Where the movie ends, the true terror begins. In the frozen wastelands of Antarctica, a mysterious, shape-shifting alien life form has wiped out an American scientific outpost. You're the leader of a military rescue team sent to investigate the carnage. Trapped by the elements and infected by a horrific enemy, you must keep your squad together. Control their fear and gain their trust, and you might just survive the Thing.
This review may contain spoilers
It was a good game which really did nicely capture the overall survival horror feeling of the cult classic Carpenter's original film. However, it suffered greatly during the mid-end stages from repetitve level designs and horrible enemy dislocation. Basiclly, you start off alone with a squad of Arctic Warfare prepared US Army Rangers fighting aganist an unknown force and end up rapidlly doing S&D, S&R and "go n' grab" type of missions nearing the end. The survial horror feeling just dissapears and even the Things disappear and are almost wholly replaced by renegade soldiers in a typical Japanese-made horror game of that time a la Extermination. The prisoner scenes just dosen't do justice and the ending is simply weird as it implies the Things were actually a covert military project intended to create a new fighting force which TOTALLY contradicts the film's storyline.
Gameplay wise, the AI is quite nice even though it sometimes stumbles just up in your line of fire and the enemy AI just rushes up to you, both the Things and the renegades. The infection and distrust mechanics are quite good though they are easy to notice later and the whole thrill of not knowing who will turn next dissapears in a poorly scripted of cloud of "left objective area, script turns your medic in a human Thing". There is plenty of ammo and various supplies left for you and the overall difficulty is pretty normal and easy to beat unless you are playing on "Insane". Just remember to keep a distance between your friends and enemies and remember to use explosive ordnances whenever possible.
What I couldn't really understand is how the game turned into a S&R adventure deep into the winter in to "explore the hidden underground militry bases" in just 4 chapters... perhaps the devs ran out of ideas late in the game's development phase.
There was also a sequel for the game planned somewhere during the year 2004 that sadly got suddenly canceled due to funding problems. It would be an c