The Thing: Remastered

Nightdive has simply made it look nicer on modern screens, run at approximately a bajillion frames per second, and updated the controls so they don’t make the modern player’s brain fall out of their head. Lovely stuff. I hope Nightdive keeps wearing other game studios’ skins.

The Thing Remastered is a solid operation that brings attention to a game that, already upon its release, had truly cutting-edge mechanics and solutions. Great to play again today.

It works as it should, which is always a plus (even if it’s a little baffling at times), and I have no doubt that if you sank a half-dozen hours or so into the game back in 2002, you should find that the game is probably the same now as it was then. I think that if you don’t have that sense of nostalgia you’ll probably find the game a little lacking, but as PS2 remasters go, you could probably do a lot worse.

Ultimately, The Thing: Remastered is mostly successful in recapturing the essence of the film, but it just didn’t give me good reasons to care about the characters, nor did it offer gameplay that was engaging enough for me to want to spend more time in such a dreary world without Kurt Russell there to fire things up. Even after being remastered, The Thing may have been better off left in the ice.

I have fond memories of playing The Thing back in 2002 because there wasn't anything else quite like it. It was inventive and exciting, and even today, no one else is trying to do what Computer Artworks attempted in the single-player space. I commend the studio for what it achieved, but the limitations of the technology--and its design constraints--are much more apparent now, even with nostalgia-tinted glasses on. Nightdive has done a fantastic job of restoring this flawed but intriguing game, continuing its crucial work with game preservation. All of the changes it's made are positive, resulting in a better game, both visually and mechanically. Nonetheless, this is a case where a complete remake would've been much more appealing, allowing for the trust and fear system to be fleshed out with less rigidity and more dynamism. As it is, Computer Artworks' vision might never be fully realized, and that's a shame.