A piece of key art depicting the main characters of The Thing: Remastered
Nightdive Studios

John Carpenter’s The Thing is one of those great reappraisal stories—a movie reviled during its original release, only to be reevaluated years later as one of the single greatest horror movies ever made. It was the perfect powerhouse of horror, drawing scares not only from its gruesome gore effects but the general sense of unease and paranoia that surrounded its shapeshifting antagonist. Any time a member of the cast left the frame, their status as a friend or foe was immediately suspect. Nobody was safe: not even Keith David or Kurt Russell, whose fates are ominously left ambiguous after just about everyone else met their tragic demise.

Yet, despite the vivid lighting, the incredible practical effects, and the star-studded cast, The Thing didn’t really click at the time.

It makes 2002’s The Thing, a video game adaptation, such a bizarre release. Released a whopping four decades after the original film, The Thing was one of dozens upon dozens of tie-in games that released throughout the 2000s, joining a wave of mediocrity and a lack of innovation that served more as a marketing tool than anything else, sans a few exceptions. For every SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, there was a Charlie’s Angels or a Beverly Hills Cop.

Thankfully, The Thing doesn’t necessarily fit that mold. It wasn’t perfect, mind you. But it brought some interesting ideas to the table in a package that was not only successful at the time but even years beyond that. Sure, The Thing‘s popularity nowadays is modest compared to other niche horror titles, but it still managed to really capture the minds of players old and new alike despite its faults.

It’s likely this enduring popularity, along with the popularity of the original film, that spurred Nightdive Studios to give The Thing the remaster treatment. Originally teased at IGN Live back in June, The Thing: Remastered marks the studio’s latest revival project following their work on Killing Time: Resurrected, a masterclass in reviving an ancient game that would’ve otherwise been lost to time.

Did Nightdive revive this cult-favorite horror game, or is The Thing better left locked away in the freezing cold?

One Thing, Two Thing, Red Thing, Blue Thing

Blake approaching a downed helicopter in the snow in The Thing: Remastered
Nightdive Studios

Billed as a sequel to the 1982 film, The Thing picks up shortly after the film’s ending. The whipping winds and frozen air of the Antarctic have enveloped U.S. Outpost 31, with a pair of U.S. Special Forces teams being sent in to investigate the current goings-on. You are Captain J.F. Blake, the gruff leader of Bravo Team, as you venture into the outpost, unknowingly stumbling into an extraterrestrial mess that can’t be cleaned up.

After finding a message left behind by R.J. MacReady, as well as the remains of Childs, you’re left to destroy what remains of the outpost before attempting to meet up with Alpha Team. That’s the plan, at least. Something out there has different plans for you.

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The titular “thing” of The Thing is a fascinating menace, a creature whose grotesque brutality is hidden under a nefarious ruse. It’s a monster that can perfectly imitate organic manner—your beloved dog, your best friend, anything that lives and breathes just as you do. An errant glance away, the turn of a corner, the shutting of a door, anything that gives the beast time to strike also allows it to blend in. Should someone step out for a second, or even so much as lag behind for a few minutes, it means that they may not be who they say they are whenever they return. This paranoia and general sense of unease make the beast’s few reveals in the film all the more effective.

The game is the same way, albeit in a much more action-packed way. As Blake attempts to locate Alpha Team, he comes face to face with the numerous forms of the creature. Monstrous, fleshy amalgamations of limbs, torsos, and protruding bones are now running amok, leading Blake to stumble through industrial structures and snowy plains while fighting for his life. Things only become more complicated as the inklings of a conspiracy reveal themselves. Questionable leadership, operational sabotage, and even more bizarre discoveries under the ice force Blake to plunge himself deeper and deeper into the madness, lest he become a vessel for the very thing hunting him.

To be blunt, the story isn’t amazing. Sans a fun cameo from John Carpenter and some welcomed fan service, I never really took The Thing: Remastered seriously. Chalk it up to how the story develops or how the stiff voice acting undermines some serious moments, but it really doesn’t hook you in like the original film did. Admittedly, it’s an unfair comparison. This was a tie-in game from 2002, after all.

Nightdive did put plenty of effort into revamping the game’s visuals, at least. Updated character models and textures, reworked lighting (including a massive overhaul that makes the game’s outdoor sections more closely resemble the film), and a handful of additional graphics options really make everything pop. The fleshy monsters you fight never looked more disgusting, the comparatively sterile environments never shined as bright, and the game’s UI elements never felt as clear and consistent. It’s expected, but there’s a clear level of effort here to revamp the game’s presentation for modern standards. The only absence here that really took me by surprise is a lack of subtitles.

