The Thing: Dolemite's hands-on impressions

[Dolemite]

Okay, I own it, and I put in some serious playtime with this baby last night. All I can say is- sweet. I'm lovin' this game. It seems to convey the atmosphere and feel of the movie perfectly. So far, it seems to have broken the movie-based videogame curse of sucking, and sucking hard. The developers have actually taken the time and care to make a great game here, and that game goes hand in hand with the efforts made to tie it in with the movie. Anyway, I'll break down the report into sections to make things easier:

Graphics
Pretty darn good. Nice an' high-res, the textures are good, and the character models are great. I suppose if I had to complain I'd say that the character models could be a tad less blocky, but otherwise everything's fine. They animate well and their mouths move and faces change expression when they talk. There's really no problem with jaggies, either, in the environment or the characters. Speaking of the environments, they sport some amazing effects. When you're out in the snow, the gusts of wind and ice are very well done, and you and your team leave footprints in the snow. The fire effects are fantastic, and the fog coming off of ice when you're indoors is almost too realistic. I've only seen a few Things so far, but what I've seen is freaky and very well designed. Also, some sections of the buildings or whatever will sometimes collapse or fall for a cheap scare. Frame-rate's good, too, and I didn't notice any slowdown. Overall, thumbs-up graphically. Even the loading screens are cool- there's a little version of the computer simulation from the movie that shows what it's like when a cell of the Thing takes over the cell of a normal creature. When it's done loading, it says, "Assimilation Complete". Heh.

Gameplay
Ah, this is where it gets good. Yes, it's a survival horror game, but it plays nothing like Resident Evil. First of all, you're in command of a team. The team is comprised of a maximum of 4 people (in addition to yourself). You start out with a Medic, and Engineer, adn a soldier. You can give them individual commands, and as a group you can order them to follow you or stay put. The controls and managing your team take a little getting used to, but once you get a little playtime in, you'll have no problem at all. The trust/fear system is interesting. It seemed likt it would be a big pain in the ass at first, but once I got used to it, it became an interesting gameplay mechanic. I did run into a problem, though...in the beginning of the game, we fou8nd a dead body, and my Medic was on the verge of totally freaking out. To calm him down, I gave him my pistol (leaving me with just a machine gun). It worked, he was no longer scared, and he trusted me more, to boot. However, my team and I soon became seperated, and I ran into an Engineer that I needed to open a door for me. He was wounded and scared, as he had been attacked by a Thing. I gave him a medi-pack to heal him, but he still didn't trust me enough to obey my orders. So, I was forced to give him my machine gun, leaving me unarmed. it worked, however, as he obeyed my every command. I drove his trust up higher by giving him extra ammo for the machine gun. Still, it sucked having no gun. It seems that I should have given the Medic earlier a shot of adrenaline and saved the pistol for the Engineer. Oh, well. I did have the option of taking the machine gun back, but then they don't trust you as much anymore. As for the movie's infamous blood test, it's in the game, but in a different form. Instead of dipping a hot wire into a suspected Thing's blood, you can find a special hypodermic needle that, when you take a suspect's blood, mixed the blood with a burning agent that causes the same reaction. Cool. Anyway, I haven't gotten too far yet, but so far it plays great. The controls are responsive and easy to navigate, but the item menu takes a little pratice to get used to. Overall, this game is great.

Story
I won't say too much here, 'cause I don't want to give anything away. Plus, like I said, I haven't gotten too far yet. But there's lots of little touches here that tie the movie and game together. As you probably know, the game takes place right after the movie, with you as the leader of a rescue team sent in to see what happened to the team from the movie stationed at the Artic outpost. Of course, you arrive to find the outpost in ruins, so you have to find out what happened. You also get to visit the Norweigan camp from the movie as well. Here's a small list of things I've seen in the game that ties it to the movie- SPOLIERS- do NOT read further if you don't want some minor plot points revealed!:












I found MacReady's tape recorder and listened to it. It actually plays what Kurt Russell dictated to it in the movie! It wasn't actually Kurt's voice playing, but it was a damn good sound-a-like. Hmm...maybe it WAS him...

