The Thing

by Vivendi Universal

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006662L
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: August 21, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,903 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PC

From the Developer

Where the movie ends, the true terror begins. In the frozen wastelands of Antarctica, a mysterious, shape-shifting alien life form has wiped out an American scientific outpost. You're the leader of a military rescue team sent to investigate the carnage. Trapped by the elements and infected by a horrific enemy, you must keep your squad together. Control their fear and gain their trust, and you might just survive the Thing.

Taking place shortly after the events seen in the 1982 film, The Thing takes us back to the Antarctic base and familiar locales from the film for a terrifying, new chapter of isolation and paranoia. The game's trust/fear interface adds a different dimension to the genre. How you influence non-player characters (NPCs) psychological state determines whether or not these characters will cooperate with you. Puzzle-solving can be accomplished by a multitude of scenarios; there is never just one way to accomplish an objective. The varying pace of gameplay blends action, puzzles, horror, and human interaction.

Product Description

This software is BRAND NEW. Packaging may differ slightly from the stock photo above. Please click on our logo above to see over 15,000 titles in stock.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sierra punishes its customers with bad game control, September 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Thing (CD-ROM)

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.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fresh take on shooters, August 9, 2002

By 

kerel - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Thing (CD-ROM)

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.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A shocking, chilling game!, August 6, 2002

By 

"bz-" (Kennewick, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Thing (CD-ROM)

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.

2115|R25JD7U502UPW7;2115|R19359HNQA42WN;2115|R2U4ACJTM00QZ9;