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The same can’t be said for the game’s sound. Or, rather, the lack of it. Musical stings are few and far between, and ambient sounds aren’t nearly as prominent as they should be. It’s not “scary” quiet, it’s “this is weird and it really feels like something should be playing here” quiet.

For example, if you’re running outdoors, you hear the wind breezing by, the crunch of snow, and maybe even a brief synth sting echoed from the original film. But most times, you just hear your own looped footsteps, with nothing else filling your ears outside of combat. Even boss battles and their accompanying reveals are given very little fanfare, and the things that do get some kind of audio cue or notable stinger either don’t deserve it or come and go in just a few seconds. It’s bizarre that the game’s sound was given such little attention compared to its visuals—if anything, it reminds me that I’m playing a game from 2002 more than anything else.

Fundamentally Flawed

Blake firing a grenade launcher into a horde of monsters in The Thing Remastered
Nightdive Studios

Speaking of which, there’s a lot to appreciate in what Nightdive did to revamp The Thing‘s gameplay. At the same time, you can also argue that they’re just putting some band-aids on a concept that was fundamentally flawed from its inception.

Here’s the main thing: The Thing is a third-person, squad-based shooter. You play as Blake, yes, but you can also carry around a handful of additional people who each have their own weapons and talents. They fall into three categories:

  • Medics heal you and other squadmates without needing a dedicated health pack.
  • Soldiers are proficient in combat, serving as an extra gun more than anything else.
  • Engineers can fix broken machinery needed to open doors and progress further into the game.

You’ll find a smattering of squadmates throughout, with their status as a potential monster being left in the dark. Interestingly, they don’t know if you’re a monster or not, either. This is where the “fear and trust” system comes into play, with the squad’s trust in Blake growing and shrinking throughout the game’s events. Some will be distrustful of you from the very beginning, outright refusing to tag along unless you hand them a gun or prove that you’re not a monster. Some will happily join your team, only to turn into a ferocious beast at the worst opportunity. Others may start to lose their mind as they’re exposed to horrifying scenarios, lowering their accuracy or just stopping dead in their tracks. It’s your job to keep these things in mind as you play, as being left without a squad puts you at a serious disadvantage.

On paper, it sounds fantastic.

The biggest thing that The Thing brought to the table was this fear and trust system. Much like in the movie, you can use a portable testing kit to test a person’s blood — or your own, if you need to inspire some trust in your squad—to verify whether or not they’re a real person. It’s a fun way to tie in an iconic moment from the source material into one of the game’s core mechanics.

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But consider this: in this squad-based game, where you’re at a marked disadvantage whenever you don’t have a full team, would you rather keep a potential thing-ified teammate on board to fire guns and heal you and do whatever else is universally beneficial to survive until they decide to attack you, or would you rather use a rare item to potentially remove them from your team immediately? And then have one less team member to help out? Mind you, a thing-ified teammate has no negatives—they’re only a threat once they drop their human disguise.

Do you see the issue here?

Granted, Nightdive did fix a huge gripe many had with the original game. At certain points, your squadmates would be forcibly turned into monsters despite you never letting them out of your sight, testing them, and keeping them safe. That’s gone. Now, your teammates may or may not turn at any point, and you can even potentially bring them into boss fights, should you be careful enough.

But it’s not even really all that important. Outside of one sequence I rushed through, it felt like Engineers were the only people you genuinely had to keep alive due to their ability to fix broken machines and circuitry. A locked door can sometimes be opened by Blake, but most times, you’ll have to ferry your Engineer over to do it for you. If they die, and there’s a locked door that has to be opened before you can progress, the game is over. Your other squadmates don’t even really fulfill their respective roles since a ton of balancing shakeups introduced in the remaster fundamentally change how you play the game.

A monstrous creature standing alone in The Thing: Remastered
Nightdive Studios

If you hand a squadmate a gun, they have near-perfect accuracy, rarely waste ammunition, rarely die on their own accord (unless you inadvertently blow their head off after they walk directly in front of you), and they can go toe-to-toe with just about anything that’s thrown their way. Health packs are numerous, as well as ammunition, flame thrower fuel, grenades, other useful items, and even save points.

Health packs, in particular, are available by the dozens, making the Medic’s role as a healer not even all that useful. Plus, now that everyone is just as effective with a rifle as they are with a pistol, the Soldier is now one of the worst guys to have in your squad by virtue of just not doing anything else. Even the magazine system from the original, wherein reloading a gun prematurely would waste any remaining ammunition left in its magazine, is gone in favor of something that’s a bit more convenient.

