The updated version of The Thing may prove that age *IS* more than just a number
I thought I liked The Thing when it launched in 2002; it was interesting as a concept and unique as a shooter. But my memory may have been a bit hazy and I could have been wearing nostalgia-colored glasses, because in 2024/25 a lot of those cool ideas just don’t play very well any more.
The Thing Remastered is PlayStation 2 as hell, from a visual and design standpoint. It takes forever for the game to get going, but that’s not because it’s trying to teach us anything meaningful. In fact it’s the opposite. When easing players into a new experience, there’s a good way to hold our hand and a bad way — and this is the bad way. We kind of not know what we’re doing or supposed to be doing, and don’t get any hint of where we need to go or what to do. At its base this is a shooter pushing us to just go and experience things, and that works for an arcade experience, but there are a few machinations here that don’t lean into that direction and end up creating a barrier that we don’t get to understand until we’re well in.
There are scripted moments within The Thing where one of our NPC teammates turns out to be the monster and then we get attacked. And then there are situations that are 100% unscripted, where an NPC in the game will have been infected and then, surprise, they become a monster. And that’s a cool idea. It leads to a lot of tension because it doesn’t happen very often, so we’re always judging who is going to turn next. The game is a four person squad-based experience with our three AI teammates having their own sort of sub-classes, like medics and aggressive shooters and physical attackers, so it has some good starting points.
But none of it ever really feels like it comes together in any sort of meaningful way. I’d like to say that there have been better versions of this idea since then, but there haven’t, potentially because the idea really doesn’t lend itself beyond what The Thing already created.
The enhanced visuals are nice because the PS2 was a beautiful era for video games, but apart from the looks and sounds the depth depth doesn’t back it up. The Thing Remastered is a weird game to bring back because conceptually it’s cool, but I don’t think anyone’s favorite game was ever The Thing, and it would never be The Thing. I guess it really wasn’t my favorite game back then, and it’s not doing anything to change my mind now.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It originally appeared on The SideQuest Live for January 12, 2025.
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