History VideoGame / TheThing2002

''The Thing'' is a SurvivalHorror game developed by Computer Artworks and published by Black Label Games, a publishing label of Creator/VivendiUniversalGames. It was released for Platform/PlayStation2 on August 19th, 2002, for [[Platform/IBMPersonalComputer PC]] the following day, and for Platform/{{Xbox}} on September 9th, 2002. It acts as a sequel to the film ''Film/TheThing1982''.

* MarketBasedTitle: It's known in Japanese as ''遊星からの物体X Episode II'', or "Object from Planet X Episode II".

* WeAreStrugglingTogether: The ParanoiaFuel affects your squadmates: they don't know that you're not the Thing, and you don't know that they're not the Thing, not for sure. You can use the blood test kits to verify if your teammates are human, but more importantly, you can use the kits to show them that ''you're'' human. If you don't, and they get paranoid and freaked out enough, they ''will'' try to ''kill you''. That's actually a far greater danger than having them "thing-out" as, rather like the movie, the actual Things are {{Clipped Wing Angel|s}} and quite quickly killed off after revealing themselves.

''The Thing'' is a SurvivalHorror game, released for UsefulNotes/Playstation2 on August 19th, 2002, for [[UsefulNotes/IBMPersonalComputer PC]] the following day and for UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}} on September 9th, 2002. It acts as a sequel to the film ''Film/TheThing1982''. Konami is involved in publishing the games in the UsefulNotes/Playstation2 with Vivendi Universal.

!!The video game contains examples of:

* TheEighties: Like the film it's based on, the game takes place in 1982, three months after the events of the movie.

* AndThenJohnWasAZombie: Handled similarly to the film, but sadly not a tenth as scary, as the revealed Things are scripted events, don't really look like much and are killed off almost immediately.
* ArmiesAreEvil: Unsurprisingly, the US military wants to weaponize the Thing as a BOW (Biological Organic Weapon). [[spoiler:Colonel Whitley]] even [[BadBoss shoots]] Dr. Faraday when he objects.

* BigBad: [[spoiler:Colonel R.C. Whitley]].

* BossBattle: There are 3 boss fights against exceptionally large versions of the Thing seemingly made of multiple bodies, similar to the Blair-Thing confronted at the end of the film. There's also a FinalBoss fight against [[spoiler: The skyscraper-sized Thing that Whitley turns into after fully losing control of his human form.]]

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Carter and Cruz, the first two squad mates you receive after encountering the Thing, turn out to be infected, but neither of them attack you when you're alone with them, and if you give them the blood test before the scripted event that turns them into Things, it shows that they're human, while there is dynamic infection and testing, teammates are scripted to reveal themselves as Things when you hit certain plot flags even if you've just tested them and confirmed they were human. This is mostly so the game can get you alone whenever it requires you to be alone, this combined with the somewhat low infection rate for [=NPCs=] means it's entirely possible for none of your team to get infected and reveal themselves before the game is scripted to do it anyway to have you be alone.
** About the only squadmate you're likely to see a non-scripted Thing transformation from is Cohen the medic, as the long series of stairwells he and you fight your way through are crawling with so many head-crawlers he's likely to take enough hits to get infected unless you bust your ass protecting him.
** On a similar note, this means any [=NPCs=] that's survival is currently a game over condition (Such as Engineers for opening fuse boxes) will seemingly never get infected...until the game decides they have outlived their plot armor and they usually then get a scripted transformation.

* EerieArcticResearchStation: The game continues from the first film after a rescue team is sent to investigate the remains of Outpost 31, then later runs into even more aliens at different research outposts and covert military bases across the continent.
* ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: US Special Forces units from the Arctic Marines are called in to investigate what happened in Antartica.

* EmergencyWeapon: There are arguably three:
** The Pistol is the least effective weapon but it's got a decent supply of ammo which can be helpful if you find yourself running low on submachine gun ammo. (Such as having to share it up to 4 squadmates.)
** The Blowtorch is VERY short-ranged (To the point where if you use it without going into first person so it's angled downwards like the flamethrower, you'll burn yourself if you're not moving backwards) but it gives you an alternative weapon for finishing off things if Incendiary Grenades/the proper Flamethrower is not an option.
** The Stun Gun can only kill human enemies, however it can stun the weaker types of Thing and be used to disarm squad members if they're behaving erratic with a firearm/turned hostile to defuse the situation.

* FleshGolem: Not explained particularly well, but some of the creatures, particularly the 150-foot tall monstrosity, greatly exceed a human in mass, thus implying they are made of several humans processed into pure biomass and fused together.

* GoryDiscretionShot: Subverted. When one of the squad mates early in the game commits suicide, it seems like the game won't show it...and then he blows his brains all over the wall in full view. And you can examine the massive hole in his head after you regain control.

* KillItWithFire: This is averted with the Spiderhead Things and Exposed Things as they can be permanently killed with conventional firearms. The larger Things including the Bosses play this trope straight but can also be finished off with high explosives [[spoiler:as a nod to how [=MacReady=] killed the Blair Thing at the end of the film.]].

* LighterAndSofter: An inadvertent byproduct of expanding the arena (you aren't trapped in a tiny little space with an unknown number of monsters running around in disguise as in the movie), giving you far superior weaponry, and the limitations of the graphics of the time. In the movie, the "thing-outs" were both {{nausea|fuel}}ting and [[NightmareFuel terrifying]]; here they are almost casual events, happening to cardboard cutout characters, and quite quickly disposed of.

