An average shooter that delivers nothing to the genre
You play as Blake, captain of an rescue team and your sent off to investigate a research facility in Antarctica and find out what happened to the communication with the scientist. Landing with his face completely uncovered in the freezing artic snow, our hero and his team soon discovers man-eating aliens spreading infections in the entire facility.
Unlike many other third-person shooters, Blake cannot walk over a small plank, nor can he jump. The camera and character are both controlled by the L3 button, which may take a bit to get used to. You'll be given your first full unit (which is rare) composed of a Medic, engineer, and a soldier. The medic will heal you when you get close to him, the engineer can open specific fuse boxes. Sadly, the soldiers don't have any special needs for you to advance the game, thus there are very limited soldiers in the entire game.
You'll start off in the artic snow and you'll see a blue meter below. This blue meter signals your cold tolerance and as it depletes down to zero, you'll begin losing health. You'll need to find shelter, any shelter of some sort whether its indoor, a blown apart shed, anything that you can physically step on that's not snow will restore your blue meter. Aside from your given team, you'll soon be dropped off on your own and find new teammates to advance the chapter. However, most of them won't automatically trust you though. You'll have to give them a weapon and ammos, or heal them to gain their trust. Once they trust you, you can order them around to fight alongside you. Being the special forces that they are, you'll grow tired of how obnoxious the AI is. Instead of taking cover, they'll run headfirst into battle and get slaughtered. Even worst, they'll frequently run right in front of your fire and get killed.
The enemies you'll face are primarily small head crabs that act like spiders. From beginning to end, your going to kill at least a 1000 of them. There's even a mission where you'll constantly take out head crabs for 15-20 minutes straight, definitely not a fun or creepy experience and even worst the whole game feels like a slaughter fest. Game play generally revolves around Blake fixing fuse boxes and finding the engineer, who is your walking keycard. He'll open up a new passage and most likely transform after hes done his fair share. Once you reach a checkpoint, you've completed the chapter and teleported to a new area. It sounds simple? that's because it really is. Due to the countless bugs and terrible game play mechanics, you'll die a lot.
Lets start with the weapons. You'll be collecting sniper rifles, shotguns, machine guns, pistols, flamethrower, and a grenade launcher. Occasionally when you fire a weapon, your weapon tends to randomly stop firing. In the heat of battle when a huge walker is scouring your direction, losing your fire-power due to a design flaw will end lead you to many frustrations and deaths. Even worst, the guns don't technically fire the way they should. Machineguns spray all over the room and the shotgun can deal max damage at 2oo meters away. The grenade also has terrible physics. It'll bounce off a wall and literally dribble on the ground like a basketball. Even worst, if you were to tap the grenade, Blake will incinerate himself.
The worst offender of all terrible weapons is the most used one in The Thing. If you watched the movie, you probably already know that The Thing can only be killed with a Flamethrower. Using the flamethrower is a lot more difficult than it should be. When you use the flamethrower, your character will light the ground on front of him in fire. Now the problem with this is that your immobilizing yourself when you do that. What's the point of incinerating the ground when The Thing is going to back out and wait? When you use the flamethrower in stairways you will literally bar-be-que yourself. Even if you did hit The Thing with it, they'll just charge into you and take a chunk of your health away. Exactly how the flamethrower ignites a flame in snow is a mystery, but rooms that suddenly catch fire out of nowhere? It's hard to take this game serious when the developers rely too much on explosions and fire. And to add, exploding monitors aren't scary, and near the end, the game throws loads of avoidable explosions at you that are completely unavoidable, cheap scares and cheap game over don't make a blockbuster title.
Puzzles are non-existent, most of which requires you to blow fuel barrels that impede your path. There are moments where you'll need to fetch an item, thanks to the developer, these items are usually stored in the very same hall or in very unusual places. I question why someone stocks shotgun shells in rooftops and blood-test kits in dog kennels. Speaking of Blood-test kits, these are never effectual. You can test a troop for infections, even if he's been tested negative, he'll still transform either ways. Outside the menu, interaction with your troops is nonexistent. The most you can do is give them ammo or health. They'll occasional say a few things like "I NEED A WEAPON!", "HOLD ON YOU PANSY!". Tough words for someone who pukes at the sight of a dead body and pee themselves.
The enemy AI don't fare better themselves. Soldiers you battle will run up to you and crouch. If you fire at them, the first thing they'll almost always do is run left, run right, and high-tail it out of there for reinforcement. They range from stupid to borderline disabled. When they do attack, their gunfire will almost always hit you no matter the distance or weapon. Can you imagine losing half your health from a shotgun fired 2oo meters across the artic snow?
From the intro video to the actual game play, the graphics are mediocre at best. Character models lack polish and detail. The enemies lack variety, and there's nothing really scary about them. The environments are generic box shaped rooms with nothing that stands out. Now I've played many low-budget horror titles before, some of which like Kuon and Cold Fear manage to have a creepy atmosphere, a creepy background theme, and some nice graphics. The Thing looks and sounds weak. There's even a sound bug during a boss fight, and some cut scenes require you to exit and re-exit the very same room. It feels heavily scripted and it restricts player's creativity.
Though I battled the terrible bugs and gameplay nuisance, I still can't recommend this game. There's way too much frustrations and broken game mechanics to recommend a rental or a purchase. Categorizing this as a horror or a third-person shooter is an insult to the genre, it fails at both attempts and even worst, soils John Carpenter's name. We've all seen it done before, but better. The Thing is inconsistent and bugged to death, do yourself a favor and pick up the movie instead.