John Carpenter’s The Thing made its way to theaters this time of the year in 1982 and E.T.-loving critics and audiences alike immediately hated it as they couldn’t fathom the idea of a biologically dangerous lifeform coming from the other side of the sea space to subjugate another. 40 years later, The Thing has found the vindication it deserved and is now regarded as one of the best films of all time – or at least as a much better film than E.T., and fans will probably be happy to learn that the film has a sequel that doesn’t suck.
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Yeah, naturally we aren’t talking about the awful prequel from 2011 that’s also called The Thing, we’re talking about the 2002 video game that’s also called The Thing. Much like the maligned prequel, it featured CGI monsters instead of the practical-effects ones we love from the original film but turns out that’s not as jarring when they inhabit a game that’s also entirely CGI.
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Much like the classic film, the game was also about paranoia, but instead of watching it while sitting on a comfy couch, we were right there, as members of a squad of up to 4 people.
Vivendi
The game has a creepy atmosphere but also features some nice flamethrower action that never allows players to feel like they’re superheroes. Unlike the original film, The Thing: The Game got great reviews from the get-go and sold well over a million copies, a pretty neat feat considering how even adaptations of successful games tend to fail hard. We’re assuming even John Carpenter liked it since he plays a whole-ass character – we sure as hell didn’t see him in the 2011 prequel. The devs, Computer Artworks, even began working on a sequel but had to cancel it because the company went bankrupt. Maybe this property really is cursed, maybe by then the company’s execs had all been replaced by doppelgangers hellbent on keeping this all under wraps.