The Thing!

[RpTheHotrod]

Well, I was at half-priced books and saw it for sell for only $4.00

 

I remember seeing the movie YEARS ago. Good movie....nice paranoia.

 

Pretty much, it starts where the movie ended. A military team is sent to the destroyed research facility to "investigate".

 

Pretty much, these "things" can mimic someone. They look, act, talk, and walk the same way, sort of speak. Your squad mates also have a trust level...and fear level. As you go along, who knows if one of your own guys is actually a thing. Your team watches everything you and the others do, and naturally start to become paranoid and suspicious. Giving them weapons and ammo helps them trust you, doing different things like "accidentally" shooting them in a firefight, taking away ammo, or making threats and stuff tends to make them lose trust. If they absolutely don't trust you, they may take drastic measures in "defending themselves" from you.

 

It's a pretty cool mind game. It all comes down to, who do you trust? You can give weapons and ammo to team mates and stuff. There are soldiers, medics, and engineers.

 

I had a sub-machine gun, but I was out of ammo. My soldier had a pistol, and my engineer had a simple blow torch. I came across one guy in a room with a flamethrower. He started yelling at me to get back. He said only a blood test can prove if someone is human or not. So I run along and find 3 bloodtest kits and return. I run the test on myself and of coarse test negative. My team sees I'm human and the trust goes through the roof. I then run a bloodtest on one of my squadmates that I've had in the group for awhile. The canister explodes, and I'm backing up, lol. He starts to change and my engineer is totally freaking out, "Dude, give me a weapon!" (he only had a blowtorch). I toss him a handgun and I start firing at this "thing" in the room. The engineer then takes a step back and starts firing at me and morphs into a thing too. Well, needless to say, I got owned by my own team. I had those guys with me for a good long while too, lol. Trusted the wrong people, that's for sure They never attacked before because they don't know what's a thing either. The soldier and I could have both been human, so the engineer thing would have been outnumbered. When the engineer thing saw the soldier was a thing, he knew it was he had me so it was safe to reveal his identity too.

 

Your squad mates even have casual conversations and stuff, too.

 

Cool concept for a game.

 

There is first and third person views. Here's first person flamethrower vs one of the "thing"s

 

[LightNinja]

Wow man that story really makes me want to buy that game O.o! it must be a really cool game, and for only $4.00?? Sure i'll get it

[RpTheHotrod]

It's pretty old, but so far, so fun.

[Darth Groovy]

I have this on the XBOX. Gameplay is excellent. It's like the game that everybody should have, but nobody seems to know about. Possibley because the movie was made back in the early '80's. (The Great Escape suffered the same fate)

 

I like the whole concept of trying to keep your men from freaking out. It adds to the tention level. Despite a rather slow start...it ultimately delivers.

 

Score: 79%

[RpTheHotrod]

79%? That sucks, lol. Say 80% at least

 

The creepy part was...when they turned on me...I then realized that up to that point, I was completely alone during all of that. Those weren't even human, despite helping eachother and some conversation here and there.

 

What if you gotta patrol an area? Tell your men to guard one place, you leave with another. What if that one with you turns and attacks? You could kill it...but when you return, is your team going to think you are the thing and you just killed their buddy? What if you return and one of the men guarding is missing. Supposodly he turned into a thing and got hurt by your soldier enough to have it retreat and run. Are you going to believe that soldier? He could be a thing himself that killed a real guy, or maybe he's telling the truth o_O

[Writer]

How bizarre... don't think it's next on my buy list.

[Darth Groovy]

Alright, you have me sold. I'll say 80%. I think the parts that annoy me most, is when your running from building to building looking for something, but then you have to "warm up" to keep from freezing to death. I know it's realistic...but it can be annoying at times, especially once you unraveled another clue.

 

Score: 80% (due to the ability to re-create the movie's creepiness)

[LightNinja]

It's pretty old, but so far, so fun.

Yah i know, i remember seeing some reviews but not reading them cuz i had no interest, i thought it was just another shoot'em'up but now i see i was so wrong

BTW the game is suposely to end when you've killed all the "things"?

[acdcfanbill]

my roomate played it on his xbox, looked pretty cool, but i dunno if its my fav type of gameplay... however, the carpenter movie is one of my alltime favorites except for the crap new box they put out w/ it

[Lightsaberboy]

oh i thought we were talking about the fantastic four thing.

 

It's clobbering time!

 

>_>

 

 

<_<

 

...*slinks away

[toms]

I was expecting clobbering too... or rude pen*s jokes...

