Carrier

"A Resident Evil clone that turns out being kind of original"

Let me get this out of the way first, Carrier is definitely a Resident Evil clone, but it is a really good Resident Evil Clone.

Controls

While Carrier retains the standard ''push up to move forward'' control scheme of past survival horror games, it manages to tweak the rest of the control. Carrier allows you to aim at any level rather than the three assigned heights of the Resident Evil series, when aiming at an enemy a blue cursor appears over top of them, it also factors in the instant 180 degree step used in later RE games. All this combines to make combat in Carrier very user friendly. Secondly, the game uses a first person perspective scope which helps a great deal with some of the constricting camera angles common to the Survival Horror genre. You will find it much easier to control this game than any Capcom ventures, though if you're new to the Genre it may take a little getting used to.
910

Graphics

Carrier has some gorgeous graphics, characters look realistic and there are nice touches like footsteps of blood, however the game is always dark, much too dark. If the game was better lighted I would give it a ten but as it stands that draws from the score. The Game contains a lot of details that add to the realism, it actually feels like you're on an abandoned aircraft carrier, background details like wipers on the bridge windows help to tie the game together.
910

Gameplay

Carrier is fairly traditional Survival Horror style gameplay, if you enjoy the RE or Dino Crisis games you'll probably like this. This game contains significantly less ''artificial challenge'' then the RE games, there is much less back tracking making it a much less frustrating game. However the game doesn't contain the same, well designed, well integrated, puzzles that made the RE series what it is today. The small amount of backtracking involved is made significantly easier by the built in map function, the maps are much better drawn than those of RE.
810

Story line

The story is pretty interesting, You start the game as Jack Ingles, a special forces soldier. Your team boards an aircraft carrier that hasn't been responding to communications. Before long you discover that the ship is infested with monsters and you're brother is somewhere in the middle of all this, add to that the fact that your team has been split up. The Non-Playable characters have a lot of personality, for the most part, several of them even have accents. The realism the characters portray helps make the story much more believable.
1010

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/20/01, Updated 08/20/01