We’re nothing if not thorough in our research here at ZONE Towers. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of John Carpenter’s The Thing and to prepare for the game of the same name, we locked ourselves up in the office over the weekend with nothing to do but stare at each other’s ugly faces and play with a blowtorch and a piece of wire. The air conditioning was turned up to max, the PCs were disconnected and, later on, thrown against the walls. It only took a few hours for the strain to show. Words were said, someone was hit over the head with a chair and paranoia set in as we became convinced at least one of us had been planted by a rival magazine. It ended, inevitably, in bloodshed. And there weren’t even any shapeshifting aliens involved.

• Things App For Mac
• The Thing Game Macready

Computer Artworks’ The Thing hopes to recreate this experience, replacing the smell of journo sweat with the above-mentioned aliens, a stunning new engine and what could well be one of the biggest innovations games have witnessed in years: trust and fear.

One of the main features of The Thing ' s gameplay is the inclusion of multiple NPCs who join Blake at various points throughout the game. At any one time, the player can control up to four characters; Blake and three NPCs. The first store dedicated to Mac games with over ten years of customer satisfaction. Thousands of Mac games to choose from! Instantly download and play most games for sale. Download Stranger Things: The Game for PC (Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, XP computer) or MAC APK for Free Exciting, engaging and full of suspense, Stranger Things is a Netflix show which debuted in 2016. Online Hidden object games no download - free online flash Hidden Object games. Find the hidden objects. Find the objects hidden in hotels, castles, garages, museums, shops. Find your way out of hotels, rooms and houses by finding the objects hidden there. New games to enjoy everyday.

Scaredy Cats

‎Stranger Things is back! Prepare for Season 2 of the award winning show by joining Hopper and the kids on a new, action-packed adventure. It's 1984 all over again. Experience an action adventure game just like the ones our heroes would have played back in the day. Explore Hawkins and its surrou.

In case you don't know, the game doesn’t attempt to recreate the W events from the film. Instead it’s set a A few months later, as you head the team sent to investigate what happened to the research base. You find little except snow, ruined buildings and charred bodies. Oh, and some voracious heads that run around on legs like giant spiders. But you were expecting that already, weren’t you?

The further you dig into the base and what its previous occupants left behind, the bigger and scarier the monsters you encounter become. Then, in a not particularly original twist which echoes Half-Ufe, you discover that soldiers have been sent by the Government to cover it all up and eliminate you and your team, so they can use the alien virus as a weapon. Don’t these people ever learn? The advantage of this happening is that you’re not confined to shooting ugly critters, there are also plenty of masked-up soldiers to deal with.

While not strictly a squad-based game, at the core of The Thing is your interaction with the team that you’re heading in this investigation, which is made up of soldiers, engineers and medics. What makes it really interesting though, is the fact that each of these characters has his own precarious psychological state, one you must take into consideration at all times. They respond to what you do and what they see, and their levels of trust and fear will change accordingly. If their fear reaches a certain level they’ll freak out and maybe even commit suicide. And if their trust in you wavers they’ll stop obeying your orders or, if they think you’re The Thing, turn on you.

Mostly Human

The crucial element for the success of the game is how well this innovative fear/trust feature is implemented in your team’s Al. You really need to feel like these are real people, if the tension that made the film so great is to be recreated. How they respond to your actions and, and how well they generate fear and mistrust in yourself will determine if you really do become totally involved in the story. It’s the difference between the game being nothing more than a nice-looking, third-person shooter (a sort of Resident Evil in the snow) and it marking a new high in believable, interactive artificial intelligence.

Even the greatest story- and character-dnven games like Deus Ex haven’t managed to build people around you who can fool you into thinking they’re human beings. The Thing won't be able to go that far just yet, but if it gets anywhere near, it’s a step in the right direction. If it can make you care about the characters around you (really care, as opposed to having a good laugh every time they suffer) it will have achieved something very few games have - and certainly no action game has managed. And if you feel affection for them, imagine how much worse rt will be to see one of them turn on you because they think you’re an alien or, even worse, transform into a monster in front of your very eyes, ripping apart the human shell you've been working alongside all this time.

In certain circumstances, losing members of your crew (either to insanity or the alien) will make your life much more difficult, not only reducing your team's firepower, but also depriving you of the way to solve certain puzzles. To work around this, Computer Artworks is ensuring there will be more than one way to get out of a scrape, and objectives will remain flexible throughout the game.

