Games I Finally Finished: The Thing

Release Date: 2002
Metacritic Score: 77/100

As shadows lengthen, the longer nights draw in, and shuddering families prepare to cower as the ghosts of their ancestors haunt the night (that is, we get close to Halloween), I generally try to sneak in a few plays of horror games on the ol' desktop PC. Since I'd just finished XCOM, some might think this rather unnecessary, but a tradition is a tradition. I could have gone back and finally finished fixing that stupid lift in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but I chose another course - the PC game of John Carpenter's The Thing.

Released a decade ago to reasonable hype and middling but not terrible reviews, The Thing is something of an oddity. Though essentially an FPS, it tried to work in issues of paranoia and squad-based trustworthiness to create a first-person horror game - a genre now common as muck, but then barely existent. I received it as a treasured gift, enjoyed it on my (then already antiquated) PC, but never got even half way through it. It wasn't that I didn't like it, it was more that other things were receiving more immediate attention, load times were slow on my doddering machine, and it just wasn't quite compelling enough. I just never got round to picking it up again.

This year was to be different. I was going to fulfill the honourable obligations of the gift-receiver. I was finally going to finish this fucker.

For those unfamiliar with the game (probably most people), The Thing is set immediately after the events of the film. You arrive as part of the mission by the US to find out what happened at the recently-deceased McMurdo outpost. The game is based over several Antarctic and internal levels, with reasonably open levels but linear structure (you can frequently explore wide areas, but must gain access in a fixed sequence). Beyond being a bog-standard FPS, it brought in the following innovations to justify its license and claim to be a horror game:

1. Crazy-ass alien monsters (though only actually a handful of different types) as well as humans who decide they'd rather you were dead
2. The need to finish of the bigger monsters by BURNING THEM WITH FIRE
3. Squad members must be convinced you are trustworthy in order to join you, and may panic and go crazy if faced with too much gory gibberish. However, while they remain sane, they do a pretty good job providing covering fire, medical care, and repairing structure damage.
4. Those same squad members will occasionally explode into an alien monster. This means they were infected.

 How well do these work in practice? Well, (1) is perfectly acceptable, though the monsters look distinctly underwhelming compared to modern creations. Can't blame them for that however. (2) is acceptable as well - while it does little more than add inconvenience (by forcing you to switch between weapons), the fact that setting fire to things creates a risk for you means that it constantly forces you to adjust to the environment. So, a bit repetitive, but maintains a certain amount of challenge.

The real problems are (3) and (4). Read those two again. Can you see how they might come into conflict? Squad members you persuade over to your side can (and there's at least an even chance will) turn on you later. You can perform blood tests to find out who's human and who's a naughty little ET, but the game gives you no reason to do so - while still human, they are an asset, so why would you force them to switch sides prematurely? And since no squad member stays around that long (if they don't transmogrify or die, a level end condition will separate them), you never develop any empathy for them.

Other than this, there's not a lot to say about the gameplay - lots of jump-scares, creepy messages left around the place, the occasional environmental puzzle, and a mid-way bait-and-switch where the military presence turns against you. Any of that sound familiar? Yup, this game is pretty much a Half-Life clone with a Thing theme tacked on and some interesting but not-quite-functional squad management.

Is it worth a play? If you are a big fan of The Thing (as I am), then probably yes. It's not bad. If you like the Half-Life series and its pretenders, then this isn't a great addition to that stable, but it's not bad. Otherwise, probably don't bother.
Am I glad I finally finished it? Yes, absolutely. It has been lying around, waiting for completion, for a decade. It needed doing. And it wasn't at all a terrible game. I just wish they'd learned lessons and put out a strong sequel.