The Art of Remastering a Mid Game

We often celebrate the best works of all time, though often that just translates to whatever is most popular. What’s most commercially viable. That’s why you see so many franchises forever in stasis, delisted or unpatched and often out of feasible reach. Where corporate CEOs see the emulation and modding scenes are people daring to encroach on their PROFITS! The reality is most just want to be able to play the games, and have no other means.

That’s where studios like Nightdive come in. They’ve finally gone beyond the obvious classics, though they still sometimes dabble in bigger profile IPs, and have instead drawn their focus to the games that didn’t set the world on fire. And I love that.

And to be clear, this is not a review of The Thing (2002) or its remaster. I will say that if you want to play it, play the remaster, which is so much less frustrating. That said, it’s still a pretty mid game. You don’t have to play it. The latter half of the campaign is basically a poor man’s F.E.A.R. with a little Dead Space for good measure.

In 2002, neither of those games existed, so that probably lent The Thing a great deal more novelty. In 2025 though, it is hilariously absurd that over 90% of the systems you’re belabored to learn in the game’s tutorial do not matter at all by the end. I’m serious, the final boss is just a turret section. Like all The Thing follow-ups (movies or otherwise), it’s just incredibly hard to iterate on John Carpenter’s original classic film.

So yeah, The Thing is not a masterpiece. Yet it is fascinating. One of the ways The Thing shines is the trust/infection system. It even harnesses a blood test to ID infected teammates. Where your squad getting infected was originally highly scripted, they’ve lightly adjusted things to be more unpredictable. Layering this on top of more traditional squad mechanics is novel, if clunky. The radial menus are very forward thinking. The game’s attempts to build upon and resolve the original film’s story are noteworthy, even if its own narrative additions are as utterly pointless as Carpenter’s face cameo as the scientist Dr. Farraday. It’s more like if a Resident Evil plot invaded MacReady’s arctic base from the film.

Yet there are obvious improvements – like the vast lighting tune-up, the material layering, the added blue tint in the style of the movie, the better controls, and so on. The crucial thing is that these improvements help the vision shine without changing it into a different game. This remaster captures the highs and lows of the original game.

Yes, that damn stairwell towards the Armory towards the end of the game is one of the most masochistic, poorly assembled grudge matches in gaming history. It’s infuriating at the best of times. It should be there, though. It was designed to be there. The player just has an easier time navigating the hazards with improved aiming and controls.

It still feels like a shooter from the turn of the millennium, but that’s the point. The hit reactions from enemies are muted. Though you hit more reliably now, the aiming is still in this weird space that is distinctly of the era, with a stronger emphasis on spray and pray. Your reticle is a static sprite but your character is trying to do the sort of dynamic reaction to twisting and turning that is commonplace in modern shooters. It isn’t as satisfying as it could be, but that’s okay.

Even the recent Angel of Darkness remaster by Aspyr now features not only restored cut content but several quality of life features that make the infamous sixth Core Design game worth playing. It’s still a mess, but sometimes the mess is the point. Even something seemingly dated can be crucial to maintaining a game’s goals. So making these old, mid games accessible to modern audiences takes careful work.

That really sticks with me in the case of The Thing. It’s not a game I imagine I’ll revisit eagerly, once was definitely enough. Yet, getting to experience it at all, let alone in this glammed up, ideal state, was still a treat. Too many games are still a nightmare to get running, let alone with all its bells and whistles working properly.

Though not every game will get this remaster treatment, the more oddities and outliers do, the more ideas will be reintroduced. A new game with the trust/infection system could be outstanding. These squad mechanics with a proper user interface redesign could make for a great squad shooter. These rendering techniques demonstrate how good even early PS2 era polycounts can look with the right lighting. The more we preserve the experiments that time left behind, the better the odds are that we won’t forget their lessons. That’s worth enduring one of the worst damn stairwells in the history of 2002 gaming.

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A review code for The Thing: Remastered was provided by Nightdive studios.

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Elijah Beahm is an author for Lost in Cult that Unwinnable graciously lets ramble about progressive religion and obscure media. When not consulting on indie games, he can be found on BlueSky and YouTube. He is still waiting for Dead Space 4.