As this game follows on from John Carpenter's 1982 film of the same name, I felt duty bound to carry out some background research and watch The Thing again. Oh, it's a hard life being a reviewer…

The Thing takes the survival horror genre created by the classic Resident Evil series and enhances it with several good ideas to create some much-needed variety. You are Blake, the commander of a team sent to the Antarctic to find out why communications with two remote research bases has been lost. You arrive at the American base to discover that it has been levelled by a series of massive explosions and most of the buildings are now rubble. But what happened and why? It's your job to find out.

As I mentioned, this game follows directly on from the film and it works hard to remain very faithful to the film whilst still creating a new story and a new experience. There are some great touches that make it feel really authentic, such as the old style computers you can find to log onto and the audio recorders you use to save your progress (the film was made in 1982, remember?) You don't spend long at the American base, but you find a number of familiar sights including the miniature spaceship that the Thing was building, the trashed recreation room, the body of Childs still clutching his whiskey bottle and the audio record that MacReady (Kurt Russell's character) made. Once you've learned all you can there, you are dropped off at the Norwegian research base, as contact has been lost with the other investigation team. It is here that the true horror and scale of what is going on begins to unfold.

A tangible atmosphere of suspense and mistrust is created in this game and you will soon be of the opinion that the Mulder approach is the only one to take. Before long you discover that the base is swarming with some kind of alien organism that can perfectly reproduce any life form, including a human, right down to the clothes they are wearing. It also behaves just like the human it took over, so the only way to know for sure whether someone is human is by administering a blood test. And it is this element of the game that spices it up in a way that Resident Evil and the like don't have - because zombies can't pretend to be people. There is a simple trust and fear relationship that works very well with all of the people that you meet. When you first meet someone, they are unlikely to trust you. Doing things like healing their wounds, giving them a weapon and killing the things that attack will earn their trust. However, if you injure them during a firefight, confiscate their weapon or kill another team member you suspect of being a thing, then their trust for you will be reduced. The blood test hypos instill 100% trust, but they are in short supply and should be used sparingly.

Meanwhile, like anyone would in this hellish situation, your team members can get afraid. If they see a particularly grotesque corpse they might puke up or lose it altogether and run around hysterically, shooting everyone in sight. If this happens you can attempt to calm them with a shot of adrenaline and get them away from whatever freaked them out, but sometimes you have no choice but to kill in self-defence. Either way, just because someone is mistrusting or afraid doesn't mean they're not a thing, because things act exactly like real people and will go to any lengths to try and fool you.

You have a team of up to four people and you can assign or remove weapons and ammo and command them to stay put or come with you. The other element that adds to the game is that there are three types of people you can find; soldiers, medics and engineers. Soldiers are the best at using weapons, medics automatically heal you and your team mates as long as you are not under attack and engineers are vital for fixing broken door panels and damaged power supplies. All types are very good under fire and will shoot the mutated things with accuracy and efficiency.

The graphics of the game are dark and brooding creating a scary atmosphere, especially if you play this in the dark. The use of sound is very good too, you can hear the footsteps of the things as they approach and hear their hideous screeching as well. The sound effects of the weapons and explosions are good, but could have been a little meatier. Use of music is minimal, meaning that when the gloomy tones lifted from the film do kick in, it simply adds to the tension. The Thing has also gone for a third person perspective, rejecting the fixed camera angle used in most survival horror and this was a good decision. It makes controlling your man easier and the game plays a bit more like a shooter, meaning that the pace can be very frantic as things attack you from all directions.

The graphical detail on the humans isn't bad, but it's that of the things where it really excels. There are small spider creatures that are distorted human heads with scuttling insect-like legs growing out of them, blobby bits of flesh that spit green goop at you, mutated dog-like creatures and the bigger humanoid things that are grim parodies of the human form. These can move very fast and spawn spider things from a disgusting pouch, plus some spit streams of green puss all over you! The small things can be killed with regular weaponry but the bigger ones must be set on fire for them to die. All enemies are targeted and the colour of the target changes from green to red as they lose health. Only when the target is red can you let rip with the flamethrower and bring them down.

The weapons you have are the standard pistol, machine gun, shotgun, sniper rifle and grenade launcher, plus the all-important flamethrower and its less powerful cousin the blowtorch. These are all very realistic and the way the flames behave is also excellent, meaning you have to be very careful not to burn yourself or your comrades when you use it. The level designs are pretty good, leading you through claustrophobic buildings to find keys and access codes that are essential for your progress, whilst piecing together evidence to uncover what is really going on. There are plenty of cut-scenes to show the reactions of Blake and his team as events unfold.

I do have a couple of quibbles, they don't detract from the gameplay enough to spoil it too much, but they are annoyances nevertheless. Although your comrades are very good at shooting things, they really aren't so intelligent when it comes to following you. It is easy to get separated from them if you run too far ahead and they won't necessarily follow you into a building until you're quite a way in. They act really stupidly in this respect and it's a bit annoying. Also, the presentation of the game is somewhat disjointed and intrusive. The cut-scenes are often cut off just before they finish, meaning that you are jerked rudely out of the moment and the music is cut dead as well. Similarly, the loading is intrusive and there are some occasions where loading transports you to a new location, which is very disorientating. For example, on one occasion I was chasing a thing that wasn't quite dead and the action stopped suddenly, the loading screen came in, then there was a cut scene and both myself and my two team mates appeared in a different location with no sign of the thing. Another time an engineer who had been with me for a while disappeared completely and no mention of what happened to him was made in the next part of the game. It's not a big deal, but it doesn't quite flow as well as it could have done.

The Thing is a well-crafted, suspenseful and intelligent action adventure with a good balance of exploration and combat and a story worthy of carrying on that of the original film. The addition of the thing's ability to pretend to be human, the trust and fear factor of your comrades and having a team to command all enhances the gameplay and makes for a very enjoyable experience. Just remember though, anyone could be a thing, anyone at all. Even me…

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).