 

i thought this game looked really interesting when it was being developed, but i remember it didn't get that great reviews - can't remember what people's problem was (bad balancing and controls i think) - so i forgot about it.

 

That story makes it sound pretty cool though. I'll keep an eye out.

[Mex]

I'm going to get this off of Amazon.com, the game is only about £2.00 with £2.50 post and packaging. Also the comments on the person selling it says that the products they ship usually arrive next day. ^_^

[RpTheHotrod]

Just an update. I figured out how it works.

 

 

It's actually an infection, and when one of your members comes in contact with one of the things, sometimes they catch the infection and eventually become a "disguised" thing.

 

So generally, all your squad mates could become things, so you have to watch how they act once they come in contact with other things.

 

So, if you run a blood test on your squad mate, and he comes out clean, you still have to watch him if they comes in contact with a thing later....he could have gotten the infection then.

[Master_Ginn]

I'm diffinately gonna check this game out. I like suspensful and scary games, but most of the time they usually stink. Like Silent Hill the Room, ug i bought that game, and sold it back a week later. It's hard to find a good scary/suspenssful game.

[acdcfanbill]

if you want a good scary/suspenseful game, i played a little bit of a new game called Obscure, and it as actually pretty good, puzzle solving and fixed 3rd person camera.

[Darth Groovy]

if you want a good scary/suspenseful game, i played a little bit of a new game called Obscure, and it as actually pretty good, puzzle solving and fixed 3rd person camera.

 

Alot of my customers tell me that one sucks billeh.

[acdcfanbill]

well, i guess i like a lot of things that people say suck so, uh, no suprise

[jokemaster]

Wow sounds cool. I thought it was just a random shoot 'em up.

[Darth Groovy]

Nah, it's a whole different concept for a video game, and I have to give the developers props for trying something different, instead of being another Doom 3/Resident Evil spin off.

 

Read this: http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/thing/index.html?q=The+Thing

 

GameSpot gave it a really good review, which is what prompted me to buy it in the first place, besides being a huge fan of the John Carpenter re-make of the same name. They really did a good job at taking the element of fear that drives the movie, and converting it to actual gameplay elements. I have not finished the game, but I plan to go back to it very soon. I just don't like playing games that involve lots of snow and cold, in the middle/end of the summer...just a wierd tick of mine.

 

One of the scariest things about the movie I thought, was that this all takes place in the coldest months in Antarctica, and happens to an unsuspecting weary bunch of people already heavily stricken with cabin fever. I mean it's the perfect set up for a horror movie. You can't leave because you will freeze to death, and you can't keep warm, because any one of you could be "The Thing". Brilliant, and VERY creepy.

[acdcfanbill]

ohh, you even called it a re-make, probably the best remake i have ever seen

[Surfnshannon]

I have this game for PC - It is pretty freaky. I bought it when it first came out though - for more than $4.00!!!

[Darth Groovy]

ohh, you even called it a re-make, probably the best remake i have ever seen

 

 

Yeah, same here. John Carpenter really did what ALL directors of remakes should do, re-think what works best, and really go with it. Carpenter's morphing gooey creature is far superior to the slope headed goofiness of Christian Nyby's 1951 film. This is one of the rare and last cases where the gore is subtle and moving. Rob Bottin's latex effects far shadow the CGI crap we have endured over the post decade. Like I said before, this is one of a very few films that left a lasting effect on me, and still does to this day. What made this movie work was not only the fx, but the characters that played this out; Wilford Brimley, as the Doctor gone "mad scientist", Kurt Russell as the helicopter pilot trying to hold everyone together, and Keith David(most underated actor ever) as "Childs" who nobody seems to trust, but maintains his level of integrity by any means necessary. The Thing is every bit as scary to me now as it was when it first came out in 1982. So many films fail to capture the element of fear these days as they did in this film.

[acdcfanbill]

i go for practical fx over cgi any day of the week, even tho i love cgi in certian movies or situations, but practical just looks better imho.

 

as as a testament to practical fx vs cgi, you should check out Dagon, based on some of HP Lovecrafts stories, and directed by Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator fame). its quite a good horror movie, and has one of the goriest scenes i have ever witnessed. I wade through zombie movies and Dead Alive like nothing, but there is a scene in Dagon that makes me wanna turn my head, but of course, i cannot also, i wanna know how they made it look so real. anyway, these great practical fx are contrasted by some really lame cgi fx, its pretty new too, but i wish they would have left them out, totally distracts the viewer.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0264508/