Crow Country has been out for a bit of time now, but with its PS5 and Switch debuts on the way, what better time to revisit! This retro styled survival horror game from a one man dev team has been in the media spotlight for some time and despite being a darling in the scene, I found a lot of the features tough to get along with. Playing as a private investigator, players are sent to the titular Crow Country amusement park to investigate a missing person. What starts off as a calm walk through the park, exploring rooms and solving basic puzzles turns into a horror experience that I’m sad to say, I’ll be happy to forget.
The game takes a lot of inspiration from old isometric classics but places you in a fully 3D world with a rotating camera. Controls have been modernised with full degrees of morion, but combat is strictly a stop and shoot. The story itself unfolds through VHS tapes, the odd NPC, notes scattered around the place and the various puzzles you will need to solve. It pinches bits and bobs from most of the classics and is pretty standard stuff for what it’s aiming to do as a whole. It’s all fun and games to start with as it’s ominously quiet, and it sets the scene quite nicely. The run down theme park looks like a health a mind safety nightmare waiting to happen so it’s no wonder you stumble upon an injured chap early on. It’s at this point, things take a strange turn and weird shambling denizens and fleshy lumps start to appear and the adventure can start in earnest. It’s a campy 90s horror story with all the expected twists and turns but the story beats are foreshadowed very early, so the mystery is somewhat absent.
The next few hours will be spent traipsing all over the park exploring and this is where an old trope reared its ugly head – back tracking. It’s not a massive play area, and lots of areas are blocked off, but you will find yourself wandering from one side of the map to the other just to use a key once and then it’s back to where you came from to do the same. It’s fortunate then, that the map layout has been considered and you unlock shortcuts as you progress. Exploration can be rewarding with items hidden in crates or behind obscure puzzles it’s just a shame the majority of the puzzles aren’t very inventive.
It’s the usual “find x item for y hole” but occasionally it throws in something that challenges the grey matter. You’ll need to be observant as you wander the park, as solutions can be hidden in plain sight. For example, there’s a puzzle part way through which saw me needing to play a shooting gallery game. I knew I needed a specific score, but I’m disappointed to say I wandered for ages not knowing what I was missing. When I saw the clue though, it was a definite face palm moment as it was so obvious! It’s a shame then that these moments are few and far between. I understand that that backtracking and item puzzles were de rigueur in the early days of survival horror, but for me it just didn’t click here. Maybe it was the drab environments that I saw a million times, or maybe it was the poor enemies I need to contend with.
Ok, let’s get it out of the way, the shooting is crap. You get fixed in position and you need to aim with a reticule that can hit different body parts. Sounds good, but it’s way too fiddly. Maybe this was meant to add to the tension, but when I opted for combat it was frustrating. The enemies don’t ever feel like they pose a risk either, no matter how big the beastie. The lack of danger posed by them meant I was rarely attacked so I did clear the game with zero deaths. It’s easy to conserve ammo for the inevitable boss fights when you can just run past everything. Even later in the game when the place is chock full, running past them is a piece of cake. These body horror abominations were also far from scary and I didn’t any that gave me the creeps. It’s also not really worth engaging with the combat, as enemies respawn once you leave an area. It’s not to say there were no risks to your life. Watch out for the traps! These things were the bane of my life and are placed in just the right spot, that more often than not, you won’t see them til the last second. This wasn’t helped by some muddy visuals.
Look, I like old games and I like retro visuals. I often laugh at myself for playing games that look like they were made 20 – 30 years ago on my Series X when it has so much power under the hood. But it’s what I enjoy and I have great memories from that time in my gaming life. Crow Country is not a bad looking game. It absolutely nails to aesthetic of an N64 game with low poly characters and flat texture work. There’s some nice design in the environments with everything looking grimy and dark, but this can hide some of the smaller gloopy enemies and traps. Interestingly it’s a fully 3D environment with almost full camera control so you can really appreciate it a bit more as there’s a lot of detail packed in here.
It really pulls at those nostalgia strings and there are times where it looks quite pretty. Everything feels like it was plucked straight out of the late 90s. The enemies look horrific though and not in a good way. Maybe I’ve played too many zombie games but they just aren’t memorable. Bloody, messily textured shambling lumps, gooey lumps, things with weird long limbs. From a visual standpoint, it just didn’t do it for me. Audio is also hit or miss with the quieter times doing more to build the atmosphere.
All of this is why I’ve actually held back on this review for a while, as my thoughts felt quite contradictory. I appreciate what the developer was going for with this project and there are absolutely areas that nail the brief. The visuals are charming and the story was a campy laugh, it also built a decent atmosphere when there were no enemies. But there’s a nagging at the back of my mind that says I didn’t enjoy it overall. The combat didn’t gel with me, even though I have a love for the old tank style. It had zero fear factor, not even the odd jump scare. There was too much ammo and health so I never felt my survival was at risk. Enemies were poor… maybe it just wasn’t for me.
Overall
-
50%
Summary
Pros
- nails the aesthetic
- Nice atmosphere
- Feels like a throwback
Cons
- too much backtracking
- Poor puzzles
- Poor combat
- Didn’t feel at risk at any time