- Joined
- Jun 7, 2002
- Location
- Silicon Valley
Review: The Thing (pc) -upnow-
Greeting ladies (for the few of you out there...bless you!) and gentlemen (if you can really call any of us guys on this forum that =P ). After posting a short mention of my intentions to buy this game, a fellow forummer (thanx Wommalong) half suggested I write a review. "By the Gods on Olympus, what the hell!?!" I thought. I enjoy writing, gaming, and sharing... and what better way. I'm going to rate the game on a 1-10 scale (some explainations will be below). Let me know what you all think.
Some of you gamers out there might remember a little old movie back in 1982 by John Carpenter simply called "The Thing". Personally I don't. I remember seeing it on the shelves at Blockbuster time and time again but never gave it any thought. The cover looked like some retard in a fuzzy snow jacket who had a bad case of phospholuminesence, until recently. When the game was announced by Black Lable I was slightly intrigued (especially since the horror/survial game Call of Cthulu still doesn't have a publisher.. COMEON MAN...GET IT TOGETHER!!!). I read more and more about the game, and with my heightened interest, I finally decided to check out the movie on DVD. Personally as far as an action/suspense/horror(?) movie goes I thoroughly enjoyed it, and watching it got my psyched to get the game. If you plan on playing this game, I highly recommend watching the movie first.
The first thing you'll notice from the game (if you watch the movie) is that the two flow together like a Jack and Coke and both can ever lead to vomitting (more on that below). The layout is right from the movie, the locations, historical references to parts/characters in the movie. It's done very nicely, so nice that I thought I'd mention it twice: The layout is right from the movie, the locations, historical references to parts/characters in the movie. It's done very nicely. The game takes place roughly 10 years after the events in the movie. Our star is Capt. Blake of some military operation from somewhere in the US. This dude is calm, collected and a bad ***. Much like Kurt Russle's character from the movie. It follows a 3rd person format and heavy enphasis on squads. You'll have a medic (hint, they heal you), an engineer (yep, they fix stuff you can't), and a soldier (to quote the game, "I help make sh** dead") Yes, he says the "S" word. It's a mature title for sure (YES!!) with blood, guts (literally), and language our parents always told us was "bad", we'd go to hell for, and sometimes led to a mouth full of Zest (You're not fully clean unless you're fu**in Zest fully clean!!). For me these alone were looking to be a selling point by themselves (I'm a sucker for gore, profanity and sex... which also applies to some of my tastes in games =P ). Your squad is essential to your success, and there untimely death (unfortunately) results in a quick: "Your medic/engineer/soldier died, game over", but not always. Some of you may think this is remanicent of the abysmal Diakatana (see review by "Jer") . On the contrary it's not. Keeping your men alive is very easy and if properly equiped they can hold their own in combat. Now many games with teammates have problems; thankfully the squad AI is smart enough not to run in front of you when you're wailing on a Thing with a shotgun. I've only had a member die twice, and that was early on. Also, dont try shooting your teammates outside of combat, they really don't like it. Given their already paranoid state they will take you down and take you down fast!
While on the subject of squads, you'll be controlling your compadres via a very simple, yet effective/intuitive interface, so no worries there. The game advertises the "trust/fear" aspect of the game, and honestly the squad members don't seem like static blips, the respond to the situation and enviroment depending on their "mental state". Simple enough, if your teammates (who "think" individually) are to afraid they'll go through 3 phases (each of which is reversable) (a) fear: they get skittish and don't funtion as well in battle (b) cracking up: they won't listen to you (this takes a while for this to happen.... it happened to me once and I had to chase my medic around the building to give him an adrenaline shot to calm him down). and (c) "insane-o" (that's my term. This is by far my favorite, and I've had it happen once) : They totally lose it here. what happens? well... my medic (again... he seems to flake the easiest) just couldn't take all the disembowled bodies room after room after room so... he takes his head clean off with his sidearm. Honestly it was great, "I can't take this any more!!" *BLAM!!*, and down his headless body goes. Oddly enough the game continued... Very cool. Your teammates will flake out, cuss, complain, puke, pee their pants. Be warey, the closer they get to cracking up the more of a liability they become.
Trust works a bit different. Basically if they think you're infected they won't do jack sh** for you. You can win it over through preformin various tasks, healing them, giving them weapons/ammo. It works quite nicely. They'll also trust you less if you take any ammo or weapons away from them or accidentaly shoot them during a fight.
Now that you know more about the game, here's what I thought of it.
Graphics wise it looks very nice. Everything is detailed nicely and the animations are very smooth, nothing choppy at all. The facial animations/skins look great. Mouths move, expressions change it's all good.