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It’s as if everything that made the original game substantially more challenging—if not a little frustrating—was significantly toned down. The only time I really felt some kind of unsettling tension was in the first few hours and a single section towards the end where you’re suddenly stripped of all your weapons and equipment. In this scenario, timing and positioning are key to avoid certain death, as your squadmates are quite literally the only thing that can propel you forward. Even the game’s weather mechanic, where standing outside too long in the freezing cold can kill you, never really gave me too much stress.

Convenience really is the biggest thing that’s driving this remaster of The Thing. The ability to reload a game after you die instead of returning to the title screen, a modernized aiming scheme, and multiple difficulty settings all make for a smoother playing experience at the expense of cutting away from an already shaky foundation. It’s not as if playing The Thing: Remastered is a miserable experience—it’s just that all these changes sand down all the thought-provoking moments you’d find in the original game as well as all the annoyances. Do you give a squadmate a full magazine, even though they might waste it? Do you use that health pack now since you’re far from a checkpoint? Should you keep using the shotgun even though you’re running low on ammo? I never really found myself making hard decisions like that.

To add to that: bugs. They’re here, and while they’re not ludicrous, some were pretty blatant. A common bug I’d find towards the final third of the game was my squadmates seemingly refusing to follow me despite me ordering them to do so. I’d have to physically shove them to where I needed them to go until, miraculously, they’d come alive and do what they’re supposed to do. A sequence involving a man about to be executed led to him being set on fire before a cutscene played. Inexplicably, long after the fire was put out, his “on fire” animation continued to play throughout the cutscene, with Blake’s mouth never moving to accompany his respective dialogue. Some objective progress markers don’t disappear as they should either—a sequence involving planting C4 in warehouses incorrectly counted two instead of four total since I had planted two units of C4 prior to opening all of the warehouse doors.

There’s also the issue of the game’s AI. When you’re fighting creatures, their animalistic scurrying feels appropriate. They don’t have the capacity for much else. When you’re fighting soldiers equipped with guns, and they’re blatantly running into their own trip mines, funneling into your sights one after another, or otherwise just tanking shots without really making an active effort to fight back, it kinda sours how dangerous they are. At least having to burn larger creatures to death after they take enough damage gave them a bit more depth compared to just shooting people until they fall over.

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Oh yes, without spoiling anything too major, humans with guns become a tangible threat alongside the titular beast. A lot of soldiers, actually. As in, way too many for this to even really be a horror game any more. Whatever interesting atmosphere and tension is established in the first third of the game goes to the wayside by the time the soldiers pop up. Creatures gradually fade away in lieu of gun battles and explosions and really obnoxious gun turrets until you reach a bombastic climax where . . . well, again, we won’t spoil it.

But this isn’t Nightdive’s fault. It was a game from 2002. For God’s sake, a Saliva song used to play during the game’s credits, something that has been replaced with a more appropriate synthesized track instead. Actually, why weren’t there more of those throughout the entire game?

The (Mostly) Definitive Edition

A soldier surrounded by gross monsters in a warehouse in The Thing: Remastered
Nightdive Studios

The Thing, more than anything else, is frustrating. It’s frustrating to see such an interesting idea not brought to its fullest potential. It’s frustrating to see some goodness here overshadowed by a core that just doesn’t play out as well as it should. It’s frustrating to see how technical and design limitations at the time really kept the original game from becoming a bona fide horror classic.

But that isn’t really Nightdive’s fault. For what it’s worth, The Thing: Remastered presents an opportunity to enjoy a substantial version of the original game that turns it into a standard shooter instead of an occasionally frustrating mix of horror and resource management. The fact that you can even play The Thing: Remastered at all is a net positive. If you were ever curious about the original game but didn’t want to hunt down physical copies or fiddle with dubious downloads, this is the perfect means to do so. You don’t have to hunt down a PlayStation 2 or Xbox if you don’t have access to a PC. The inclusion of cut content and other fine touches—complete with the assistance of developers from Computer Artworks, the original team behind The Thing—also makes for fun additions.

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While I don’t necessarily think this is Nightdive’s best work, it’s certainly one of their most out-of-pocket releases. If they can bring something like The Thing back from licensing hell, let alone the kind of legal grey areas in which movie tie-ins increasingly exist, there’s some hope that they can bring other fascinating games back from the grave in some capacity.

Should you ultimately play The Thing: Remastered? For $30? Maybe? It’s a bit of a hard sell when you consider what the indie horror scene alone has to offer, let alone when compared to Nightdive’s other remasters. Still, if you’re a huge fan of The Thing, or you can appreciate what The Thing: Remastered has to offer, you might get a kick out of what’s here. For me, seeing what could’ve been versus what’s actually there was a big deal-breaker—if you can enjoy something like this in isolation of that, then it’s well worth a shot.

The Thing: Remastered is currently available on PlayStation, GOG, Steam, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch.

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

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