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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.

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.

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.

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.".

Very disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: October 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Sierra, let me give you some advice. I should not have to tell one of the biggest gaming houses in the world this. In the year 2002 when I play a game I damn well expect to be able to look up and down. I didn't mind with DOOM cos that was in 93, but not in 2002. This flaw really irritated me so badly I can't be bothered completing the game. You cant look at or examine anything on the floor or above you - its really annoying. Secondly, the weapons are just awful. That assault rifle I've got just seems to fire all over the place. It doesn't even seem to fire in a straight line and I can't aim the damn thing. And the flame thrower, what is that all about? Why why why does it aim at the ground and set the floor on fire in front of you instead of allowing you to fire it across the room from a distance? The only way you can set anything on fire, except for yourself, is by going right up to it. Finally, I found this game totally failed to capture the building suspense of the magnificent film. Every time you meet someone they say something like "hey, I don't trust you, you're one of those things" blah blah blah. They even copied some of the well known phrases word for word from the film which I didn't like, couldn't they have had the imagination to think up something new. It's 20 years since that superb film and this game tries to borrow on its name but doesn't even come close to doing it justice. Don't waste your money. If you do don't say I didn't warn you.

I Don't think it's as bad as people say.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: November 06, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Ok. A lot of people say its horrible. They can't look, its boring, whatever. The point is, this game was not made to be the best in gameplay. It was to be the most suspenseful and chilling game yet. If you liked Half-Life for its puzzles, plot, and sense of mystery, You'll probably like this game. As for lokking around, If you simply aim you can lokk well enough, and besides, You can take in enough with a few glances, which may be all you have time for with the possibility of ambush at anytime. I read a review in which someone complained about the fact that the rifle didn't shoot straight. Let me put it this way, The first time I see someone accuratly fire a rifle in one hand at moving targets in a life or death situation with his heart throbbing,I'll pay that guy $20. If you find it boring, There's nothing to be done, Some people like sensless slaughter found in deathmatches while others like games with an actual plot.

I'd rather get a root canal than play this game again.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: July 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The "3 B's"... Boring, buggy, and bstupid. Clumsy and difficult to control. For instance, there's an awful depiction of space. You can be standing about what looks like 3 feet away from a fire, and your dummy of a character will start yelping, "oww", "ugh" (just burn, you idiot...). Your stupid character can't jump or look down or up. It's like he's a kneeless, neckless monkey with a gun or something. One of the most important weapons in your limited arsenal, the flamethrower, only shoots the floor 3 feet in front of you. You literally have to run at the alien and torch it at close range, but of course you'll just start yelping again cuz you're too close to the fire.

The honest truth is that I didn't even finish the game. I got to the last boss and every time I was suppose to kill him, I would get some error and get thrown out of the game. I called support several times, downloaded two patches, with no avail. But, you know what? I don't even care. I forced myself to get that far in the first place.

It doesn't even have cool cheats...

This is the worst 3rd person shooter I've ever played. A word of advice if you still want to pick it up though. Hold on to the medical packs. The big Things are really really hard to kill so you'll need as many of them as possible.

The Thing PC Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: December 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I would get to the last boss and fill him full of holes,But then I would get a runtime error message and my screen would go black forever. The game would lockup so I couldn't see the final results with the ending movie so I didn't know if I beat the game or not. I thought my computer was messed up and told my Dad. We went to the website and found some patches listed. With the 1.1 patch installed I was able to end the game and see the result. With the 1.2 patch the mouse look option let me look around alot better and control the flamethrower and not get myself cooked by shooting the ground all the time. It's a really cool game without patches though. This made it better. I just didnt like not knowing if I finished or not. The patches were the answer. Now it's perfect. Get the patches from the Website thethinggames.com like I did and no excuses.

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...

Not for the easily bored or scared.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'll admit, this game is somewhat hard and frustrating at times, but beleive me, if you put effort into the game, it will pay off with some good old fashioned gory entertainment. I got the game yesterday and it is true, I did need to get help on the internet when I got stuck. However there are abundant resources for whenever your in a jam. The reason I did not give this game 5 stars is because it had a flaw in it. The sound gets all messed up about 3 levels in and I did some research on it and you have to download a patch to fix it. Regardless, the patch worked fine. Beware though, this is a very very violent game. I would say that it is even more violent than Max Payne. There are some scenes in it that made me want to throw up along with my comrades. The old lady at Target was right to ask me if I was 18.

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