Sound is also nice. Nothing fantastic, but good. The music score is mood setting and situation appropriate and sound effects are also nice. My complaint would be that most of the sounds effects especially for the weapons will be a dead ringer for anyone who's played Max Payne. No biggie though.
On that note, the controls feel very similar. More of a pro and an observation then a con. The menu system is very easy to learn and dealing with your squad couldn't be any easier. You'll find very few differences between the console and PC title. Playing it on the PC, you'll be able to "feel" the console design.
The gameplay was pretty solid, nothing out of the ordinary and my only gripe is the first boss character I came across. It took me a while (8-15 loads I forget which) to figure out how to beat that blasted "Thing" (get it.. thing?....nevermind... come on laugh damnit). I think it was overly difficult, but in heind sight, maybe it was meant to be that way and it was my pigeon-holed thinking that made it take so many tries before I beat the scum-bag.
All around I think the game is very good. It supplies a nice "paranoid" feel, and you're never quite sure if someone you meet is on your side or infected (so you'll have to do a blood test on them). The paranoia that was present in the movie is preserved nicely. Not perfectly, but it's done very very good and has left me with a fun game. If $49.99 is a bit expensive for you, then you might want to wait till the price drops a bit, you can get it as a present, or get your sugar daddy/mommy to buy you a copy.
Graphics: Very nice for modern 3rd person adventure/survival games.
Sound: Nothing spectacualr but enough of a mood setter.
Gameplay: Control is excellent, it's simple, effective, and intuitive. The camera never gets stuck and is all around nicely placed.
Difficulty: Seasoned veterans will find it a good enough challenge.
Story: (to me one of the most important aspects) It's driven with a very good plot; however there are some places where the flow is slightly interupted.
Overall score: 8: Considered a very fun game to play, and I'll recommend it to anyone who likes the action/survival genre. A few flaws which couldn't be ignored kept it from being a fantastic game.
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scoring:
01: Abysmal. You can't try to make a game this bad, but somehow it happened
05: Average. Nothing special at all. It was ok to play, but you'd never miss anything if you didn't, maybe good as a free download or a $5 purchase.
10: Ausgezeichnet. That's german for "Excellent". In other words it's the best there is, and you will never get a better gaming experience. The developers did absolutely everything right. Every other game will be a pale shadow compared to this digitally rendered masterpiece! For many... your life will now be complete.
Greeting ladies (for the few of you out there...bless you!) and gentlemen (if you can really call any of us guys on this forum that =P ). After posting a short mention of my intentions to buy this game, a fellow forummer (thanx Wommalong) half suggested I write a review. "By the Gods on Olympus, what the hell!?!" I thought. I enjoy writing, gaming, and sharing... and what better way. I'm going to rate the game on a 1-10 scale (some explainations will be below). Let me know what you all think.
Some of you gamers out there might remember a little old movie back in 1982 by John Carpenter simply called "The Thing". Personally I don't. I remember seeing it on the shelves at Blockbuster time and time again but never gave it any thought. The cover looked like some retard in a fuzzy snow jacket who had a bad case of phospholuminesence, until recently. When the game was announced by Black Lable I was slightly intrigued (especially since the horror/survial game Call of Cthulu still doesn't have a publisher.. COMEON MAN...GET IT TOGETHER!!!). I read more and more about the game, and with my heightened interest, I finally decided to check out the movie on DVD. Personally as far as an action/suspense/horror(?) movie goes I thoroughly enjoyed it, and watching it got my psyched to get the game. If you plan on playing this game, I highly recommend watching the movie first.
The first thing you'll notice from the game (if you watch the movie) is that the two flow together like a Jack and Coke and both can ever lead to vomitting (more on that below). The layout is right from the movie, the locations, historical references to parts/characters in the movie. It's done very nicely, so nice that I thought I'd mention it twice: The layout is right from the movie, the locations, historical references to parts/characters in the movie. It's done very nicely. The game takes place roughly 10 years after the events in the movie. Our star is Capt. Blake of some military operation from somewhere in the US. This dude is calm, collected and a bad ***. Much like Kurt Russle's character from the movie. It follows a 3rd person format and heavy enphasis on squads. You'll have a medic (hint, they heal you), an engineer (yep, they fix stuff you can't), and a soldier (to quote the game, "I help make sh** dead") Yes, he says the "S" word. It's a mature title for sure (YES!!) with blood, guts (literally), and language our parents always told us was "bad", we'd go to hell for, and sometimes led to a mouth full of Zest (You're not fully clean unless you're fu**in Zest fully clean!!). For me these alone were looking to be a selling point by themselves (I'm a sucker for gore, profanity and sex... which also applies to some of my tastes in games =P ). Your squad is essential to your success, and there untimely death (unfortunately) results in a quick: "Your medic/engineer/soldier died, game over", but not always. Some of you may think this is remanicent of the abysmal Diakatana (see review by "Jer") . On the contrary it's not. Keeping your men alive is very easy and if properly equiped they can hold their own in combat. Now many games with teammates have problems; thankfully the squad AI is smart enough not to run in front of you when you're wailing on a Thing with a shotgun. I've only had a member die twice, and that was early on. Also, dont try shooting your teammates outside of combat, they really don't like it. Given their already paranoid state they will take you down and take you down fast!
