Post by Keith Heitmann on Mar 17, 2003 0:03:27 GMT -5
I just completed a week of playing the FPS game "The Thing." Personally, I think it should be subtitled "Dead Again" because of the number of times I died trying to complete each level. The game has a good story line and the monsterous creatures that have taken over the antarctic Outpost 31 are very viscious.
There are 10 long levels in this game with each level broken up into smaller segments, and not all of them require the killing of creatures. There are also troopers running around under the command of a mysterous commanding officer that is trying to thrart your mission to destroy the base and its contents.
There are three major boss creatures in the game that prove to be a real challenge but they can be dealt with once you figure out their weaknesses.
The other creatures are broken down into various "walker" types and smaller fast moving creatures called "scuttlers" because they sort of scuttle along the floor quickly as they attack you. The walker creatures are to main types, the standard distorted humanoid bi-ped walker with long overly long arms that have sharp ends, and the four legged "bulldog" walker that has a long pointed appendage where a head might be tht i uses to attack you before the mouth full of teeth rip you to shreds.
The larger walkes will spawn smaller scuttlers as they die or at various times when they are attacking you. Not only that you have to beware of the numerous corpses of the station crew that are strewn about because they will occasionally spawn scuttlers to attack you too.
As you move through the base you'll encounter all sorts or problems inside and out. The weather outside is in blizzard condition and the temps are -40 F below zero and your time outside is limited so you spend a lot of time running back to buildings or sheltered areas to recover. If you take too long to do this your health will star to drop severly as your body begins to freeze.
There are various traps the infected personel will set for you. Infected personel will at some point in time burst out into a bi-ped walker, the problem is that you don't always know who is or is not infected. There are a limited number of test kits you must find and use on yourself to calm the fears of various people you meet or on them to detect if they are infected or not. Infected blood will burst the tube on the syringe you use.
People that are not infected must maintain their trust in your and to keep their trust you must arm them and keep them supplied with weapons and patch them up with health kits you find if they get wounded in a fight. If they aren't treated quickly they could die and thus prevent you from completing a level. Some are health workers, other are engineers, or other outpost crew. You'll need their help on a number of levels, and often as you move on to the next level you'll move on alone.
You'll have to solve puzzles as you progress through some levels figuring out how to make things work and what to do with them when you do get them to work.
Then when you've finally worked your self down into the bowels of the outpost and killed off the boss down there you have to escape backup the way you came in on the next to last level. As you leave the outpost will erupt in a series of explosions and fires. Using a fire extinguisher and moveing carefully you have to work your way backup a ramp you recently had to fight your way down. And you'll have to fight your way out.
You'll have to kill off a group of snipers and more troopers waiting on you outside as you move through a frozen ice canyon. Using your powerful sniper rifle to litterally blow the heads off the troopers, and your MP5 you'll have to battle your way and the cold to a dome building with a maze, more troopers and laser trip mines inside.
Once you clear this building you face a nest of 5 more snipers outside.
After this you face the the Whitley Boss and the final scene of the game. A helicopter arrives and you use it and some areal gunnery using its M60 to set off groups of fuel drums nearby and shoot at the boss.
There to two major complaints I have about this game:
1. You can only save at selected points in the game. So if you have to quit and you haven't quite gotten to that next save station, you'll have to repeat the last portion of the level all over again when your resume play.
2. There is a crash problem with the final cut scene of the game. After kill the final boss the cut scene starts to load and the game crashes with a illegal operation error message. There is a patch but I played it without the patch.
There is a registry hack you can use to bypass that save game problem. By adding a specific line "DoInGameSave" with a binary value of "1" you can make the game save to a file called TestBetaGame and resume from there, although you must use the LOAD SAVE option from the Main Menu and not the LOAD SAVE option the game popsup when you get killed.
The graphics are good, movements are fluid, sounds are great and there is a great amount of challenge to this game and a equal amount of frustration.
There are 10 long levels in this game with each level broken up into smaller segments, and not all of them require the killing of creatures. There are also troopers running around under the command of a mysterous commanding officer that is trying to thrart your mission to destroy the base and its contents.
There are three major boss creatures in the game that prove to be a real challenge but they can be dealt with once you figure out their weaknesses.
The other creatures are broken down into various "walker" types and smaller fast moving creatures called "scuttlers" because they sort of scuttle along the floor quickly as they attack you. The walker creatures are to main types, the standard distorted humanoid bi-ped walker with long overly long arms that have sharp ends, and the four legged "bulldog" walker that has a long pointed appendage where a head might be tht i uses to attack you before the mouth full of teeth rip you to shreds.
The larger walkes will spawn smaller scuttlers as they die or at various times when they are attacking you. Not only that you have to beware of the numerous corpses of the station crew that are strewn about because they will occasionally spawn scuttlers to attack you too.
As you move through the base you'll encounter all sorts or problems inside and out. The weather outside is in blizzard condition and the temps are -40 F below zero and your time outside is limited so you spend a lot of time running back to buildings or sheltered areas to recover. If you take too long to do this your health will star to drop severly as your body begins to freeze.
There are various traps the infected personel will set for you. Infected personel will at some point in time burst out into a bi-ped walker, the problem is that you don't always know who is or is not infected. There are a limited number of test kits you must find and use on yourself to calm the fears of various people you meet or on them to detect if they are infected or not. Infected blood will burst the tube on the syringe you use.
People that are not infected must maintain their trust in your and to keep their trust you must arm them and keep them supplied with weapons and patch them up with health kits you find if they get wounded in a fight. If they aren't treated quickly they could die and thus prevent you from completing a level. Some are health workers, other are engineers, or other outpost crew. You'll need their help on a number of levels, and often as you move on to the next level you'll move on alone.
You'll have to solve puzzles as you progress through some levels figuring out how to make things work and what to do with them when you do get them to work.
Then when you've finally worked your self down into the bowels of the outpost and killed off the boss down there you have to escape backup the way you came in on the next to last level. As you leave the outpost will erupt in a series of explosions and fires. Using a fire extinguisher and moveing carefully you have to work your way backup a ramp you recently had to fight your way down. And you'll have to fight your way out.
You'll have to kill off a group of snipers and more troopers waiting on you outside as you move through a frozen ice canyon. Using your powerful sniper rifle to litterally blow the heads off the troopers, and your MP5 you'll have to battle your way and the cold to a dome building with a maze, more troopers and laser trip mines inside.
Once you clear this building you face a nest of 5 more snipers outside.
After this you face the the Whitley Boss and the final scene of the game. A helicopter arrives and you use it and some areal gunnery using its M60 to set off groups of fuel drums nearby and shoot at the boss.
There to two major complaints I have about this game:
1. You can only save at selected points in the game. So if you have to quit and you haven't quite gotten to that next save station, you'll have to repeat the last portion of the level all over again when your resume play.
2. There is a crash problem with the final cut scene of the game. After kill the final boss the cut scene starts to load and the game crashes with a illegal operation error message. There is a patch but I played it without the patch.
There is a registry hack you can use to bypass that save game problem. By adding a specific line "DoInGameSave" with a binary value of "1" you can make the game save to a file called TestBetaGame and resume from there, although you must use the LOAD SAVE option from the Main Menu and not the LOAD SAVE option the game popsup when you get killed.
The graphics are good, movements are fluid, sounds are great and there is a great amount of challenge to this game and a equal amount of frustration.