The Thing: Remastered

The Thing: Remastered captures the essence of a timeless horror game and gives it a fresh coat of paint alongside some quality-of-life improvements for a modern audience.

The Thing was worth playing in 2002 and it still holds up today with all the convenient bells and whistles included in this faithful remaster.

Nightdive Studios has tackled this 2002 classic as its latest effort in games restoration and preservation, but more than that, the team actually fixed issues that held this game back when it was first released, making it arguably one of the most fascinating Nightdive remasters yet.

It works as it should, which is always a plus (even if it’s a little baffling at times), and I have no doubt that if you sank a half-dozen hours or so into the game back in 2002, you should find that the game is probably the same now as it was then. I think that if you don’t have that sense of nostalgia you’ll probably find the game a little lacking, but as PS2 remasters go, you could probably do a lot worse.

Ultimately, The Thing: Remastered is mostly successful in recapturing the essence of the film, but it just didn’t give me good reasons to care about the characters, nor did it offer gameplay that was engaging enough for me to want to spend more time in such a dreary world without Kurt Russell there to fire things up. Even after being remastered, The Thing may have been better off left in the ice.

The Thing: Remastered, like the original, tries as hard as it can to be like a good game. Do not believe it.

The remastered The Thing hasn’t aged nearly as well as its cinematic counterpart. Excessive hand-holding reduces the action to simplistic tedium, the sense of threat is virtually non-existent, and the clumsy AI feels like a relic from the turn of the millennium, complete with allies getting stuck on obstacles. The Thing: Remastered is best suited for fans of Carpenter’s work and nostalgic players looking to revisit what was once a cult action-horror experience.