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Intrepid Homoludens

"Do The Thing that you do so well!"

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Last night I finally seriously started playing The Thing (PC). I had capriciously bought it about 2 years ago when it first came out (why, oh why did I pay full price?) but for some reason hadn't touched it with conviction.

Now, I'm a rather ardent survival horror whore, and the game isn't too shabby. There were a good number of things (pun unintended) I would have done differently, but overall it's good enough to warrant a few hours of lights off, sound up session. The strategy elements are sufficiently interesting and necessarily very simplified, although it's disappointing to see that it wasn't more imaginatively crafted into the story proper - the NPCs you work with are systematically 'infested' at the service of the narrative, they could have been better if done unpredictably. Graphically, it works well enough as an action game, but the blockiness and lack of ambient effects (dynamic shadows, intensive lighting, etc.) had me grossly missing the Silent Hill games too often. The sound is perhaps the game's best work, with minimal use of music and moments where nothing but the howling winds of Antarctica are your only companions. I really wish they had styled this game more as a suspense type adventure, where the fighting is scarce and the psychological edge in character relationships cranked up to highest, where the dread of not knowing when the next awful sudden moment is far more frightening than the moment itself. My only apprehensive and tense feelings happened at the very beginning, just before the first fight with those little nasties. After that it became conventional and banal. But still, I'm having a rather good little time with this.

In short, I wish the Silent Hill development team (including the director and music composer) had been given this project and used the SH2 or SH3 engine.

Anyone else play it? Share thoughts, please.

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I'm just glad that they

essentially finished the (Kurt Russel version) movie.

I hate it/love it when they leave you hanging like they did.

Otherwise, yeah. My thoughts are about the same. This aint anything to write home to momma about, but I certainly found it enjoyable. Just not scary past the beginning. To me.

I always think of how much more awesome something could have been, but this had a lot of pieces in place that just needed the right shooshpah to make them work. It's close. It got very close.

SHOOSHPAH!

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