PlayStation 2

Carrier: The Next Mutation
Platform: PlayStation 2
Publisher: Jaleco
Developer: Jaleco

The Basics

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Too often in the realm of video games, it's easy to trace the inspiration of certain titles. Video game enthusiasts' long-standing moan is that inventiveness and originality are too often shelved in favor of shadowing a proven success. Enter Jaleco's Carrier: The Next Mutation, a survival-horror game once planned for the PlayStation 2 with clear designs that followed in the path of a certain Capcom franchise's (read: Resident Evil) success. Carrier (well known to Dreamcast owners as that Resident Evil rip-off with frustrating camera angles) was heading to PS2 country, with "The Next Mutation" added to the title. Carrier: TNM hoped to take what had made the DC's Carrier compelling and improve upon the tried-and-true formula by offering a deeper storyline, enhanced control, intuitive cameras, and better graphics than those in the DC original--all to create a more refined gameplay experience than before. But it never happened.

More than a subtitle, "The Next Mutation" could be taken as a literal reference to Jaleco's approach to the game's plot. The story cast you as one of two government agents sent to investigate the loss of communications on an aircraft carrier. The carrier had been taken over by a destructive alien organism that was intent on perverting natural life to serve its own ends. Quickly, the two agents found themselves forced into a do-or-die struggle against the thousands of crewmembers that the organism had mutated to evil. Things got a bit fuzzy after that, though. In The Next Mutation, the game spanned beyond the original Carrier's aircraft carrier setting into an abandoned outpost in the middle of the ocean. Also, the characters from the original DC version were gone--they'd been redesigned, renamed, and replaced. The back story got an overhaul, which was reflective of the new settings. Also, dialogue and plot pacing represented a sizable improvement upon the original since Jaleco's development teams were revising them.

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Carrier: TNM's gameplay featured some significant enhancements. Control marked a slight departure from the survival-horror norm. Rather than imitating Resident Evil's awkward perspective-based control, Carrier: TNM made walking and maneuvering a much less cumbersome affair: Pressing a direction on the control pad made the character move in that direction--which was a small but significant change. Also new for the PS2 version was the ability to move and shoot at the same time, and the targeting system was improved as well. Weapons themselves saw graphical upgrades, and there was a definite possibility of new firearms in addition to the plenty of pistols, machine guns, and other powerful guns available.

Carrier: TNM, like the original, focused on slaughtering hundreds of mutated crewmen at close quarters. Like any good survival-horror game, though, the action didn't stop there. In your adventures, you'd encounter all kinds of mutated baddies that weren't your stereotypical survival-horror zombies. In addition to having a sizable hand in some copious bloodletting, you were tasked with solving some intermediate puzzles. As in the DC's Carrier, key cards and detonating explosives were the rule, and puzzles required more backtracking and memorization than brainpower.

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Jaleco's primary focus with Carrier: TNM was to deliver significantly improved next-generation graphics that would tap the power of the PlayStation 2's hardware. Many areas of the game were plagued by slowdown on the DC, and this was to have been corrected in The Next Mutation. Also, explosions and weaponry effects that looked weak and halfhearted were being completely redone for the PS2. Carrier: The Next Mutation was expected early in the second quarter of 2001.

WHAT HAPPENED?
GameSpot reported in February 2001 that Jaleco had canceled the development of the PS2 version of the survival-horror game Carrier. The game's cancellation was a result of the company's desire to trim development costs to meet its fiscal-year revenue expectations.
 

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