Last year was the 40th anniversary of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Despite being released in 1982, this alien invasion movie of psychotic paranoia still holds up to this day, due to its unnerving story and near timeless practical effects.
Strangely, despite its success and cult-like status – and despite an intriguing prequel in 2011 – The Thing never received a proper sequel. Or did it? In 2002, Computer Artworks released a video game based on The Thing that continued the story where the film left off. It’s not considered canon, but that doesn’t stop it from being a fascinating artefact in its own right.
Computer Artworks’ The Thing begins with the player at an abandoned Antarctic outpost, not long after MacReady shares that drink with Childs. In the game, you play as Captain Blake, who seems to be oddly unphased by the destruction of the Outpost, the missing crew and that gigantic flying saucer hidden beneath the snow.
Blake soon makes way to another nearby outpost, only to discover things aren’t much better here either. Crew members are missing, and the few that remain are especially paranoid and flame-thrower happy.
This sets up the classic vibe of The Thing wonderfully. You arrive at an abandoned outpost knowing very little with only a few paranoid crew members remaining, traumatised by a blood-thirsty, alien parasite invader and suspicious of one another.
What follows is a third-person action game, but one with some interesting wrinkles. To survive The Thing, maintaining the trust of the surviving crew is key. As Blake, you’ll have to gain this trust by killing the aliens that roam the base as well as supplying the crew with weapons and ammo. In turn, you have to trust the crew in return and hope that they’ll have your back as you have theirs.
1 of 4 Caption Attribution It remains a very atmospheric game.
Unfortunately, as this is The Thing, you could be handing weapons to the enemy – an alien enemy that can create convincing imitations of crew-members. You might not know which crew members are consumed by the alien until it’s too late. But then, if your crew fear that you’re the alien entity, they will kill you and your colleagues in a heartbeat.