The Thing is based on the 1982 film of the same name by cult filmmaker John Carpenter, which in itself was adapted from the 1938 story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell. The film starring Kurt Russell takes place at US Outpost #31, an American scientific research facility somewhere in Antarctica. A helicopter carrying two seemingly mad Norwegians chase a lone dog into the US outpost and are ultimately killed in an accident before the reason for their chase can be explained. However, the US researchers soon discover why the dog was being pursued as it turns out to be a shape shifting alien life form capable of consuming and perfectly imitating any living thing.

Before long paranoia sets in as scientists go missing and it becomes unclear who is still human and who is the Thing. The film ends with the outpost in ruins and on fire with the only two survivors bound to freeze to death as the fire subsides. But the question remains...Are they both human or is one of them the Thing? This is where the game comes in.

The game version of The Thing places you in control of Blake, leader of a crack military unit sent to Antarctica to investigate the demise of Outpost #31 and its inhabitants. Things soon go pear shaped and before you know it, you are running around secret military laboratories fighting off waves of...Er, Things. Graphically the game still looks good despite its age (The Thing was released on Xbox in September 2002) and the sound track is quite solid with good voice acting, moody music and only the occasional glitch during cut scenes.

On release the gameplay was touted as being a revolutionary concept in gaming, revolving around an intuitive trust and fear system and advance artificial intelligence. In reality, it was never anything more than a standard third-person shooter with a woefully generic military conspiracy storyline and average AI at best. But what of the intuitive trust and fear system? I'll cover that later.

Viewed from a third-person perspective with a stop-and-look first-person view thrown in for good measure, The Thing looks like any other game of its type with a standard control scheme...Trust me it's there, try configuration three. The Thing tries to fit into the survival/horror genre but ultimately is a bit too fast-paced and action orientated to be faithful to the subject matter. The game would have been more true to the source material if it were a little slower with less emphasis on flat-out action and more on scaring the crap out of you. You don't have to face the Thing alone however, as at various stages in the game different characters will join you.

These characters can be soldiers, engineers or medics. Soldiers being more accurate with weapons, engineers able to fix advanced junction boxes and medics with the ability to heal everyone in you team except themselves. The B Button accesses the squad menu displaying up to four characters in your immediate vicinity accessed by either an up, down, left or right movement of the Left Thumbstick or D-Pad. This radial selection system, mirroring the movements of the Thumbstick or Pad is used throughout all the in-game menus and works very well. Through this menu you can give an individual or group orders to stay put or follow you as well as giving or taking weapons and ammunition. There is also an ability to order an individual to go to a specific location but the uses for this are very limited and seem like an afterthought to add variety to the puzzles, almost all which require you to open a door of some variety.

The biggest selling point of The Thing should have been its supposedly intuitive trust and fear system, as a major quality of the film was the sense of paranoia created by not knowing if someone was human or the Thing. It was even debated if someone would actually be aware if they had been taken over by the Thing. This in itself sounds like it would make a remarkable game and no doubt was the major motivation behind making a game adaptation of the film ten years after its release. All of that would have been true, if only the trust and fear system wasn't bollocks. In theory it's perfect, in practice it's flawed.

All information about your team is displayed as a series of icons above their heads. These icons vary from changes in trust and fear levels to low ammo. There are a number of actions the player can perform that will raise or lower team members trust levels. E.g. If you give them a weapon, their trust will increase...Give them ammo for it and it will go up even more. Likewise if you take a weapon off someone, their trust will decrease. Let's think about that for a second...

[pause for effect]

...Now why would you take a weapon off someone?...Because you think they're the Thing? Yes. Ok, now why would you not want the Thing to have a weapon?...So, it doesn't shoot me? Correct. Then explain to me why you should bother taking a weapon off someone, if when they turn into a Thing they immediately drop it and try and beat you to death with their mutated arms instead?...Hmmnnn, I don't have and answer for that one either. Not only that, in the film the only way to know if someone was human or in fact the Thing was to take a blood sample and burn it. If it fizzled, they're human. If it screamed, they're a Thing! This test is available within the game through the use of special blood test hypos.

That's great, but why is it then possible to test someone and receive a clear result and then literally 30 seconds later (without them leaving your sight) they transmogrify into a hideous mutant beast! Really, what is the point?