Of no surprise to anyone given Nightdive's not exactly subtle tease earlier this week, cult classic squad-based survival horror shooter The Thing is getting a remaster - and it's launching later this year on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and PC.

The Thing, developed Computer Artworks and released back in 2002, serves as a direct sequel to John Carpenter's 1982 horror movie classic. It casts players as United States Army Special Forces member Captain Blake, who heads to the Antarctic outpost seen in the movie to find out what happened to its ill-fated research team.

The ensuing action is a third-person shoot-y kind of thing, with players able to get assistance from jittery survivors they meet along the way as they confront all manner of sinewy, alien-inhabited monstrosities. And the game did alright for itself back in the day, managing to shift over 1m copies - but Computer Artworks' collapse meant a planned sequel never emerged.

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Computer Artworks' 2002 videogame adaptation of 1982 movie The Thing was a ghoulish and gripping third-person shooter with some terrific mechanics that weren't quite fleshed out, flesh being the operative word. For instance: you can enlist surviving soldiers as squadmates, but are they really surviving soldiers, or are they human-shaped warrens of teeth and mandibles poised to split open and shower you in digestive juices? You have a limited supply of blood tests with which to determine whether any people you rescue are Things in waiting - and even as you're worrying about them, they're casting suspicious eyes at you, care of some embryonic "trust" and "fear" systems.

Sadly, much of this acute paranoia could be easily gamed out in practice - back in 2002, I deduced that contact with enemies increased the odds of infection, and adopted a policy of shooting anyone who'd been in my squad for too long. But it's the kind of system an intelligent remake could pounce upon and have fun with. Sadly, Nightdive are not working on a remake, like their previous System Shock remakes. They've just announced that they're making a remaster, due later this year. Still, I will take a Thing remaster and thus, the opportunity to write more about The Thing, over no remaster at all.

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