the “monster.”

In 1950, the premise of Who Goes There was brought to the screen, in chilling black and white, as The Thing from Another Planet. Although departing from the original story as regards the “alien chameleon” nature of the Thing, the film still made a great impact on this writer during my freshman year in high school, likely beginning my hair loss.

Then, in 1982, the master director John Carpenter created an instant classic—simply entitled The Thing. Returning to Campbell’s original concept of trust versus suspicion, Carpenter wove a gripping story of survival, desperation, paranoia, freezing cold, and sheer terror! Prior to playing the wonderful game, you are “required” to rent or buy, then view, this memorable video. Let me share some salient quotes from the film that help set the tone for the game—a game that, by the way, follows up the 1982 film’s narrative and theme very closely and is set four months after the film concludes:

  • “We’re a thousand miles from nowhere, man, and it’s gonna get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better!”
  • “I don’t know what’s in there [with the dogs], but it’s weird and pissed off!”
  • “It’s an organism that imitates life forms, and imitates them perfectly.”
  • “How long were you alone with that dog?”
  • “I don’t know who to trust; watch Clark, watch him close.”
  • “Are you gonna listen to Gary? He could be one of those Things, and it doesn’t want to show itself.”
  • “How do we know who’s human?”
  • “Nobody trusts anybody now, and we’re all very tired.”
  • “It just wants to go to sleep in the cold till a rescue team finds and reawakens it.”
  • “We’ll just wait here for a little while and see what happens.”

Where the Movie Ends, Your Mission Begins

Three years ago, Computer Artworks created one of my favorite non-bestselling games, Evolva. Using gorgeous graphics and a very inventive, even a bit weird, storyline, the developer introduced a team of four Genohunters who were designed to “genetically adapt to deal with whatever they were confronted with.” Instantly absorbing genetic materials from its foe, the Genohunter can mutate its abilities and be sent into combat situations too hazardous for humans. Sound like a familiar theme? Indeed, likely without overtly realizing it, Computer Artworks was almost creating a set of four “Things” as heroes! What better studio, then, to accept the challenge and responsibility of developing a video game sequel to Carpenter’s classic film?

“The Base Is Gone, Colonel!” —Blake

To the whoosh of helicopter blades fading into the black Antarctic night, you (Blake) and your team of three are deposited just outside the station, which has been strangely quiet for the past four months.  The weather is deteriorating, and it’s unlikely you can count on support, let alone rescue, for the next few days. Of course, with your teammate specialists including an ace soldier, a sophisticated engineer, and an invaluable medic, you feel quite confident to deal with whatever “arises,” so to speak!

From the fine paper manual to the interface and in-game field manual, The Thing smoothly introduces you to one of the most tension-producing games I have ever experienced—a most worthy followup to the film. The first few of the 19 levels include helpful tutorial pop-ups.  What initially appears to be rather daunting as regards team management quickly becomes integrated into your gameplay.

While initially glancing about after landing and before entering a facility, you soon notice a blue health bar moving downward due to the 40-below conditions. This circumstance continues until entering the relative warmth of housing and is an overall factor pervading the entire game. You may temporarily evade the monsters, perform a task, or find an item by going outside, but you can’t stay out for long.

The Thing is primarily a third-person action/shooter/adventure game, with terrific and unique twists! You’ll have short-term and overall mission statements throughout the levels; inventory items, weapons and other materials to find; doors to open; computers to access; blood testing; and a ton of shooting, grenade-hurling, and flame-throwing to do! On the face of it, the game seems like a Resident Evil clone. Far from it! Let’s take a look at what separates The Thing from the rest of the pack.

“How Do We Know Who’s Human?”

Recall that line from the film? This anxiety-producing theme has been beautifully carried over to the game, and it has to do with your squad mates and others you encounter in your perusal of the base.

