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A New Level of Fear!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is one seriously good game. The AI and special lighting effects along with excellent audio create a spine-chilling atmosphere. You can trust no one in this game. Everyone is a potential target, a potential "Thing". Go out and buy it!!!

A shocking, chilling game!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: August 07, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I was lucky enough to come across an early beta of this game, and I'm glad I did. The Thing game, by Computer Artworks (makers of the acclaimed organic-action game 'Evolva') was made for consoles, and you can tell (no mouselook, you 'lock on' to targets, etc.) but that doesn't mean it doesn't control well on the PC.

Be forewarned before you play. This game contains all manners of highly explicit gore, entrails; disemboweled, decapitate, AMPUTED corpses lie everywhere around the Antarctic stronghold which you explore. This game is also, I think, the second game in history of gaming to have the characters saying F-words, scatalogical terms, religious exlamations, etc. A bold step.

The graphics are very well done, and the game runs fluidly on my Celeron 800 MHZ processor, 256 megs of RAM, and a GeForce 3 Ti200 video card. The game, obviously, is an action game, you command a small squad of people. Anyone can be a Thing, and you must blood-test your "friends" to see if they are who they say they are. If they do turn into fully grown Things, and you don't have a flamethrower on hand (the only weapon that can fully kill a full-grown Thing), you're screwed. If you protect your teammates, it will minimize their chances of turning into a Thing, but in some circumstances it is inevitable.

As I said before, this game is dripping in blood, gore and swears so this isn't for the young'ns :). But, if you're older than 17 and have nerves of steel, have fun! ...wetting yourself.

A fresh take on shooters

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 17 / 17
Date: August 09, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The Thing attempts to spruce up the shooter genre with some novel elements and largely succeeds. One of the most obvious is the squad-based aspect of many missions, requiring you to keep your engineer alive so he can fix a vital control panel while the soldier provides extra firepower and the medic dishes out healing kits. This works a lot better than in previous attempts, though the squad only really comes into play later on in the game, as almost all the members you recruit early on have a habit of turning into Things... This is further enhanced by the need to keep your team trusting you and stop them from freaking out, though this is usually easily accomplished.

The game is based on the aftermath of John Carpenter's excellent 1982 film The Thing, in which an alien entity takes over an Antarctic base by infecting people with a virus that causes them slowly to mutate in bloodthirsty monsters. The game puts you int he persona of J.P. Blake, a marine sent to discover what happened. After a few levels of chasing around in the snow, you discover you aren't the only one sent in after the aliens...

The graphics look like a spruced-up version of Half-Life, which isn't bad, though it's not quite as pretty as games based on the Quake III engine. The control interface unfortunately betrays the game's multi-platform target, displaying the clunkiness normally found on console games. Still, they've managed to avoid the worst excesses of console kludging, and it is fairly usable. The action itself is mostly third-person with auto-aiming (adjustable), though you can switch to a static first-person view.

Another console hang-over is the inability to save anywhere - you're restricted to save stations that are sprinkled around the levels. When entering a new level you often need to run around for 10-15 minutes of game-time before you find a save point, and while occasionally irritating, it does add to the tension of the game.

Overall, an excellent new shooter, well worth your money.

the best game ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 14
Date: August 24, 2002
Author: Amazon User

to who it may concern when i saw this game i said i got to have it because it looks good and fun thats why i said i want to buy it i love the way it was made and its looks good as soon AS i get it iam going to play until i bet the game haha

Great game but the easy level sure isn't

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: September 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

the graphics and story line are excellent also the action is fast past,but my complaints are as follows:(maybe some one from
Sierra might read this?)

1 easy level is too hard(try getting into the armory!)
2 sequence is too long between save points-this is strange
because some save points are very short?
3laguage unsuitable for younger people,it doesn' really add
to the story line!
4sometimes switches between weapons seems to malfunction-I have
a new dell with top features and no problems with other programs
5 this is a very good game and avid gamers will no doubt be
able to get into the armory,but for the rest it will be a
frustrating experience-did they forget this was supposed to be
fun?

a licence off target

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: September 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

When I knew that a game from the Thing had to be released I was excited and eager to play it; also knew from some previews it had new features that made the game different from others. Now that I played I was disappointed: the graphics are top notch (wonderful storms) but all the rest is quite repetive and uninspired, the gameplay is the usual find the button and smash the monster/soldier. The movie was set in a little Antartic Base with few men fighting for survival, in the game we have everybody available from the Army and monsteropoly, a festival of people who help you and die little after, some become a monster because infected also if you checked and were sane few seconds before(the test kit is useless)! Also the thrust and fear method is relatively used because most of the time (and in the most difficult parts) you are alone; people are scripted persons at the right moment to help and go away.
Also the "Army wants kill you" is an usual clichè introduced firt in Half-Life and here repeated to make you kill more in the game.
In conclusion too many monsters and shoot-around; the thing was one, here we have the whole family. The only "things" similar to the movie are the snow and the title. If you like a normal shooter with little additions it is good entertainment but, please, forget about the movie and you'll have more chances to enjoy it.

