Sent in a short while after the destruction of Outpost 31 (perhaps a few days, certainly not more than a week), Captain Blake and his crew investigate the immediate area only to find that there are no survivors and no explanation of their deaths since nothing can be seen in the pallid wasteland. Moving to a part of the Antarctic base where another team has been isolated, Blake discovers the presence of the Things that killed the other humans - and that they're quickly recuperating for another full-scale attack. In fact, they may already be here, in each human that surrounds you. The story flows very naturally, quickly burgeoning into a compelling story about humans who aren't trying to understand why things are going wrong, but only to live as long as they can. Up until now (with the exception of Capcom's Sweet Home), it seemed that no developer could grasp the most basic, most fundamental fact of survival horror: Fighting alone is not at all fun and creates a very uneven experience. Though The Thing easily knocks away the first postulate, it eventually fails the second test: Keep the story simple. Towards the middle, the game introduces ye olden corrupt officials hat trick, the cruddy politick rhetoric that was already overcooked when Half-Life first popularized it back in 1998 (and everybody knows that Half-Life took a high-profile nosedive when the military soldiers were brought in full force). Suddenly, it's no longer about survival in the worst of conditions, but a petty vendetta against your superiors.

That's not to say that the game lacks a strong story, and if that's what you're culling from my words, be assured that's quite opposite of what I truly think. While the stories respectively for Resident Evil or Silent Hill may be more fleshed-out or more grotesque, one can only dream about where The Thing has headed, as they both (along with practically every contemporary horror title) lack the fierce narrative drive that The Thing possesses - a growth that stems from its versatility and precipitous pace, making the competition look positively flaky. The pre-rendered backgrounds and horrifying, not-as-dramatic-as-you-think camera placement (what is it with the Japanese's obsession to act like film directors?) are disposed of, and auto-aiming is graciously present, which allows you to finally shoot and kill while making good use of your legs. The game is split up into over a dozen levels (which feel more like vignettes and scenes from a movie), resulting in minimal backtracking and just the smallest tinge of desperate and irrevocable isolation.

To help combat lonely hours out in the middle of nowhere, Blake can enlist the help of the fellow humans who are caught in the same mess, in what is another genuinely fun and innovative advancement for video games (the new crop of systems have proved to be nothing short of a renaissance.) Few of the people you meet are ever willing to join you (a natural feeling; the person trying to help you now may turn into a monster bent on killing you five minutes later) without incentive or proof that you're on their side, which is accomplished by giving them weapons, taking blood tests, or embarking on tasks they tell you to perform. Once they're under your command, it's up to you to keep them alive and make sure that they aren't anymore subsequent transformations. Infections can spread to anyone in your party, wiping them all out in a matter of minutes, so catching them early on is often pivotal. Characters in your party also have varying levels of tolerance and fear; where one may be unfettered by a decaying corpse, another may keel over and slowly die with fright. It was questionable if the complex controls as mapped to a PC keyboard could be duplicated on the PlayStation 2, but Computer Artworks' has taken full advantage of the Dual Shock and controlling is a very fluid affair after a few minutes.

Let us consider for a moment the implementation of human control and camaraderie and what it means to the genre, for it is certainly the most paramount factor in the game. With virtually every survival horror game created so far, the people fighting for their dear lives rarely seem smarter than the monsters they're laying to final rest, finding the most inconvenient and illogical reasons to split up. Why was that? Insufficient capabilities and resources in the console? Lazy programming and game design? Ignoring everything that made post-1960s horror movies fun to watch? But not an excuse in the world will be sufficient after The Thing; it has raised the bar indefinitely, in a game that deserves to be recognized as a seminal milestone of survival horror. Though, naturally, with no text parser (what was the last game that even had one? Starship Titanic?) you can't converse with any of your partners and there are no emotional chords between them. But at least the unapologetic game doesn't pull any punches about it, unlike other games where you invest time and effort into the characters, only to find them emotionally stunted, stupidly written, pathetic morsels of human beings that no one in world could possibly care about. Sometimes it's better to never try at all than to try and miserably fail.

The one true fault of the game, something that not even the programmers and producers seem to have realized exists, is the execution of boss battles. Frustrating and pell-mell, each poorly designed and counter-intuitive, they are not at all challenging, but cheap beyond reason. The goals for each one are vague, and all take place in tiny rooms where it becomes impossible to avoid taking damage, usually regressing to back-and-forth blows. One particular fight towards the end took me about twenty tries, and by the time I was finished, I didn't have enough med kits to even consider finishing the game, forcing me to replay several levels in an effort to get better results. These unfortunate battles are unsightly and painful, like biting into an ice cream cone only to find a hidden syringe or discovering ugly bugs in your bottle of 1929 wine. But given these disappointments, the fact that the game refuses to dip to anything lower than an A- material is a true testament to the strength of the rest of the game, much of which is simply inspirational. There are portions that can be quite frightening, where nowhere you can turn to is safe (don't count on save rooms as a constant source of solace!). One fantastic scene is just a jolt of energy; onslaughts of Things invade from every corner and every broken window while you try to fight back wave after wave of enemies with your teammates against your back. It's Assault on Precinct 13 in freezing Antarctica.

Games that are spread over several consoles rarely equate to anything more than cash runs for products of dubious and questionable quality. But with this piece, it seems more like an honest dissemination of something that is wonderful, a prothalamion of high production value, violence, and unadulterated fun the likes of which we haven't seen since Grand Theft Auto 3. In a town of uninspired and bland landmarks that are really showing their age, The Thing stands tall like a campanile. The blizzard that plagues Outpost 31 has yet to be lifted but the anathema of survival horror at last has.

· · · Sqoon