| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| Xbox | 5.80 |
| Overall | 5.80 |
|
This review is the opposite of my Bully one, this is bad game that I liked more than I should. The Thing has a very interesting premise, a horror game where you have to manage teamates fear and trust because anyone can be the thing. Well that premise never really makes it into the game, it tries but fails. Yes you gain teamates, yes they have bars telling you if they trust you or not. Yes they can have their fear increase making them turn to a crying ball on the floor. And all that has practically zero effect on the game. For about half the game you don't have partners and when you do they function just fine like 90% of the time. Simply give them a gun and ammo and they will always trust you. If they get afraid they usually become unafraid in a few seconds or you can hit them with adrenaline if need be. I never encountered a situation where they lost trust in me. The worse most unforgivable issue is that it does NOT matter who is the thing. The only reason this entire system is in place is to cause mistrust in a group but when the game makes no penalty for having an alien monster with you who cares. In fact the thing is extremely helpful. These teamates have roles; engineers, medics or soldiers (which there are like two the entire game). Engineers are required to move around the game so often times you cant kill them if you wanted to. Medics are great cause they heal you. They all have perfect accuracy making them a great help in combat. So what happens if they are the thing, nothing. They help you just like normal then at a later point it might simply transform and become a super easy enemy to kill. The value it brings from helping you vastly outweighs the stupid enemy it becomes. So basically you never have to worry about any of these stats, its a broken pointless system. Oh you also have blood tests you can use but it doesn't work. I have used it on people that come up clear and they become things later. The rest of the game doesn't fair much better. At first it seems like a really cool old school horror game but that illusion fades away quick. I am expecting low on ammo, you and your teamates struggling to survive horror adventure. Nope its an action fest with near infinite ammo. You never have to worry about bullets and you are constantly shooting things everywhere. Most are crappy little crabhead like monsters you simply shoot until they die. Others are the bigger things that you have to shoot till they are low on health then use a flamethrower to kill. That is about the extent of the combat variety. This is a shooter with completely crappy shooting. It has tank controls but mixed with twin stick but the stick commands are backwards. The guns auto lock on so you simply run around while spraying bullets. You can go into first person aiming but you cant move, only lean from side to side making this mode more trouble than its worth. Guns feel weak with little to no impact. The game is at its best when things calm down and you have to solve some type of puzzle or basically figure out where to go. At the start it feels right as it doesnt have much combat and the game lets you simply learn as you go. There are no giant arrows telling you where to go so exploration is key though there isn't much freedom. There are almost no puzzles, I would say the only thing resembling one has to do with switches on doors. By far the best moment of the game is where you lose all your weapons and you have to escape a lab where you have two potential squad members but are separated by doors with switches. You can open and close these but in the hall way is a giant thing, with no gun you will die. So you have to manage your way opening and closing doors and avoiding this monster while you assemble your team so that you can reach the guns, this works GREAT. Every once and a while this game will have a moment like that which gives me that feel of old school horror. But then the shit hits the fan and it all falls apart. Toward the end the game introduces human solider enemies, now you have to hide behind cover and get into horribly awkward shootouts. This is when a whole host of technical issues begin to show up, the last two hours is one of the biggest train wrecks I have ever seen in gaming. lets run down the list, your teammates become glitchy, not following you when you want. One of them totally disappeared when I went from one chapter to another. One of them is shown in a cutscene to want to kill you and then he joins your squad no problem later. The enemies are the biggest morons in history. If they stay behind cover and shoot they work ok but when they try to move they get brain dead. There was one cutscene showing a squad running out to get you, then the game starts and they run at you but don't shoot, one guy knelled in front as me as I shot him to death. The last section of the game is a giant maze of enemies and mine traps in which the enemies simply run into all the mines. I am not joking you can simply sit back and hear the explosions going off as they kill themselves. The bosses are just GARBAGE. The first one you encounter starts suddenly as you reach a door, a cutscene starts where you see the monster, the sound cuts off so its all silent, then you instantly start in the room with the boss hitting you before you can even react. All bosses are this sloppy, one of the last ones you can literally crouch in front of it and it won't hurt you. The final areas of the game are so frustrating and terrible, it becomes call of duty but a nightmare version of it. Just squads and squads of enemies making you slowly crawl from area to area, one mistake means you have to do it over again. There is a whole section built on totally random instant kills. It has a terrible final boss battle. I liked the slower parts of this game, the more horror parts. I kind of enjoyed the whole old school aspect of it as well. For a while I enjoyed the teammate system but that was before I realized nothing I did really mattered. In reality though this game is a total mess, a poorly, glitchy made mess of a game. It's got enough decent things to overcome its crappiness which is why I actually did enjoy it for the most part but I can't excuse what I played. This is a bad game that has a few redeeming aspects. |
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Posted by Dvader Sat, 13 Apr 2013 21:43:01
Sun, 14 Apr 2013 12:03:40
"This is a shooter with completely crappy shooting. The guns auto lock on so you simply run around while spraying bullets. " But I thought you liked GTA aiming? 
Sun, 14 Apr 2013 17:15:41
You would have liked it more had you played it in 2002.
Sun, 14 Apr 2013 18:42:41
Perhaps but still many of these glitches and issues are inexcusable.
Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:23:33
TBH the game looked kind of rank back when it released even, so I was never enticed into playing it.
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