The particular specialties of your squad are required at various points throughout the game. Although you, as Blake, are a “jack of all trades,” there will be times you’ll need the Engineer to open an advanced junction box, the Medic to back the team up in a nasty firefight, the Soldier to use his expert marksmanship in unusual situations. Although you only play as Blake, the leader, simple “follow, stay, go to” orders can be given to the team members as individuals or as a group, and you do have the responsibility of disbursing found weapons, ammunition, medical supplies, etc.  to appropriate members. Which brings us to paranoia.

You may recall that our alien monster, both in whole and little parts, is uniquely adept at taking human form as a disguise. If a team member, or another, has been left alone, you can’t be sure whether or not he has been “occupied.” Indeed, sometimes your team isn’t especially sure of you! Therefore, interface icons include an element completely unique to any game—Trust and Fear factors. Although there are some rough edges, this component of the game adds to the overall tension and anxiety. From direct comments to actual icon indications, your squad mates indicate degrees of trust and fear that range from mild concern to outright losing it—including vomiting! As leader, you need to keep them together (remember, you need that Engineer to open certain locks, etc.) and also keep them from turning against you. You’ll be wasted going it alone—I know, I tried! Sometimes giving a wary mate, who’s looking about anxiously, extra ammunition, a weapon, or a healing potion will bring him around; while on other occasions you may need to perform a blood test on him, or yourself, to prove “humanity.”  Be careful, though! If the teammate is inhabited, giving a weapon may lead to it being turned on you, and giving a blood test can lead to all Hell breaking loose!

Antarctic Atmosphere

The Thing is beautifully rendered, both in terms of graphics and sound. It works on a fairly wide range of systems; I found flawless performance on my PC. From the blinding snow conditions outside to the shadowy building interiors, environments were convincingly portrayed. The sense of desolation is very real. Human models are not clones, and they show a good deal of individualization. The monster, in its various forms, is hideously realistic.

Sound and music are among the best I’ve experienced for this kind of game. Voice acting is outstanding. Conversations and expressions of fear are realistic and of movie quality. Weapon effects vary and are as expected. Music is reminiscent of the film soundtrack and perfectly helps set the overall tone of suspense and impending terror.

A Touch of Consolitis

I suppose we have to get used to multiplatform productions and, relatedly, the limitations imposed on PC gaming equipment. My only real gripe about The Thing relates to this “disorder.”  The save-game system is of the limited, Resident Evil-type variety, requiring sometimes frequent repeats of sections in order to reach the save tape recorder. Mouse control is very limited, allowing free look but not movement while in that mode. Only the horizontal axis is available for view, although the vertical is not often needed. However, I must be getting a bit immune to Consolitis, since this condition did not seriously impact my enjoyment of the game. It might, though, for others.

Warning—Expectoration, Evisceration and Dismemberment!

This is not a game to play with your grandchildren! The Thing is mature-rated, and appropriately so. From vomiting to severed heads, to the creature breaking out of or into humans, to the bloody shooting and flame throwing, to the language, The Thing is a game for peculiar, strong-stomached, horror-loving adults only.

Man Is the Warmest Place to Hide

The Thing is the finest game sequel to a movie ever created!  On its own, it’s a compelling, tension-building, heart-pounding tale of “haunted science station” exploration. There’s not only a monster to be dealt with and a narrative and mystery to resolve (with a satisfying conclusion), but also a need to constantly be aware of the mental state of your associates, on whom you depend.  In relation to the film, the story line continues without a hitch, and there are subtle references to Carpenter’s work scattered throughout.  Indeed, the Director himself has given his blessing to the “faithfulness” of the game to his masterwork. Both as a work on its own and in relation to the film, the design and execution of The Thing earns a Gold Star from this reviewer.

So see the film, take a little break, then turn down the lights, put on headphones, and prepare yourself for the atmosphere, anticipation, apprehension, anxiety and action of The Thing. If you’re of my generation, you may want to have an extra set of Depends and the blood pressure kit nearby!