awsome game this is

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: September 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The other day,which was 6 days ago I was watching the sci-fi channal and the commercials came on the first one was about sam adams new light beer which was pretty stupid then this commercial
came on right in the begining it said rated m for mature then shows these guys jumping out of a heliacopter and run to this base I thought at first it was another aliens game because guys are shooting spider like thing out the window and this big red alien running around and the guy trying to kill it with a flamethrower and the leg with blood all around it was pretty cool looking. but what suprised me that the name of the game was
"the thing." it tooked after my favorite movie way cool it contuies right after the movie its the thing 2, the game.
this was the kind of game i had to have. i have 10 computer games , red faction, predators vrs. aliens 2, and many more but this game is the best beats all of them.

Game has unresolved issues....

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: September 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The copy write of this program causes it not to run on all CD ROM drives... I have Samsung CD ROM SC-148 and it will not play.
Tech support stats "its a known problem with no resolution at this time."
Buy it and take chance it wont run even if you meet all system requirements...

Don't Waste Your Money (PC Version)

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 16 / 21
Date: September 07, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The Thing is marketed as an enhanced first person shooter by Black Label Games and promises "an awesome blend of action, evasion, trust, and fear". I picked it up because I am a huge fan of John Carpenter -- Rowdy Roddy Piper in "They Live" consistently makes my Sci-Fi top ten. Unfortunately, this game fails to deliver on this promise, and even worse, it fails to deliver on even the fundamentals of first person shooter games. Net/net: I find it difficult to believe that any serious gamer could recommend this title. Here's why you should spend your money elsewhere...
1) Hyper linear, childishly simple, mouse in a maze game progression
2) No jump function (this is made even more ridiculous by the programmers use of a fence that comes up to the main characters knees to draw game boundaries)
3) No look-up or look-down capabilities
4) VERY limited weapon selection -- the weapons that they do offer have truly uninspired affects
5) Unforgiveably inefficient user interface

The reason I gave it 2 starts instead of one is because the programmers have made a moderately successful attempt at enabling the gamer to manage a squad. But since everything else about the game is so tremendously [bad], the novelty of this wears off in five or ten minutes.

Sorry Mr. Carpenter, looks like you'll need to file this one alongside of "Escape from L.A.".

Sierra punishes its customers with bad game control

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 31 / 34
Date: September 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Yet ANOTHER game marred by a stupid control system. And it's tragedy here because The Thing has a lot going for it. The game borrows so heavily from Half-life that you'll swear you've played some of the scenarios before--but Half-life was so good I didn't mind. The Thing has some of the best AI I've seen for the characters you team up with. For the first time I found myself arming my team members better than myself because I could actually count on them to watch my back while I flipped switches. This trust builds great drama into the game because, at any time, these characters may wig out, turn into The Thing, and try to kill you, but until that point you're forced to depend on them. It's a powerful dynamic that gives you that "Who can I trust?" paranoia of John Carpenter's movie.

What kills this game is the INVISIBLE CERVICAL COLLAR the genius game programmers force you to wear as punishment for buying their game. Words cannot describe how stupid this is but I'll give it a try: Imagine any 3D shooter with standard mouse/keyboard controls. Now imagine disabling one axis of the mouse so that you cannot look up or down. Playing The Thing is like playing Half-Life with your neck vertabrae fused in place. WHY? Is this Sierra's sick joke upon its customers? Did they have a meeting where they said, "We have a great game here, now what STUPID, GLARING flaw can we shackle it with?"

The only way to look or aim up or down is to stop dead and go into "free look" mode. So the most natural movements, like backing away while aiming a flame thrower at an enemy's head, are impossible. Worse yet, the all-important flame weapons (necessary to finish off large "Thing Beasts") are permanently aimed at the ground 3 feet in front of you rather than outward (unless you go into "free look" mode). The result is an incredibly annoying tendency to set your own feet on fire, and I found myself fearing this more than the baddies. I cannot imagine how this game gets through even the most basic testing without people screaming about these flaws. This game wants to be so cool, (and I give it an extra star for trying) but in it's current form The Thing is an act of sadism of Sierra towards its customers.

And a futile plea to all game programmers from someone who shells out tons of money for your products: PLEASE put the "creativity" in the game and leave it out of the control system.

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