Much like Resident Evil 2, Carrier offers two scenarios, first with a character named Jack then another with a character named Jessifer. The big difference is that you’re on a carrier ship on the seas after a previous search team stopped responding to communications. As with most horror games, something is turning people into mutated monsters.
Just like every other survival horror game that takes place on a boat or spaceship, everything starts to look alike, so without a walkthrough you can easily find yourself running in circles. Also of note is a weird quirk in the ship layout—there are certain decks that are sort of multilevel—you can climb up and down ladders and still be on the same deck. This multilayered design is not reflected on the map, making it even easier to get lost when trying to get back to a specific location because you actually have to go up or down a ladder to reach it. For instance, you’ll look at the map, which shows you’re standing directly in front of a door, yet you’re staring at a blank wall. That’s because you have to find the ladder to go up or down to get to the actual wall that holds that door. Argh!
The funny thing is I played this game almost 20 years ago, so when I loaded my old completed game save I was treated to a bonus feature—after playing through once, Jack gets sexier, wearing a chest-revealing V-neck shirt. Don’t get too excited; these are blocky, solid color Dreamcast graphics.
Speaking of visuals, this game is really dark. You can’t even see enemies walking towards you in hallways unless you turn up the brightness in the game options and set it to the max on your television as well.
You do get night vision goggles you can use to see in dark areas, and they also tell you if people you meet are infected. If they’re not infected you can talk to them and they become a survivor. But honestly I never checked anyone I ran into and no one turned monster. In fact, I didn’t use the night vision goggles at all. They are first person POV, and you can’t move or shoot while wearing them, so essentially they’re pointless. Not to mention, when you try to turn them on they take precious seconds to focus, and something could be on you before it even shows in the lens.
The controls are pretty smooth, but not without some issues. These are tank controls, but there is a quick turn button, however it tends to get “triggered” when you’re in the heat of battle due to the button combo being close to the combo for aiming downward at crawling enemies! Argh. As far as aiming goes, you do get targets when you are locked on to an enemy, and there is supposedly a way to adjust your aim to different parts of an enemy’s body, but I didn’t quite get the hang of it. I think the goal is to hold the trigger button, shift the stick to align it with the target you’re aiming for, and then just leave it there and shoot. Don’t actively try to aim constantly with the stick.
Weapons include a pistol, a sort of electric bolt gun with unlimited ammo, a machine gun, and even a rocket launcher for the last boss. Ammo supply will become an issue, because some enemies take a lot of hits to go down. Also, if you pick up all the ammo you find as Jack, it won’t be there for Jessifer, so you have to really think about leaving supplies behind. Ugh! Good thing for the unlimited electric bolt gun.
Another destructive item at your disposal is bombs; boxes in certain save rooms have unlimited supplies of them. Generally they are used for very specific reasons—like blowing up patches of giant poisonous mushrooms. Setting them off is not handy for regular combat. You have to place them down, trigger them, and then run away from them in like 5 seconds or you blow yourself up. Also, you have to equip them before using them, and you usually forget to equip your gun again right after you use a bomb, so the next time you face an enemy you find yourself planting a bomb instead of shooting a gun. Argh!
Enemies vary as the game progresses. One of the main enemies looks like the flower face zombies from Resident Evil 4 years before that game existed. Some enemies are like fast zombies. Some nail you with spikes that burst from their chests when they’re near you. Other enemies spawn from the plants growing over hall walls and ceilings. A big hanging enemy drops to the floor when you shoot it and then gets up and looks like a big praying mantis. Eek! Big bugs hop along the floor and swarm you. Plus, there are various invisible enemies. I guess you could waste time looking for them through your special goggles, but I would just blindly shoot, which would cause them to become visible temporarily, and then I would keep shooting once I was locked on them. The enemies seem to get more aggressive, take more bullets to kill, and come in small groups in tight areas late in the game, making it harder to see and fight them and get away from them. At times they’re also right on top of you when you enter a room…even obscuring your view of anything else now and then.
There are a variety of bosses along the way. You have to aim specifically up at one boss while spikes are chasing you around the floor. There’s a giant, indestructible slug you have too just avoid as you run in circles around a section of hallways in order to press certain buttons in a specific order to open a door.
An infuriating fish man boss is fought in waist high water…which slows you down! Argh! You have to drop bombs to blow him up, but you also have to wade (not run) away from the bombs in five seconds or you blow up, too. The timing to get him close enough to you to drop the bomb, not get hit by him, and get away from the bomb is difficult as fuck.
And the final boss? After another total avoidance segment involving pushing buttons to open a door as he pursues you, you have to fight him on a platform elevator. You first have to run in circles and shoot him four times with the rocket launcher, after which you then have to just run away from him until the elevator stops and a cut scene takes over. You’d never realize you just have to run not shoot for the second half of the battle unless you read a walkthrough.
And there lies one of the major faults of the game. It is not generous with save stations before or after bosses. For instance, the chain of tasks you have to do before confronting the final boss three times in a row is so far removed from the last save room (which you won’t know to stop in if you don’t read a walkthrough) that you’re going to want to cry if you die while fighting the boss.
Exactly what kind of tasks do you have to do? It’s very typical survival horror stuff: find key cards, find memos with codes to enter into computers, talk to survivors you run into to direct them to safety, and my least favorite…a mission on a two-minute timer. Although it involves simply running from one room to another nearby room to turn off three computer terminals, every single hall and room you pass through has multiple invisible enemies, including the room with the computers!
Now aside from the enemies and tasks, other aspects of the game to watch out for are temperamental, typical horror game fixed camera angles that make it hard to see what danger is right in front of you, little red arrows that point to things you can pick up, and save terminals that can be ridiculously hard to line up with. Thankfully the inventory system is simple. You don’t seem to have any limitations as to how much you can carry, you never have to enter inventory to access items for unlocking doors (plus they’re automatically discarded when you don’t need them anymore), and entering the inventory screen pauses the game, so you don’t have to worry about getting attacked while you’re healing yourself. Ugh. Healing. It’s highly advised that you try to get hit by enemies as little as possible, because they take good chunks out of your health bar fast, and you can’t see your health bar on the regular screen, only in the inventory screen. In contrast, there is a fast button for cycling through your weapons without entering inventory, which is convenient, and you don’t have to reload—the guns seem to reload automatically.
Finally, the maps to different areas are supplied to you along the way, and there’s a quick button to check the map at any time as long as you don’t want to check different decks of the ship, in which case you’ll have to access the map through the inventory screen. The map offers the names of rooms, your location, which way you’re pointed, and which doors are locked or unlocked.
PLAYING AS JESSIFER
Jessifer’s game is a fraction of the length of Jack’s game. Essentially it’s just another chapter. There’s nothing new to experience beyond the final boss…the only boss. That’s right. This is a very easy mission, and it’s all running, fetching, and fighting the same enemies again in the same locations.
The cool thing about Jessifer’s final boss is that you fight him outside on the deck of the ship. However, it’s not much of a fight. As soon as it starts, he’s in front of you. Just shoot him four times with your grenade launcher and he dies. He never even has a chance to move from his starting point.