Games of Which the Thing Reminds Me

  • Aliens vs. Predator 1 and 2—Although The Thing is more subtle and rich in story, the premise of an alien that inhabits humans, as well as the related gory killing, is very evident.
  • Project Eden and Evolva—Both games involve team speciality and control; although, unlike The Thing, they do allow transferring the player to different characters.
  • Resident Evil and its successors—Ridding a mansion, spaceship, or Antarctic station of foul monsters is a theme of many survival/horror games. However, although there are some Consolitis control components in The Thing, this game is at a wholly different level. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Computer Artworks Publisher: Vivendi Universal Games Release Date: August 2002

Available for: PlayStation 2Windows Xbox

Four Fat Chicks Links

Player Feedback

Screenshots

Click to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge

System Requirements

PIII 500 (PIII 700 recommended) 64 MB RAM (128 MB recommended) 16 MB video card (32 MB recommended)

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

Pages

Top

Category Archives

Top

Blog Posts

Top

16 Responses to Screw the Internet

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    God damn, Scout, I’d never heard of this Lanier fellow, but that’s pretty profound.

    Information is not a manufacturable item… as you said, we are making less and less. This is either indicative of a larger-scale societal transformation, or a bad thing. I’m afraid I’m inclined to assumed the latter.

    Thanks!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Steerpike, that was exactly the argument Lanier was having with callers on the BBC. Lanier was all fatalistic about society’s drop in real productivity while his opponents claimed that this was a huge transformation and that he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all. If you notice, the web address of that first Lanier link is well.com. I mean, that is old! The Well?

    Lanier’s thoughts were pretty much echoed by David Simon, one of the creators of The Wire. Here he speaks with Bill Moyers about the fate of paid journalism in the face of the web.

  • Spike

    I’ve read many criticisms of Facebook et. al.  I’ve also read contradictions of those criticisms, namely, that social sites are making people more connected than ever.  I think that that connectedness is an illusion.

    For several months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 my daughter badgered me to join FB.  I could connect with her and some of her friends that I know as well as renew old acquaintances with some of her friend’s mothers.  I finally signed up so she’d quit the badgering. I used to check in every day to see what daughter and friends were saying because if I didn’t she’d ask if I saw her post, or a friend’s post. 

    What I’ve learned is this:

    1.  “Karen Likes John’s photo (or post)” IS NOT communication.

    2.  The reason I lost contact with some of these “friends” in the first place is that we no longer had anything in common.

    3.  I am bombarded with so many ads in so many places that I can do without more.  My policy is to never click on ads on FB or on many other sites. 

    4.  While FB’s original mission was connectedness/communication, I think it has become “Let’s make as much money from these fools as we can.”  “Wanna have gobs of fun playing a free game on FB?”  That game is gonna cost ya big, folks. 

    5.  Social sites are just more places where your personal info can be stolen.  There’s enough risk out there as it is.  Additional risk is not providing any valuable payoff for me.

    6.  Why do I want to “friend” a certain handbag manufacturer?  Why do I want to take a quiz that tells me what my personality is?  FB content providers tell you up front that if you click the link to take their quiz (goes for other types of content as well) you are giving them permission to access your profile info.  That’s ok.  I’ll also give you my SSN, bank account number and the key to my front door.  Not.

    7.  Don’t even get me started on the number of people who start an account in a pet’s name, and even have the pets making friends and posting.

    “…he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all.”

    No, it’s just that most of us get to the age when we demand a bit of wheat with our chaff.

    At 38 my daughter is older than the average demographic of social sites although I know that that demographic is skewing up.  She seems to be cooling on FB.  Some of her 221 friends are as well.  Many of them do want some wheat.  When more cooling has taken place I will unjoin.

    I wonder, though, what new fad will come along when FB, Twitter and others run their course?  MySpace, anyone?

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    My favorite line from the BBC interview was when Lanier was comparing MySpace and Facebook. He admitted that MySpace had some eye gougingly bad pages but said that he liked the “strangeness” of personalities that you get with it. With Facebook, he claimed that it was like looking at a tax form. A boring, watered down, bland presentation of people.

