Carrier

"Survival horror at its best"

From the creators of the long forgotten and overlooked Saturn horror RPG Torico, comes Jaleco's first forray into the often mediocre genre of survival horror - and it has to be said this game is far greater than the sum of its parts. Before I go into that though, here's the plot - the time is the not too distant future and the world's two hemispheres are at war. In order to combat the evil south's plans of terrorist activity, the North constructs a huge aircraft carrier as its primary anti-terrorist unit. Following a successful mission, the craft (named the Heimdal) suddenly goes silent on the way back to the North. Fearing the worst, a specialist team is despatched to investigate. Naturally this team disappears and a second squad is sent in, to determine just what the hell is going on. Playing as Jack Ingles, your ship is shot down by the automated defence system of the Heimdal and you're left on your own...

And so off you go into the carrier. This being a survival horror game, it soon becomes apparent that a nasty organism has infected the crew and has turned most of them into (wait for it...) zombies.Ok, so the plot isn't at all original (anyone seen the movies Virus or Deep Rising? it's just like them, particularly the former), but as things progress it certainly gets a lot more interesting. Now the first thing which comes to most peoples minds is this - it's a Resident Evil clone! And surely being from a little known company and costing just £5 now, it must be crap. Right? Wrong! So very wrong!

Whilst it may lack the overall sheen of say, Code Veronica, the gameplay takes all the little problems that made the RE series infuriating and completely irons them out. Remember how saving the game was so annoying, what with the ink ribbons? Here you can save at any of the check points, which means it's not too easy or too difficult. The overall difficulty curve is just right too. Remember how the weapon aiming system of RE was utterly flawed? Here you can aim anywhere on the screen and also have a target which shows what body parts you're aiming for. And you can even use a viewing scope to go into a first person view to scan your environment and determine whether the NPCs are zombies or survivors. Whilst the environments aren't as richly detailed as CVs, they still look great and create an effective claustrophobic atmosphere. Similarly, though the voice acting isn't great, the characters are well defined and you actually care about them.

The enemies are something of a mixed bag. Some ideas like the ghost zombies who can only be fully seen by using the scope are great and make for some truly chilling moments. However, these are underused and some of the creatures are a bit well, unimaginative. The sound though is great. The music is inobtrusive and occassional things like the sound of distant welders being shot and echoing through the ship are very effective. Which leads us onto the weaponry. Unlike in RE, as many weapons as you like can be carried at once and they can be cycled through in real time, rather than having to use a paused menu screen. This makes strategic combat far easier and the action more intense. Although the actual variety of weapons is pretty small, none of them are useless and the amounts of ammo given are just about right.

Size wise, the game is very big. As well as playing through as Jack, once completed you can also access Jessifer Manning as a playable character. It's little touches like this, which whilst not at all original, do make Carrier a very good game indeed. The game is far less frustrating than many of its bigger name contemporaries and is generally full of nice little ideas. Maybe I'm just going mad, but I found this game to be a lot better than Code Veronica - the controls are easier to use and it manages to actually add a fair few subtle but effective ideas to the genre - and at £4.99, we really are looking at a pretty much essential purchase. Buy it now!

GRAPHICS - Some of the enemies are uninspired, but the main characters and environments are very detailed and polished. Nice lighting effects too. 8/10

SOUND - Nothing particularly spectacular, but once again the games little touches shine through (the distant welder noises being a great example). As for the voice acting - well you'll hear worse, but it's no Soul Reaver 2! 7/10

GAMEPLAY - By sorting out the little problems that hindered the Resident Evil series, the programmers have made probably the most playable survival horror game to date. Ok, sometimes it's quite easy to get stuck and the puzzles range from stupidly simple to brain bustingly cryptic, but it still can't detract from a very well thought out game. 8/10

LASTABILITY - The game is pretty large and has two playable characters, but like all of its ilk, there's little to entice replays once you've completed it. 7/10

OVERALL - 8/10 - This is honestly one of the best survival horror games I've ever played. Ok, it blatantly rips off the likes of Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil and a whole host of movies, but the fact that it improves upon them in many ways is highly commendable. And at such a ridiculously cheap price, you can't complain!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/07/02, Updated 12/07/02