Target Acquired

The game is played from a third-person perspective - as you may have figured out already - and while the controls are similar to an FPS, with a combination of mouse and keyboard, there are a few subtle differences. Running and crouching are both activated as toggles and you can't jump. But the most noticeable change is the absence of an on-screen crosshair, although this doesn’t mean automatic targeting (at least not to a full extent). Instead, there is a targeting mode that shifts perspective to first-person, keeps you still and adds a crosshair. It’s a bit odd at first, and an obvious concession to a console’s joypad, with Metal Gear Solid 2 as the main reference point. But if you want to hit those crawling creatures square in the eye and put the right target ablaze with your flame-thrower, you’re going to have to get used to it.

An original touch is added by way of using both your hands for separate functions, with each mouse button controlling one. With your right hand you use weapons (machine guns, shotguns, even a handy sniper rifle) while with your left you use other objects (torch, flares, grenades and so on). This means you can hold a flare in one hand while shooting with the other without having to resort to some strange gun-mounted torch.

Cold As Hell

Another console element that’s crept into the game is the saving method, which follows the old Resident Evil formula, swapping typewriters with tape recorders. You’ll only be able to save at these points, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Us PC gamers need to lose that bad habit of saving our game every few seconds.

Since, like Half-Life, the whole game takes place in one location, you can’t expect too much variety in the environments. The outside setting is recreated very convincingly, with snowstorms obscuring your vision most of the time and the below zero temperatures decreasing a bodyheat bar with every passing moment. If you don’t find shelter every so often you’ll freeze to death, adding a time-limit edge to the missions where you have to find a way into locked bases and cabins. These buildings have a bit of a boxy look to them, but are given life by the fact this is the same camp the team in the film lived in. You also get to explore the Norwegian base that MacReady visits briefly in the film, complete with carved ice block and Norwegian corpses. One thing you won’t be getting from the movie though is Ennio Morricone’s brilliant and unnerving score, as the game features its own music.

Unnatural Order

Another important element when commanding a team is the interface. It’s no use having a whole set of commands available to you if you have to distract yourself from the action for so long that you lose interest. As you’d expect from a title that’s also being developed for consoles, the interface here is simple, intuitive and a few button taps away.

All you need to do is press the team interface button when you have members of your team around you, and you’ll be able to see the health and mental state of each one as well as the weapons they’re carrying. You can give them the collective order to follow you or stay put, or click on each guy’s face for individual orders. So, if you need an access panel repaired you get your engineer to go over and fix it. You can also give them weapons and ammo or make them give you theirs. Whether they trust you enough to do so. though, is another matter entirely.

If they don't, you can either try to earn their trust (by sharing ammo, healing them, killing monsters and proving your humanity with a syringe) or. for a quick fix. put a gun to their head and force them to do what you want. Don’t turn your back on them if you do that though...

Computer Artworks is already planning sequels. It will be interesting to see how they expand on the premise set out in the film, and whether they will succeed into turning it into some kind of Aliens-style franchise. They’re already working on a way to create random, free-flowing monsters rather than the stock ones available here. And storywise. you can easily imagine a scenario where the film’s computer prediction about how long it would take for the whole global population to get infected if the alien virus got out was taken to its conclusion. Who knows, maybe all this will inspire John Carpenter to make another film? Actually, let’s hope that never happens. Nobody wants another Ghosts of Mars.

This page is for the 2002 game based on the John Carpenter film of the same name. For the unrelated 1988 game, see The Thing (1988).

Availability[edit]

This game is not available digitally.

Essential improvements[edit]

Patches[edit]

Patch 1.2 adds mouse look (enable in options under advanced controls).

Bump mapping[edit]

Game data[edit]

Configuration file(s) location[edit]

Things App For Mac

Save game data location[edit]

Video[edit]

Widescreen resolution[edit]

The Thing Game Macready

Input[edit]

Audio[edit]

Localizations

Issues fixed[edit]

White screen, no intro movie error[edit]

Missing data paths will result in a white and black screen when starting the game or broken menu graphics.

VR support[edit]

Other information[edit]

API[edit]

Middleware[edit]

Enabling cheats[edit]

System requirements[edit]

Notes

1. ↑When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References

1. ↑The Thing for Windows (2002) Tech Info - MobyGames - last accessed on November 30, 2016