Carrier Review

Overall Rating

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Carrier is a rather basic and poor quality third-person adventure game in the vein of Resident Evil. Where Capcom's thought provoking series laid suspense, horror, action and edge of the seat game play on thick, Carrier lacks them all. The story is one that has been done before (ship picks up alien artifact, becomes infected with virus, rescue team sent in etc. etc. etc.), and the game play is as thread bare as it comes. You control a member of the rescue squad trying to find out what went wrong on-board the colossal carrier vessel Heimdall. Your crew gets killed by creepy plant/zombie things, and then it's left to you to explore the ship and find answers. Along the way you'll pick up some new guns, find keys and shoot various zombies and monsters. All usual stuff for this genre I'm sure you'll agree. There are a few new ideas thrown in, such as the viewer that lets you identify whether survivors you meet are infected or not. If they are, pop a cap in them.

Carrier was released quite late on the Dreamcast, but you wouldn't be able to tell that from looking at it, as the whole look of the game is hideous. The character animation is shoddy; the interiors of the ship are basic and empty with only minimal texture mapping; the enemies are about as scary as Sooty and Sweep. If you've ever played Hybrid Heaven on the N64, you should know what I mean - totally bland, uninteractive backgrounds with a few flashing lights dotted about to make it look more 'realistic.' It doesn't.

Carrier doesn't just look bad though, it plays badly too. The dialog between characters is embarrassing and badly acted, and on top of this, it is just plain boring to play. You just end up running from room to room shooting identical zombies and looking through draws for ammo and mission specific items like floppy disks etc. It's just such a sloppy game, and it isn't a patch on Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Poor graphics, forgettable sound and effects, boring and repetitive game play are all things you'll get to witness if you play Carrier.