The Thing: Remastered Launches On Xbox Following Mixed Initial Reviews
Last week, we noted how The Thing: Remastered appeared to be heading to Xbox consoles on December 5th despite no official announcement from the publisher, and that’s exactly what happened – it’s out right now on the Xbox Store!
A small selection of reviews also went live last night for The Thing: Remastered, and they’re actually quite surprising to read. There’s plenty of positivity in these, but also some negativity – we’ll share some examples for you to read below.
“For what it’s worth, The Thing was never perfect. It has some weird speed in its overall gameplay and cringy dialogue that detract from its scarier elements, but those elements are still fun, and with the improvements that address a sore spot in its strength, The Thing: Remastered makes an interesting outlier of the horror genre that much more valuable.”
“Part of me wishes [Nightdive’s] effort was spent on a better game, but the other part is happy that I got to experience the absolute mess that is The Thing. I know it sounds weird to hear, “This is a mess; you should totally check it out,” but that’s what I’m saying.”
“Ported by Nightdive, The Thing looks fantastic and has all the bells and whistles you’d want from a remaster. As a follow-up to the cult 1982 movie, the story didn’t quite do it for me, and the gameplay, mostly with its AI companions, can be a bit annoying.”
“Nightdive is known for its warts & all approach to resurrecting old titles, so I can understand them not wanting them to change things up in any radical ways. Still, I think there was room for at least a few respectful improvements that wouldn’t have undermined the OG developers’ vision. Putting that one issue aside, however, this remains a terrific overall package that’s sure to delight fans of The Thing.”
“I commend the studio for what it achieved, but the limitations of the technology–and its design constraints–are much more apparent now, even with nostalgia-tinted glasses on. Nightdive has done a fantastic job of restoring this flawed but intriguing game, continuing its crucial work with game preservation.”
“Nightdive has simply made it look nicer on modern screens, run at approximately a bajillion frames per second, and updated the controls so they don’t make the modern player’s brain fall out of their head. Lovely stuff. I hope Nightdive keeps wearing other game studios’ skins.”
“The Thing stays interesting in its foibles even when it’s nowhere close to entertaining. And, on balance, I don’t regret my time with it. It’s a worthwhile bit of in-amber preservation, even if I don’t necessarily want to touch the insect inside if I can help it.”
If we look beyond the professional reviews, things are faring well on Steam and Xbox. The Steam verdict sits at “Very Positive” based on just over 100 ratings so far, while the Xbox Store (US) version has a perfect 5/5 score based on 44 user reviews as things stand. If you’re wondering, there’s no Metacritic average for any platform just yet.
We received our Xbox review code for The Thing: Remastered a few hours ago, so we’re hoping to provide our own verdict in the coming days. If you’re eager to buy it now though, it’s available for £24.99 / $29.99 on the Xbox Store.
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