You find the destroyed remains of the UFO that the Thing was constructing at the end of the movie.

You find Childs' dead body! As you may recall, Childs was the only other guy left alive (along with MacReady) at the end of the movie. Guess he didn't make it. However, no sign of MacReady- yet...

You find the helicopter that Blair wrecked.

You find the big, hollowed out block of ice at the Norweigan base camp that the original Thing was removed from (switch to first-person mode and check out the steam swirling out of the block- very nice effect).




END SPOILERS


Sound
Not much to say here. The sound effects are all good and realistic, the voice action's fine, there's lots of cursing, and your character sounds A LOT like Solid Snake. The Things noises are very scary, and the game makes good use out of using very little background music at all. Mostly the thinsg you hear are just the noises going on all around you, adn the distant moaning of the Thing itself...

Overall, this game is great so far. It's original, it looks good, plays good, and is actually very creepy. Fans of the movie and adventure/survival horror fans in general should check this out.

[Despair]

Wow, Great impressions Dolemite Definately the game I'm looking forward to play, once I'm done with DTR.

I still deciding if I should get PS2 version now, or wait for Xbox version coming next month. Xbox version will probably graphically better, and I kinda allready have too many games to play at the moment, so I will wait for it.

[bbobb]

Sounds good, I'll be picking up a copy today.

[Sqoon]

Great impressions.

Are the characters or situations randomly generated?

[Dolemite]

Originally posted by Sqoon
Great impressions.

Are the characters or situations randomly generated?

Nope, everything seems to be scripted so far. Not in the Half-Life sense, however, where everything happens in real-time while you do your own thing. Whenever you encounter an event or meet someone for the first time, you view an in-game engine generated cut scene, and then you go back to the gameplay. It works well.

Oh, and a word of warning to anyone who buys this game- when you find the blowtorch thing (in the small shack in the Norweigan outpost), DO NOT fire it while walking forward- you will set your feet on fire and do a shitload of damage to yourself. This weapon seems to be for just firing bursts of flame at your feet to either kill small creatures biting at your ankles and for creating little patches of flame to keep monsters away from you. As for the infamous flamethrower, I haven't found that yet, but it's in the game...I'm a little dissapointed by it, however. According to the pic in the instruction booklet, it isn't connected to big tanks that you wear on your back like in the movie, it's more like the flamethrower in Aliens, with the fuel tank hanging off of the barrel. Oh, well, no biggie.

[Megatron]

The movie The thing was and is the creepest shit that I have ever seen, The video game sounds sweet.

I have 2 questions
1. How many Things are there?
2. What did the Thing look like?

[StriderKyo]

Originally posted in Nemesis' sig
"My power is everything; defeat is upsurb"-Galvatron

What the hell does "upsurb" mean?

And uh, the game sounds awesome. It sounds exactly like what I wished Carrier turned out to be.

[Ashod]

What, no impressions of the instruction booklet and the DVD case colour? I've come to expect that lately.

[1CCOSA]

One of my new favorite movies, I just discovered it last year. It's even scarier than Alien! Really shows where the whole RE/T-virus inspiration came from. Glad to hear the game shaped up nicely so far, as a 2D fan I'm really picky with the 3D games I play.

[Dolemite]

Originally posted by Nemesis
The movie The thing was and is the creepest shit that I have ever seen, The video game sounds sweet.

I have 2 questions
1. How many Things are there?
2. What did the Thing look like?

Um...in the game, I'm not sure how many Things there are. I only just started playing it. However, like in the movie, anyone can possibly be a Thing, because the Thing can infect any number of people/animals, and they all become perfect imitations of the former person/animal. The Thing doesn't take over the person, it absorbs the person's body and becomes a perfect physical copy of the person, down to even having access to their memories so they know how to act as that person. I remember in the movie that the scientist Blair calculated that, if the Thing reached populated areas, that it would take it about 28000 hours to infect the entire population of the world. Creepy, huh?

As for what the Thing looks like, it doesn't really appear to have a set form. It looks different every time it appears. It usually looks like a grotesque combination of all the previous creatures whose form its assumed. The movie had the freakiest monster designs I've ever seen, and the game seems to be following in its footsteps.