The Thing: Remastered

Deck: The Thing: Remastered reintroduces a flawed but fascinating game, with overhauled visuals and a number of crucial quality-of-life improvements

Nightdive have done a great job preserving and uplifting The Thing into a crisp and playable modern offering. It's still a fascinating game, but maybe not quite interesting enough to be worth revisiting.

Nightdive has greatly improved on a lost gem from the turn of the century, with a massive visual overhaul that further enhances on an impeccable atmosphere, even if aiming still underwhelms.

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.

The Thing, by its very concepts and mechanics, is well worth the price of admission for historians and enthusiasts. There really isn’t much quite like it, and perhaps that’s because it would be difficult to pull off well. For what it’s worth, The Thing was never perfect. It has some weird speed in its overall gameplay and cringy dialogue that detract from its scarier elements, but those elements are still fun, and with the improvements that address a sore spot in its strength, The Thing: Remastered makes an interesting outlier of the horror genre that much more valuable.

Nightdive Studios did the best they could with a mediocre game. The Thing was never a good game and the original developers often lamented over the final product. They had much grander ambitions that could have made it a genuine classic. While the remaster's technical execution is commendable, the source material's was questionable. Despite this, the remaster may serve as an impetus for future adaptations of John Carpenter's film. The film's core concept remains a compelling narrative foundation and has potential for more successful interpretations in the right hands.

Despite all its flaws, The Thing: Remastered is a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s classic film. While it has shortcomings in terms of storytelling and gameplay, if you’re a fan of the movie, it’s still worth experiencing. Nightdive Studio has done a good job delivering a faithful remake, but it hasn’t managed to address the issues of the original version.

I loved replaying The Thing. You can tell what a labor of love this was for the team at Nightdive who have a fantastic track record for not just porting titles to modern but making them a much more enticing product for everyone. Yes, the game still feels like an older title but it's both easier on the eye and easier to play. This makes The Thing: Remastered the definitive way to experience The Thing. There are so many nods and cameos relating to the original film you'd be hard-pressed to find such an impassioned love letter to a source material anywhere else.

The Thing: Remastered is worthwhile and no mistake. Nightdive's lovingly made revamp might not paper over the cracks of the 2002 original, but it preserves what made it a cult classic, while applying subtle, albeit meaningful, improvements.

We don't have much more left in the hat of this The Thing Remastered, but it is a real personal pleasure to be able to try it again as I did back in 2002 and treasure it again in my memory, now rightly so, as a survival horror of high quality and that deserves more recognition than it had, Both because of its place in the saga, acting as a sequel to the film, and because of the title itself, which has an agile, fun, dynamic gameplay that never tires.