The Thing Retrospective Game Review

So recently, I went on a kick of John Carpenter movies, y’know, like The Thing and the 2011 prequel of The Thing. As I was watching the movies, a friend informed me that he had played the video game a few years ago. To my surprise, and excitement, I decided to play the game myself.

The Thing video game from 2002 starts where the 1982 film ends. A second team is sent out to the site in Antarctica in 1982. The site is still burning from the explosions of the ending and you are left to explore and find out what happened.

If you are already a fan of the movie, the anticipation mounts as you know something is about to happen. Along the way, there are fun easter eggs from the movie, including the tape recorder Mac speaks into in the original movie.

You get the order from your commander to blow up what remains of the site in the snow with C4. Your character, Blake, makes in known that he is the only one on his team that speaks Norwegian. As I am playing this, I’m thinking that Blake would have come in handy in the original movie when the dog showed up to the compound before Lars, from the prequel, was shot dead.

Almost thirty minutes into the game, you encounter some creatures and it appears to be a straightforward mission. Find people, find information, survive. Easy right?

Well, you see, it’s not so straightforward as that. Each team member has a fear meter, which affects their sanity. If their fear gets to high, bad things happen.

Blake is quickly faced with suspicion as he shows up to the rescue of another team, and almost gets set on fire by a flamethrower. Given the option of taking a blood test, Blake obliges his teammate to prove that he is not infected. While Blake passes the test, two of his teammates are not so fortunate and are quickly disposed of with the flamethrower. After finding out someone wrecked the radio to their team’s safety and escape, Blake now is on a rescue mission to find any survivors and get out.

As you’re going to through this game, I’m wondering where exactly are all of these random creatures coming from, and why are they only now vulnerable to bullets? Bullets didn’t work on them in the movies, so that was an interesting design choice to have enemies killed with bullets in the game.

One thing I didn’t expect from this game was a boss battle, though it was short. Another element that was unexpected was enemies coming up through the floor if the floor is vented. That was a nice touch to add to the creepy factor that’s already amped up in this game. At a certain time, you are without weapons and you have to maneuver yourself and the people with you in order to survive enemies. Stress levels were not at all low at this point, but I was still having a good time with the game. And now is a good time to mention that while the dialogue provides a good portion of the story, a lot of the lore in-game is told through computer terminals that Blake can access. As you progress in the game, the difficulty becomes more intense, and the enemies more numerous and more powerful.

As of August 2025, you can get this game on Steam for $21 for the remastered version.

In my opinion, this was definitely a game that was overlooked in the early 2000s. John Carpenter himself has stated in the past that he considered this game to be the sequel to the 1982 original movie. If that’s the case, I agree with him and it is well worth the playthrough.