They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well Capcom, feel flattered. Resident Evil is a great video game series, I have fond experiences playing all of them. But some companies viewed Capcom’s survival horror genre defining series as a chance to shell out some schlock. Today I present two offenders of Resident Cloning. The Playstation’s Overblood, and the Dreamcast’s Carrier. As I have said before, I have owned some crappy games. Sure, these games did some things differently than RE, but for the most part, they were simply banking on a market that had already been established by RE.
I remember shortly after buying my Playstation in 97, that I wanted to score a couple of games on the cheap. I saw Overblood for $14.99, hey any games worth that right? Wrong. Overblood even had the same Herb/First Aid spray powerup system as RE. The animations made me shudder. This game was merely purchased to tide me over until Resident Evil 2 came out.
Same story, different verse. After buying a Dreamcast, I was having loads of fun with Sonic Adventure and Soul Caliber, but once again, I need that special somethin’ to tide me over until Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Well, Carrier didn’t come through. Carrier has the worst lighting of any game I have ever played. It was dark, I mean dark! I could hardly tell what was going on. The only redeeming quality of this schlock was how funny sounding the “Carrier!” sound was when you pressed start. You see on all Resident Evils, when you press start at the menu, someone says “Resident Eeeeeviillll”, and it’s part cheese, part scary. But, when Carrier copied Capcom and did the exact same thing, it sounded hilarious. Kind of like when you see a child on his tippie toes trying to reach a cookie jar. Cute, but pathetic.
Anyway, if you see these games for cheap try ‘em out. You will laugh. Think Ed Wood caliber video games.