Here’s the thing about The Thing: Remastered; it’s still very much 2002’s The Thing. Which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how much you like your The Thing.
2002’s The Thing, you see, which was developed by Computer Artworks and based on the intensely sexy Kurt Russell movie, The Thing — itself based on a novella that isn’t called The Thing — is a real mixed bag of a game, truth be told. It sets its stall out impressively, digging into the creeping fear and slowly rising paranoia of the classic movie, giving you some light squad control and an intriguing fear/trust system, whilst presenting its tale in environs that, whilst certainly now aged, still absolutely nail the vibe of the thing (didn’t even mean that one). But! It also falls apart quite badly for the second stretch of its slight running time.
Let’s stick with the positives for now, though. This is a game that’s always had its presentation nailed down, and that side of the experience only gets better with the maestros at Nightdive on remastering duties. We already know this team does stellar work (we’d sure love to see their magnificent System Shock remake on Switch), and this time around is no different, thankfully. The Thing: Remastered is a slick and crisp revisit to 1980s Antarctica. It controls perfectly, it’s got motion controls, HD Rumble, fully mappable options for your controller settings and sensitivities, and all the nips and tucks you’d expect to ensure that you’re getting the original vision, presented as well as it can be.
The graphics have been cleaned up and enhanced, of course, with flashier character models and textures. Nightdive has even hand-crafted some animations, as well as presenting updated lighting and atmospheric effects. Antialiasing and depth-of-field effects make the cut in this Switch version, too, so we’ve got a good-looking game (for its era) that’s now easier than ever on the old eyeballs. Oh, and we get achievements, which is always a fairly big plus on Nintendo’s console.
One fly in the ointment that we did notice in this version (in comparison to Xbox, at least) is that the loading times on Switch can be a little frustrating. They’re way longer than we expected on a title this old, even on ageing hardware. It’s not a dealbreaker in any way, but a shame they can’t be shorter on such an old game, remastered or not.
So it’s all good on a technical level, barring a few loading screens. It runs very nicely on Nintendo’s console overall, feeling smooth as a hideously mutated baby’s bottom, and for the first two or three hours it’s well worth settling into. Even now, some 22 years down the line, it holds your attention in a strong start that asks you to use your brain a little as you band together against the elements, solve some reasonably decent puzzles, and get all wrapped up in the suspense of gaining the trust of your comrades, whilst also getting to indulge in some sweaty moments from the movies – which we won’t spoil here, just in case.
Kicking off, everything seems set up for great success. You’ll need to monitor your temperature as you dash from building to building, watch stress levels, (don’t act crazy in front of your squad), use a hypo gun to settle nerves, and dish out commands to fix blown fuses, open doors, heal up, and make sense of what’s been going on. All of this early stuff is great, especially when it looks and feels this nice, and busying yourself finding keys or reading documents to glean clues on how to move forward is the kind of old-school entertainment we are 100% down for.
However — and it’s a big however, unfortunately — this is also a game that falls flat on its ass in its second half. It’s not an uncommon situation, especially for the era, that a licensed action game starts out with a decent premise, smartly utilising aspects of the movie, before giving in to the temptation to just add lots of guns and things to shoot at, but it really stings here. If they’d just stuck to being quietly inventive we could have been looking at an all-time horror classic. Oh well.
Yep, once the guns come out, once the bigger enemies arrive and the worm turns to a rather shoddy attempt at blockbuster action, it never recovers. This was just about 7/10 stuff back at the time, an enjoyable ride for a couple of hours if you were really into the movie. Now, two decades later, and even with a very skilful remaster to show off its very best bits in the best light possible, it’s a hard thing to recommend to anyone other than avid fans of the source material, or those of us who have fond memories of playing the original. We will say, playing on the Switch feels nicer than on a big console, it’s all just that bit more charming in portable mode, but it’s still a pretty hard sell.
It’s a messy experience at its core, and in these stretches of always-poor and now badly-aged action — which entirely take over as the story rolls into the final third — the game totally fails to remain entertaining. There’s no silver lining. Once the wheels start to come off and it prioritises shooting bland enemies over revelling in its uniquely atmospheric fear/trust system, it’s toast.
Well, that was a bleak ending. Sort of like the movie.
Conclusion
The Thing: Remastered is another splendid remaster from Nightdive. There’s absolutely no issue with the enhancements, control tweaks, and other work that’s been done here; it’s the game itself, unfortunately, that for well over half of its running time leaves much to be desired. A good start, one that digs into the paranoia and fear of the classic movie with a handful of unique mechanics, is all too soon wasted as tension gives way to sloppy gunfights that aren’t fun, no matter how smooth they now play or nice they look. It’s certainly still a curiosity, and fans of the movie or returning players will enjoy the nostalgia. But beyond that, it doesn’t warrant a hearty recommendation.
