27 years ago The Thing was released in theaters and while it wasn’t as big as E.T. it soon grew a cult following and made it one of the best Sci-Fi horror films of all time and basically is the grittier of the two alien films. Several years ago after the film celebrated it’s twentieth anniversary a game based on the ‘82 horror fest was released on the PC, Xbox,and Playstation 2. It deals with the military going in and attempting to clean up the mess made by the Norwegian team and the American team. The game does feature the last two characters of the film, Childs and MacReady. And the alien life forms from the film are featured showing what their base form is.(Something John Carpenter didn’t want to show) 
The gameplay is built on a fear and trust system reminiscent of how things were in the film with people refusing to go with you unless you give them a weapon to defend themselves. Also the shooting is part strafing and part Resident Evil style stopping to shoot. The game features guns ranging from pistols to shotguns,grenades,and flame throwers to defeat the Thing beasts.
Now that I have told you guys all this how about you get the game and play it. Here’s a trailer for it.
day and is now a shadow of it’s former self. Interplay had many IP’s including Earthworm Jim, MDK, Decent, Bard’s Tale,Baldur’s Gate, Clay Fighter, and Fallout. With all those games it seemed like Interplay would be on top of the world. Interplay was founded in 1983 by Brian Fargo (Now at InXile Entertainment). Interplay soon made a name for itself by creating great CRPG’s with The Bard’s Tale and Wasteland. Interplay also had a similarity with Bethesda, they both loved making Star Trek games. About 14 years after Interplay began, they released one of the greatest role-playing games of all time, Fallout. Which was the spiritual successor to Wasteland (EA had the rights to Wasteland so a sequel could not be done at the time) the mix of retro-futuristic elements and the post-apocalyptic setting made Fallout a smash hit. But not one of Interplay’s big IP’s. That was Bladur’s Gate a D & D game developed by Bioware.
While I may have what some may call a hatred towards Activision for how they milk IP’s I am fond of one of their subsidiaries Raven Software. Raven Software based in Middleton, Wisconsin are the developers behind games like Quake 4, Star Wars: Jedi Academy,the recent Wolverine game, and the upcoming Wolfenstein which is a reboot of the grandfather of the FPS genre. Raven was started back in 1990 by Brian and Steve Raffel. Raven Software, although owned by Activision is a group of really talented people.
ckstar released the cult classic Max Payne and what followed was the sequel, “The Fall Of Max Payne” which was criticized for it’s length and the lack of replay value. Next was the inevitable movie starring Mark Wahlberg and that movie failed due to bad directing. And in 2010 Max Payne 3 will be released for the Xbox 360, PS3,and PC. So now I am taking a look back at Max Payne 1. If any of you have ever played Max Payne you will know that he is largely based off of The Punisher since he is a cop who’s family is murdered and is hunting the people who took his family away from him. Also rather than having cutscenes most of the story in the game is presented in the style of graphic novels and even film elements. For instance when you are going through a building you take out a group of drug dealers and as you are killing them from afar it goes to a ceiling cam and it shows the bullets hitting them in slow motion.
