Burn, Hollywood, burn!
Taking down Tinsletown!

The infrequent large 'boss' enemies are a particular treat - they really have gone to town with these, turning them into large squelchy horrors that match pretty closely some of the images from the film. Boss monsters are a staple of console gaming so belie the cross platform design of the game. Usually, the boss has one gimmick vulnerability that requires several attempts to find and then exploit. While that is the case partially with the Thing, there are a satisfying number of times that just plain slugging it out with the Thing will suffice. Assuming you have been careful with your ammunition and can afford to do so that is...

There is a second frustration with the game design that detracts a bit and that is the fairly high turn over rate of party members between levels. Having done the hard work to make the squad mates believable characters who can and will freak out, throw up or try to kill you they then diminish that aspect by too frequently stripping all the squadmates away and leaving you on your own. Twice this is done fairly enough as part of the story but there are very irritating sequences where activating a trigger point forces a teammate to become a Thing and attack. It has two major effects, firstly the bloodtest kit becomes that bit more useless as it can report someone to be fully human only for them a scant few seconds later to breakout into a Thing and attack. Secondly it promotes some cheap tactics where slaughtering a teammate while they are still human becomes a useful tactic because they are easier to kill that way.

In game cinematics advance the story nicely.

Other games do use trigger activated scripting to advance their story, Half Life for example but, given the careful work done to make the squad AIs be so reactive to their environment and to you, it is such a shame that the more intrusive scripting had to be used. With a little more design work it should have been possible to not need those triggers and that would have pushed the game into classic status. As it is the game is very fun but thanks to slightly too intrusive scripting has diminished replay value. Well, diminished conventional replay value - already a few people have been exploring the various ways the AIs can commit suicide when you push them too far.

Barrels simply must die!

If you like survival horror games or are a fan of the film, this game is well worth your time to check out. It stands as an example of movie to game conversion that does justice to the film while taking the survival horror genre in a new direction with fully AI controlled teammates that are genuinely useful, not frustrating and are much more realised characters than the stock automatons we have been used to. But for the two glaring defects in the game design this game would have been an instant classic, instead we have to settle with a really good game.