Nightdive, you carried out good. The Thing: Remastered is an ultra-sharp and commendably playable replace to a recreation that historical past will keep in mind as ‘truly a reasonably good decide at Choices if you actually simply popped in to get some Revels however bought embarrassed when the until staffer stated “is that the whole lot?” in a tone that may have been impartial however equally may have been a damning indictment of your character’.
I’m being barely facetious right here, in fact. History truly remembers Computer Artworks’s 2002 shooty horror recreation for a way extremely formidable and conceptually creative its proto-sus social squad system was. In homage to the body-snatching alien paranoia of Carpenter’s 1982 horror traditional, The Thing duties you with not simply assembling and directing a squad, however retaining them from breaking down or turning on you – in worry you is perhaps internet hosting the titular molecular stowaway.
I’m completely happy for you, historical past, however I’ve performed the sport now, and I say this: probably the most exceptional characteristic of The Thing, looking back, is the way it predicted all the Dead Space trilogy in miniature. And by ‘in miniature’ I imply with overwhelming weight given to the half the place somebody determined to throw in trendy navy components and bollocks the entire thing up.
Again: Nightdive have delivered a improbable remake. Every occasion of a 2002 sound engineer pitching down a Nokia recording of their cat growling is crisp and distinct, and each face popping out an armpit hanging from a stalk is vivid. Controls and menus really feel trendy and intuitive, and the one change I made to the default settings was to activate ‘old skool aiming’. I had one recurring crash when an engineer saved dying on one stage, in any other case, issues went as easy because the nostril of a Swedish forest cat. Sorry. Norwegian.
The query, then, is whether or not you’ll truly need to play it, which is form of like asking if you wish to spend your weekend at a museum. Full of dwell crabs coated in rotting meat. And you’re the janitor. And you’re not allowed to depart till you’ve cleaned all of the crabs. With a malfunctioning electrical toothbrush. But! It’s nonetheless a museum, and so incorporates displays each enriching and academic in how they contextualize the current state of button pushing and protect older concepts on how button pushing might be carried out.
In quick: It’s an attention-grabbing recreation! It’s nearly a extremely good horror recreation, however then it turns into a foul motion recreation fairly early on and mainly stays that approach for the remainder of its runtime.
It begins very robust, although. You play as Captain J.F. Blake, a pint tray runoff cocktail of a number of completely different military-type dude archetypes, despatched to analyze the fallout of the movie’s occasions. A type of Kurt Russel six levels of character separation manifests right here in the truth that Blake is successfully Solid Snake, minus all of the camp and wit and doofy knowledge and self reflection and mainly all attraction or charisma. Still! when he asks what a noise was, he asks it along with his total ass. The movie is not required watching any extra so than regular, which is to say: sure, it is required watching even when you do not plan to play this. Even when you watched it final week. Go watch The Thing once more.
The recreation’s noteworthy peculiarity comes not from any of its myriad half-baked concepts in a vacuum, however the sheer variety of half-baked concepts it has. You’ll use torches and flares to gentle darkened areas, hearth extinguishers to entry beforehand very on-fire areas, and syringes to calm panicking squadmates. You’ll discover a thousand weapons per stage, however give most of them to those self same squadmates, alongside ammo. You’ll hijack safety cameras to disclose door codes and infrequently do a turret part. Sometimes, you’ll lead your panicked squad for a pleasant jog outdoors to calm them down, ensuring to not keep too lengthy in case your ‘it’s chilly!’ meter drains and also you begin taking well being injury.
You may even, in probably the most The Thingly factor The Thing does, take samples of your individual blood to carry aloft in entrance of your squad to persuade them you haven’t been taken over. Each squad member has a specialisation, a well being bar, and a belief meter. Medics heals your squad, engineers can repair tough fuse packing containers, and so forth. Accidentally capturing them makes belief go down, therapeutic them and giving them weapons makes it go up, as does the aforementioned “take a look at my blood!” trick. That that is possibly the one occasion that waving a vial of your individual blood at a stranger would possibly logically end in elevated good vibes is a testomony to the premise’s enduring brilliance.
So, early on, you stroll slowly by corridors and dimly-lit analysis stations. Maybe one in every of your squadmates will see a corpse of a colleague, puke on the ground, and refuse to press on till you consolation them. You take care to maintain everybody stocked on ammo and to not by chance shoot anybody. It feels gradual, deliberate, and atmospheric. You go on like this for about an hour, after which the sport simply runs out of concepts and begins chucking dozens upon dozens of the smallest, speediest, crawliest enemies at you each 5 minutes. There’s the occasional little bit of energetic pressure when you must flamethrower one of many greater monsters with out additionally cooking your squad in tight environs, however there’s additionally simply a lot ammo and a lot dangerous capturing that it begins to smother all the opposite stuff. We’re all very drained. But it is nice. We have like, 10 billion shotgun shells.
Then, simply if you really feel it might probably go both approach, the sport doubles down on its dedication to ignoring the most effective elements of its personal premise by throwing umpteen dudes with weapons at you. They’re not a difficulty to cope with – preserve your squadmates armed they usually’ll snipe something that comes inside 100 ft of you kind of immediately. But their frequency does begin to leech away the sport’s flavour till all of the beforehand echoing, dismal hallways simply begin to resemble bland packing containers. Sometime after your second boss, the sport responds to a transparent alternative to introduce a brand new kind of monster with “ah, however, what if we gave the gun dudes flamethrowers now?”.
As I stated, it’s that Dead Space trilogy speedrun feeling: measured and efficient horror giving option to motion horror earlier than being drowned out by a number of buckets of gun-having males. Occasionally, issues get attention-grabbing by way of stage design. A mission that sees you escape from a lab with no weapons, trapping enemies behind doorways and ordering squadmates previous safety lasers feels downright impressed, and an earlier submarine jaunt represents that recreation’s claustrophobic horror at its greatest. But even early on, it’s simple to inform that capturing is the worst half – made attention-grabbing by context and different stressors – in order quickly as the sport doubles down on it, it actually does collapse.
Which, to clarify as soon as once more, is totally no shade to Nightdive. The Thing stays attention-grabbing in its foibles even when it’s nowhere near entertaining. And, on steadiness, I don’t remorse my time with it. It’s a worthwhile little bit of in-amber preservation, even when I don’t essentially need to contact the insect inside if I can assist it.