    I joined Facebook almost exactly a year ago. Apart from sparking up a new friendship with a very dear buddy, I’ve gotten about zero back from it. I sort of read with bemusement the activities of people I hardly know and could care less about. And when you consider how much information the devs harvest there…it’s scary. Lanier claims that the information is so far worthless to the investors and that the whole thing has become a sort useless ritual serving no purpose. He claimed that Google’s ads on the other hand will probably turn out to be the greatest advertising model ever created. He also thinks Google should stop before it’s too late but says they probably won’t. Just a glance at the side bar reveals about 4 ads for advertising agencies. Heh.

  • lokimotive

    Has anybody read Anti-Oedipus? I’m slogging my way through it (the third attempt I believe), and Deleuze and Gauttari’s ideas seem relevant to this in a way that I’m not sure I can articulate. This probably has something to do with a conversation I was eavesdropping on that, coincidentally, mentioned a lot of Deleuze and Gauttari’s theories. Someone was talking about another theorist (whose name I didn’t catch) who was defending “Generation Y” essentially. The argument went that Generation Y is an example of a “de-Oedipalized” cultural group (that’s Anti-Oedipus jargon, just stay with me). Apparently this meant that they made connections in a different manner than other generations, the idea of bricollage was brought up and things were generally mired in a lot of reasons why I don’t have my Masters in English. What I got from it was this Generation Y shoots out connections everywhere and attempts to make up a whole idea with them as opposed to relying on predefined pathways. In Deleuze and Guattari’s language: the schizo as opposed to Oedipus. In language that probably makes sense: Peer to Peer as opposed to client-server.

    So, of course, no one’s really right. I’m skeptical of the idea that Generation Y (full disclosure: I’m 29 so I’m part of that group) has enacted some sort of paradigm shift in how to operate in social systems, but facebook has changed how I connect with people. Then again, it’s not like I don’t value face to face communication.

    The future is somewhere in between. I’m really not cynical enough to believe that we are at the end times of civilized society because of Web 2.0. Instead society will change and stay the same because that’s what it does. Facebook is not the future; it’s probably a rung up the ladder though.

  • kaythomas

    To me, Facebook and Twitter are 0’s. They are not worth my time.  I do not care what someone I know or don’t know did a half hour ago or will do next.  I have met up with people on facebook I had lost contact with.  But, in truth, the reason I had lost contact was I was not that interested in staying in contact.

    I think for many people the Facebook/Twitter world is great.  For me it has nothing to offer. 
    kay

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Tap has an automated device that twits… tweets… whatever whenever someone posts a new article. Just in case it draws some visitors.

    To be honest, though, I’m on Kay’s side of the fence, I don’t understand Twitter and I don’t understand why it’s so popular. I barely care what I’m doing from moment to moment, why should anyone else?

    I don’t get Facebook either, though I’m a member to keep track of all the girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day in high school.

  • Lewis B

    Tweets are great for giving me snippets of news.  If I like what I’ve read in the short paragraph tweets give, then I will visit the main page for that tweet. (Very good for following world news, favourite columnists, etc.)

    However, reading tweets from people such as “Just woke up, Madonna is giving me a massage while I shave my nuts” is not my idea of a good read.

  • Toger

    I use tweets the same way Lewis does. Of the people/things I follow, if the tweet is interesting I’ll follow the link to read the entire article. I follow fairly intelligent people, so I’m not subjected to the idiocy of “Just brushed my teeth while sitting on toilet”.

  • Gregg B

    @loki: I’m afraid I’ve not heard of them. I’m a couple of years below you so that puts me in the same Generation Y as well. I read through a few of those links Scout posted as well as a few more on Lanier’s new book “You Are Not a Gadget” and it took me a fair while to get to the crux of what he is saying and he has a lot to say, most of which I find very confusing.

    As a graphic designer the whole “everything is becoming advertising” thing has been bothering me for years. The incessant barrage of advertising is like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul, which sort of makes me a hypocrite. After all the years of tuning my art and design skillz my creative abilities have amounted to nothing more than crafting pretty ads that sell things. Non of it speaks any truth or has any sort of ‘beauty’; it’s just stone cold mechanical capitalism. Granted there are ads out there that are beautiful, clever and visionary but the front line stuff is as dull as it gets. I’m sure this isn’t strictly what he’s getting at but it’s definitely something that irks me in relation to Scout’s last remark.

