The Thing Remastered – PS5 Review

The Thing Remastered is a third-person shooter/horror title that began life in 2002.  Originally developed by Computer Artworks, the game received some okay reviews back in the day.  It wasn’t the most technically accomplished game of the PS2/Xbox era but fans of the John Carpenter movie that the game is based on definitely enjoyed what the game did to continue on from that film.  Among those fans were Nightdive Studios who, having remade various Doom, Turok and Quake titles, decided that this game needed an overhaul too.

The game opens up at Outpost 31, the location from the film.  The place has been destroyed by MacReady and Childs in their efforts to survive an alien that replicates humans perfectly and then uses them to then sow the seeds of fear and paranoia as it then attempts to take over more of them.  The film, one of the very best films ever made, uses the bleak, icy setting and the small, trapped cast of characters to really amp up the tension and the game attempts to continue that.

You play as Blake, a US Special Forces operative sent to investigate.  This sees you looking around the outpost and moving onto the Norwegian camp (as seen in the underrated 2011 prequel movie) too.  This virtual tourism isn’t quite as effective as it was in Aliens: Colonial Marines (say what you want about that game but it was very cool to walk around areas you saw in the film) but the setting works nonetheless.

By this point the ‘Thing’ has spread.  Various ‘Scuttlers’ (smaller creatures that move like Facehuggers but are made from pieces of their victims) and ‘Walkers’ larger human+ sized creatures eventually appear to distract you from your task which is, at any given point, usually looking for a key, a key card, a broken fusebox or something similar.  Yep, this gaming from 2002 and you’ll be spending a lot of your time trudging around identical looking corridors, rooms and the snow outside looking for whatever it is that will let you progress.  Don’t expect mission markers, keys that shine or anything else that’ll make your life easier.

As the story progresses, you realise that the army have tried to capture and manipulate the organism which explains why there are so many of them crawling about the place.  And so you’ll need to fight back as you explore but also recruit help too.

Much was made of the squad mechanics back in the day.  You’ll find survivors who are able to assist you.  There are three types:  soldiers (who are just good at killing things), engineers (who can fix digital locks and fuse boxes, allowing you to progress) and medics (who’ll heal you).  And that’s great except that they’re tired, terrified, paranoid and, very possibly, not human.  It was always a great idea in principle, working through an objective with a mechanic who might ‘thing out’ at you at some inopportune moment but it never really worked and that was for a few reasons.

Firstly, the things aren’t all that hard to kill.  There’s quirk where you have to damage them with regular weapons and then set fire to them when they are weak to finish them off.  That works okay but you should re-bind the ‘Quick Flamethrower’ control.  That’s one issue with the game, we originally played it on the PC back in 2002 and now it just doesn’t fit a controller.  There are a ton of bindings that you just can’t assign because you’ve not got enough buttons on the DualSense.  But ‘Quick Flamethrower’ is an essential one which we mapped to the TouchPad as it wasn’t even mapped at first.

So when a squad member starts sprouting extra limbs, you’ll be able to kill them pretty quickly.  The shock of it is usually obscured by the god-awful camera direction.  This needs talking about.  Whenever anything important happens, it’ll be in an in-engine cutscene.  These look absolutely primitive and ALWAYS cut out too abruptly.  It’s so badly directed.  Squad-mates thinging out isn’t done in cutscenes, it just happens and normally you don’t see it because you’re too busy looking at the thing you’re trying to kill.

What’s better implemented is the terror of these guys.  A lot of the time they won’t want to follow you anywhere and so you need to earn their trust by either giving them a weapon or performing a blood test on yourself.  You can also test them but it’s not worth it as a) they probably are a ‘Thing’, b) they’re easy to kill if they are and c) when you finish a level you’ll likely never see them again anyway.

The mission structure is pretty odd.  If this game was made today, it’d 100% be open-world but here it’s set in a series of small areas.  Usually it’s a case of find the key, turn on the power to something and walk out the door.  There’s no real sense of exploring the world, just working through chunks of it.  Repetitive chunks at that.

Back when we played the original, we ended up enjoying the second half a lot more.  This is where you face a lot of human soldiers who have orders to shoot you on site.  It’s not the best third-person shooter but a ranged threat is more compelling than having a blob of flesh jelly swipe at you and then randomly scuttle about before trying it again.  Unfortunately, the gunplay on this remaster isn’t great.  They’ve tried, giving you options for regular aiming mechanics, an awful Operation Wolf style old-school cursor variant or three degrees of auto-aim (the middle of which is the game’s default setting).  We tried them all but settled on auto-aiming because trying to kill a tiny walking hand thing in a dark room with normal game mechanics is AWFUL.  Auto-aim makes it all a little too easy but it’s the better option.

But look, there’s a cool story here that doesn’t embarrass the series.  Sure, the voice acting isn’t great (although John Carpenter does have a fun cameo) but the story is solid enough.  The game?  Well, it’s what you expect from a fairly low budget 2002 game.  We’re not massively sold on the ‘remaster’ aspects either.  It still looks dog rough and it doesn’t play much better either.  But if, like us, you’re a huge fan of the film and you want to see an attempt at following the story, then this is okay.