While on the subject of squads, you'll be controlling your compadres via a very simple, yet effective/intuitive interface, so no worries there. The game advertises the "trust/fear" aspect of the game, and honestly the squad members don't seem like static blips, the respond to the situation and enviroment depending on their "mental state". Simple enough, if your teammates (who "think" individually) are to afraid they'll go through 3 phases (each of which is reversable) (a) fear: they get skittish and don't funtion as well in battle (b) cracking up: they won't listen to you (this takes a while for this to happen.... it happened to me once and I had to chase my medic around the building to give him an adrenaline shot to calm him down). and (c) "insane-o" (that's my term. This is by far my favorite, and I've had it happen once) : They totally lose it here. what happens? well... my medic (again... he seems to flake the easiest) just couldn't take all the disembowled bodies room after room after room so... he takes his head clean off with his sidearm. Honestly it was great, "I can't take this any more!!" *BLAM!!*, and down his headless body goes. Oddly enough the game continued... Very cool. Your teammates will flake out, cuss, complain, puke, pee their pants. Be warey, the closer they get to cracking up the more of a liability they become.
Trust works a bit different. Basically if they think you're infected they won't do jack sh** for you. You can win it over through preformin various tasks, healing them, giving them weapons/ammo. It works quite nicely. They'll also trust you less if you take any ammo or weapons away from them or accidentaly shoot them during a fight.
Now that you know more about the game, here's what I thought of it.
Graphics wise it looks very nice. Everything is detailed nicely and the animations are very smooth, nothing choppy at all. The facial animations/skins look great. Mouths move, expressions change it's all good.
Sound is also nice. Nothing fantastic, but good. The music score is mood setting and situation appropriate and sound effects are also nice. My complaint would be that most of the sounds effects especially for the weapons will be a dead ringer for anyone who's played Max Payne. No biggie though.
On that note, the controls feel very similar. More of a pro and an observation then a con. The menu system is very easy to learn and dealing with your squad couldn't be any easier. You'll find very few differences between the console and PC title. Playing it on the PC, you'll be able to "feel" the console design.
The gameplay was pretty solid, nothing out of the ordinary and my only gripe is the first boss character I came across. It took me a while (8-15 loads I forget which) to figure out how to beat that blasted "Thing" (get it.. thing?....nevermind... come on laugh damnit). I think it was overly difficult, but in heind sight, maybe it was meant to be that way and it was my pigeon-holed thinking that made it take so many tries before I beat the scum-bag.
All around I think the game is very good. It supplies a nice "paranoid" feel, and you're never quite sure if someone you meet is on your side or infected (so you'll have to do a blood test on them). The paranoia that was present in the movie is preserved nicely. Not perfectly, but it's done very very good and has left me with a fun game. If $49.99 is a bit expensive for you, then you might want to wait till the price drops a bit, you can get it as a present, or get your sugar daddy/mommy to buy you a copy.
Graphics: Very nice for modern 3rd person adventure/survival games.
Sound: Nothing spectacualr but enough of a mood setter.
Gameplay: Control is excellent, it's simple, effective, and intuitive. The camera never gets stuck and is all around nicely placed.
Difficulty: Seasoned veterans will find it a good enough challenge.
Story: (to me one of the most important aspects) It's driven with a very good plot; however there are some places where the flow is slightly interupted.
Overall score: 8: Considered a very fun game to play, and I'll recommend it to anyone who likes the action/survival genre. A few flaws which couldn't be ignored kept it from being a fantastic game.
----------------------
scoring:
01: Abysmal. You can't try to make a game this bad, but somehow it happened
05: Average. Nothing special at all. It was ok to play, but you'd never miss anything if you didn't, maybe good as a free download or a $5 purchase.
10: Ausgezeichnet. That's german for "Excellent". In other words it's the best there is, and you will never get a better gaming experience. The developers did absolutely everything right. Every other game will be a pale shadow compared to this digitally rendered masterpiece! For many... your life will now be complete.
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