    Anyway, I remember Twitter just exploding in what seemed like the space of a week and I still can’t fathom the allure of it aside from providing a direct stream of consciousness from famous folk to their ravenous fans. I wish I’d thought of it to be honest. I can see the creators sitting around a table staring at Facebook and then saying “I know! We make a website that’s just about status updates! You can even update them with your mobile phone!”.

    With regards to Twitter news snippets, unless it’s for a phone, I don’t see the point because RSS feeds do a great job. At present too great; I simply can’t keep up with my subscriptions. There’s too much information on this super highway.

  • Jen

    Twitter is officially the dumbest thing ever.

    That said, it looks like I will have to be the official “tweeter” for my day job before too long. I can’t wait! (roll eyes)

  • xtal

    I’m with everyone else here. I’m glad to say I’ve never signed up for Facebook; I fear that if I ever had I would have long ago died from loss of brain cells due to reading moronic status updates. It’s as Kay said: ninety-five per cent of people with whom you lose contact are probably no longer in your life because you have nothing left in common. And echoing Steerpike’s comment, me eating toast and jam on a Sunday morning watching Fawlty Towers is not interesting, not to me. Why the hell would anyone else give a shit?

    Twitter I signed up for about a year ago, not really understanding what it was. I now understand it…but don’t care to use it often. I have made 58 tweets over that year. I suspect for some that is a daily or weekly average. It’s just Facebook status updates without all the drunken photographs. I admit it can be mildly useful for following, say, a news site. Usually when I hop on my twitter (once every two weeks??) it reminds me that I should read The Onion more often. That’s about it.

    Let’s see… looking at the actual humans I follow, um… Wil Wheaton is happy that the LA Kings have won 9 games in a row, my sister-in-law thought our dinner tonight was “delicious,” and Kevin Smith’s batteries are recharged … or something.

    Wow, my life is already getting better!

    p.s.  <—– Gen Y'er (can we call ourselves that?) and proud that when I Google my own name a real estate company pops up.

  • Fraser

    Twitter is exactly as useless as the person who’s writing it. If someone is telling you boring shit over Twitter, it’s the person wasting your time, not the delivery channel.

    MySpace is the same, but it seems more intrinsically garbage because for some reason almost everyone who used it was an intellectual embryo with a fetish for unreadable hyperneon text on top of garish uninteresting photos. Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.

    That’s the argument against the whole of this post: the internet isn’t evil, but the people who use it might be. It’s people who make business models successful; people who make money flow to advertisers instead of artists, by buying into the advertising.

    This has been a pretty didactic post, so let me compensate by saying VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOOO!!!

  • Gregg B

    Good point about not blaming the delivery channel Fraser. I seem to recall Lanier saying that he preferred the personality that MySpace has over Facebook despite its Craptastic Pages of Illegibility. I’m trying to think of something intelligent to follow that up with but my brain is failing me at the moment, so…

    VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOO!!!

  • Jason Venter

    Fraser, I really loved your following comment:

    “Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.”

    I think that may just be one of the most hilariously true comments I’ve read in a comments area on any video game web site ever.  That sounds overly dramatic, I know, but I actually mean it.  Kudos to you!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Yeah but don’t you miss all the ugliness of MySpace? All those hideous pages at least had personality or what Lanier called the “strangeness of the person” to them.

    I actually don’t agree with a lot of what Lanier says esp “the hive mind must die” stuff. But I do think he is right about the spirit shriveling blandness of Facebook.

    I also suspect that Twitter is going to be around for a while. It will be more and more influential. People are simply not as willing to ingest huge amounts of information in the form of pages of text anymore. The delivery systems that succeed will be those that can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. Most days we want “glimpses” or “snapshots” not total immersion. Lewis, Toger and Fraser are correct in that you get out of it what you decide to follow.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.