* MarketBasedTitle: It's known in Japanese as 遊星からの物体X episodeII or Object from Planet X episodeII.
* MeleeATrois: Things and enemy soldiers will fight each other as well as you and your squad. Since the soldiers lack fire-based weapons they will get wrecked against anything but the small crawling head-Things.

* SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear: The game does this practically every level. This game isn't an RPG but is filled with {{Guest Star Party Member}}s. It's a SurvivalHorror game, so ammunition and weaponry are limited. Your party members seem to desert you after each load screen for a new level and take the weapons with them. They apparently think that they have a better chance without the guy who gave them their guns.
* StressVomit: Your teammates do this, a lot, usually in response to gory visuals. You can even get them to go in stereo if you're really good!

* VomitIndiscretionShot: Characters tend to vomit on a regular basis. The puke-o-rama is a reaction that the [=NPCs=] have to gruesome and outright mind-damaging sights like carcasses, splatterage and the occasional roasted Thing-bits here and there. It's up to you as Blake to calm down their nerves by usually taking them away from where the offending sight is for a breather.
* WeAreStrugglingTogether: The ParanoiaFuel affects your squadmates: they don't know that you're not the Thing, and you don't know that they're not the Thing, not for sure. You can use the blood test kits to verify if your teammates are human, but more importantly, you can use the kits to show them that ''you're'' human. If you don't, and they get paranoid and freaked out enough, they ''will'' try to ''kill you''. That's actually a far greater danger than having them "thing-out" as, rather like the movie, the actual Things are [[ClippedWingAngel Clipped Wing Angels]] and quite quickly killed off after revealing themselves.

* TheyLookLikeUsNow: Par for the course, it ''is'' based on the film. However, you get a blood test kit, consisting of a syringe gun that introduces a chemical that reacts to the blood by releasing heat. If the syringe breaks, the test subject drops the disguise. If not, they relax a little. [[GameplayAndStorySegregation However, certain enemies transform during scripted events, even if you test them beforehand and they're declared "clean".]]
* UncertainDoom: Not all your teammates have a scripted death or Thing transformation. If you can keep them alive, several simply disappear between levels (lost in the storm, captured by Gen Inc, just straight up vanishing) with their ultimate fate left unknown.

* BerserkButton: Combined with AFatherToHisMen. Blake cares a lot for the men under his command and he throws himself in rage at [[spoiler:Colonel Whitley]] when the latter taunts him over Blake's men dying/getting infected while fighting The Things.

* EvilAllAlong: [[spoiler:Colonel Whitley turns out to have been manipulating Blake all along from the beginning of the game by acting as his commanding officer. His ultimate end goal is to eventually infect the entire human race with the Cloud Virus and turn them into Things, starting with Blake's rescue team, in order to rule the planet.]]

* BigBad: [[spoiler:Col. R.C. Whitley]].

* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: There is a stage where the player descends a long staircase, and has to deal with automatic turrets on every level, scalding steam vents, seemingly endless streams of [[GoddamnBats scuttling creatures]] that pop out of dead bodies (and attack you from front and behind), and the medic, the only hope of surviving the stage, turns into a monster at random points. If the player doesn't have enough health packs, or enough firepower, it's impossible to get through the stage(though there is one way to make it easier, if you leave the medic near the top of the staircase and run back up to him to get healed instead of having him follow you, he doesn't seem to turn into a monster).
* TheVirus: [[spoiler:The covert military group researching [[TemptingFate (and trying to weaponize)]] the Thing actually classified it as the Cloud Virus, which could be FridgeBrilliance since actual viruses reproduce in a manner somewhat similar to the Thing - namely infiltrating a cell and then hijacking the machinery of said host cell to produce more copies of itself, render the cell difficult to detect by the immune system, and so on.]]
* VomitIndiscretionShot: Characters tend to vomit on a regular basis. The puke-o-rama is a reaction that the [=NPCs=] have to gruesome and outright mind-damaging sights like carcasses, splatterage, and the occasional roasted Thing-bits here and there. It's up to you as Blake to calm down their nerves by usually taking them away from where the offending sight for a breather.

* Emergency Weapon: There are arguably three:

[[caption-width-right:1000:Anoter team infiltrates the EerieArcticResearchStation.]]

After communications have been lost with Antarctic U.S. Outpost 31, a team of special forces is sent in to investigate. John Blake is the leader of one of the two units, and finds the Outpost destroyed and deserted, with the frozen body of Childs and a recording by R.J. [=MacReady=] offering little insight into what happened. When the second unit encounters more aliens at the Norwegian camp and gets decimated, Blake heads over and finds himself forced into a fight to stop the Things from spreading further.

* ElitesAreMoreGlamorous: US Special Forces units are called in to investigate what happened in Antartica.

''The Thing'' is a SurvivalHorror game, released for UsefulNotes/Playstation2 on August 19th, 2002, for [[UsefulNotes/IBMPersonalComputer PC]] the following day and for UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}} on September 9th, 2002. It acts as a sequel to the film ''Film/TheThing1982''. Konami is involved in publishing the games in the PS2 with Vivendi Universal.

* EliteAreMoreGlamorous: US Special Forces units are called in to investigate what happened in Antartica.

[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/250px-The_Thing_3.jpg]]

''The Thing'' is a SurvivalHorror game, released for UsefulNotes/Playstation2 on August 19th, 2002, for [[UsefulNotes/IBMPersonalComputer PC]] the following day and for UsefulNotes/{{Xbox}} on September 9th, 2002. It acts as a sequel to the film ''Film/TheThing1982''.

* ArmiesAreEvil: Unsurprisingly, the U.S. army wants to weaponize the Thing. [[spoiler:Colonel Whitley]] even [[BadBoss shoots]] Dr. Faraday when he objects.