The Thing: Remastered(Playstation 5) Thoughts and Rant

When I heard Nightdive was going to remaster this game having not played it, I was scratching my head. Yes, the game does have a cult following however that is just as mind numbing in it's own right. As far as the remaster is concerned, it does it's job and Nightdive delivers yet again. The problem is that The Thing 2002 wasn't a good game even for it's time. This game could be one of my go to examples how horribly things can go wrong when innovation isn't matched by good execution. It can be used as an example of how not every title from the 6th gen is automatically amazing for simpily being from that era. It also fall into the licensed game trap that a story unique in another medium can be a derivative and boring in a different one.

It's easy to insult The Thing 2002 for being a 3rd person shooter with a premise of the titular movie. It really is. The infection is a massive red herring since all your npcs are scripted to turn. What I don't understand is, why have everyone who turns into the monster be random npcs with no real character? The game can easily have scripted infections but have it be in a way where when it happens, the player is attached and don't want the npc to become the monster. Instead of every npc is a generic nameless character who are just there to be fodder with the exception of the engineer to repair the many, many, many fuse boxes and then it turns into a dull escort mission. You can also win them over very easily by handing them a 9mm pistol. Spoony's review isn't lying, there are lots of broken fuse boxes where you need to wait for either the main character or an engineer to fix. These sections just waste time and offer no geniunely interesting gameplay.

It's a 3rd person shooter and maybe you'd think the combat might be enjoyable but not really. All you do is shotgun the same headcrab enemies for much of the game. There are bigger thing monsters to fight but just shoot them then flame them with them running around and having a hard time knowing where you even are. There isn't much more to it do than that. It's the same 3-4 monsters for much of the game. Shotgun and shoot the headcrabs, shoot the bigger monsters than flame them. You also have to fight special forces marines since it doesn't already borrow enough from Half Life and their AI is really dumb and have their bad pathfinding put you in such advantage where you kill them before they fire their hitscan weapon at you until you fight enemies with flame throwers because if the flame even touches at you at full health, it will be a game over. This is where I quit the game since I would have to deal with them one shotiting me or the enginners I have to escort. It wasn't worth it for a game as aggressively bad as this even with Nightdive making this remaster easier with more health kits and auto saves, there is still awful design quirks about it's combat that persist.

The story might just be one of the most poorly written in gaming. I am almost shocked John Carpenter gave the game his blessing and even popped up in it. The first big issue is that the main character Blake is so generic and has no personality he can call his own. He just goes through the game killing monsters and no sense of doubt, no learning about his backstory, just anything that makes him more than a character I'm playing as. All the npcs that are with Blake are going to die or won't be able to follow him past a loading screen so he has no one to play off.

It doesn't help that the bosses pop up out of nowhere with no mystery, intrigue and build up any kind. Blake just walks into the room and you fight it. No sense of anything foreboding. Not even a creepy hallway or some segway into the boss like say a lot of boomer shooters do. There isn't even any reason why buildings are suddenly exploding or why every fuse box is busted.

The villain is also generic, confusing and also really stupid. He sends in Blake have look around the research outpost and then when the latter is cornered after rescuing not John Carpenter, he keeps him alive in the lab...just to come up with a bomb to try to kill Blake. What stopped him from killing Blake before. I'm guessing not John Carpenter is supposed to be important but then he dies as soon as Blake wakes up from being unconcious.

The final nail in the coffin is that the writers that the Thing was a virus and not an parasitic alien life form that completely takes over it's host. The Thing is a virus infection like Resident Evil's T-Virus. I would do what many people do online and bash the writers for not "understanding" license they are adaptating but if this game and story was good, I could overlook this but this just adds an extra reason for me to dislike this game.

Overall, I'm lost why a game like this was ever remastered. If you want 1st or 3rd person shooters play Half Life and Max Payne respectively. Want sqaud shooters? Play Rainbow 6 or Ghost Recon. You want to play a game with an actual zombie virus infection? Play Resident Evil.