Nightdive’s The Thing: Remastered stealth releases, which seems appropriate

During the PC Gaming Show, Nightdive Studios announced that – Surprise! – The Thing: Remastered has released on PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. That means right now! You can play it now!

The Thing: Remastered is an update of the 2002 game, The Thing, which is based off the 1982 film, The Thing. The game is set up as a sequel to the movie, taking place just shortly after the story of the film ends. It involves an antarctic research team dealing with a shapeshifting, people-cloning alien that has infiltrated their ranks. It’s tense and concise. And it’s really good! I hadn’t seen it before, so I watched it in preparation to finally play this game.

In fact, I’ve got a review of the game that should be going up simultaneously with this article. I’m not going to spoil the review in case you want to go in without knowing how you’re going to feel about it.

The Thing: The Game attempts to tie in the themes of the movie to the sequel narrative that it’s going for. There’s a trust/fear meter that affects all your allies. You have to gain their trust either through a blood test or by loading them up with ammunition. Their concern is that you might secretly be a the thing, but it’s them you need to watch out for. Any of them could be infected and can transform at any moment.

The fear system is a lot more straightforward. Your squadmates are rightfully nervous, and they’ll snap under pressure if you don’t take care of them. Largely, this just seems to be an issue if you hang out in a room with a huge mess in it. You can get them calm again just by leaving the problem area.

Also, don’t stay outside for too long. It’s winter in Antarctica and protagonist J.F. Blake did not pack a hat. You can only remain out in the open for a short amount of time before you need to take shelter and warm up.

Nightdive has done a lot of work cleaning up the graphics. In particular, the lighting is much more advanced thanks to their continuing work on the KEX Engine. The Thing: Remastered is their most latterday remaster, the first that originated from the new millennium, if I’m not mistaken. However, the fact that it’s a movie-licensed title and the fact that early-Windows games have a lot of issues on modern hardware means that this is in important release.

The Thing: Remastered is now available on PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.