Plenty of games nowadays are urged to be as big and powerful as they can look and feel to stand out. It’s always nice to try and be as best as possible in a genre of games, but sometimes the less difficult and less time-consuming games can be given a bad rap. Not every big giant landmark game in a genre is going to appeal to someone, especially to someone new to the genre. With that idea in mind, Crow Country is the perfect game for those looking to get into the survival horror genre. It’s not that hard of a game, but the style and story the game has is more than enough to check it out.
Special Agent Mara Forest is on the case in this adventure to the abandoned theme park, Crow Country. The owner Edward Crow has been reported missing by her daughter, and now Mara has to find him. Throughout the theme park, she finds monstrous horrors that litter the park like the actual litter that populates the abandoned tourist destination. During her case, she comes across more and more survivors that help shine a light onto the history that has happened throughout the park and learn just how far down the roots of these problems go.
The first thing noticeable about this game is that it’s stylized from the old PlayStation 1 games. Its look is blocky and chunky, with the color palette being used to show off that the location you’re in really is a dilapidated amusement park. The place is like a Disney World from an alternate timeline where it failed to be as successful as it is now, with multiple areas having different themes and looks to sell how varied each part of the park is.
The gameplay is also as vintage Resident Evil as it gets. The game offers a modern and classic mode for not only how you control, but also for how you can explore the game. If you wanted to, you could just explore the entire game without fear of encountering an enemy that could kill you. However, it’s not that challenging to fight them, granted you have the ammo for it. You start with your pistol and soon enough get a laser scope for it. You deal more damage to enemies the closer you get to them, so you’re encouraged to take risks with shooting enemies.
There are other ways the game nudges you towards risky ideas in a friendly way. Around the map, there are bottles and boxes you can break with a simple shot. The odds are solid that you will find ammo, antidotes, or health kits hidden there, so keep a keen eye out for them. If the worst comes to pass and you run out of ammo, you can always backtrack to your car to get more pistol ammo. You can also check the trash cans and vending machines for ammo or health kits, with them being refilled by just leaving the area and coming back to check again.
Alongside your explorations, you will be running into puzzles all around the park. Some of these puzzles will be required for you to progress, and other times, it will be just for you to find a secret around the park. There are 15 secret puzzles in total to solve, and partway through the game, you get the chance to get a map to tell you just where these secrets are hidden to help you out. That said, sometimes the puzzles for these secrets have you go out of your way to think outside the box, however never to the point where it feels like it’s cheating. One puzzle that comes VERY close to crossing the line involves a coffin, but it’s not that bad if you know where to backtrack in the section. These can be some of the most challenging puzzles the game has to offer, that is the game lets go of your hand and lets you try it for yourself, so if you want to have harder puzzles, be sure to look for them.
If you could sleuth out from my comments, this game’s biggest downside is that even when fighting with enemies, it never feels like you’re in any actual danger. The game is very generous with health and ammo. Sure, the game does rate you in the end if you go for the survival horror mode instead of exploration mode, but if you find every secret, then the only thing you will have to worry about is the combat. While the enemies do take more damage the closer you are to them, the fact that ammo is more common than it should be gives you a gateway to just picking them off as far away as you want. Add in the fact that you can get even more powerful weaponry from shotguns to magnum revolvers, and even a flamethrower and grenades, and combat becomes more trivial than it really should be.
Ok, so it sounds like I have been ragging on this game for the past couple of paragraphs. But, aside from the difficulty being less than expected, it’s still a fun and solid time. Despite how easy it is, the puzzles are still fun to solve and still require you to pay attention to the environment around you. The notes left around by the park staff also help guide you towards what you need to do, albeit sometimes just saying what you need to do. That said, some of the puzzles still use your weaponry to the fullest of their abilities, and when you finally have all the items you need, it is fun to crush the earlier puzzles where you just know you needed a certain item to get through and getting rewarded with more ways to solve puzzles. If you still really need an extra hint, the fortune teller machines will tell you what you need to focus on, at the cost of lowering your rank a bit.
And the notes do make sense for the location and add to it. This is a theme park that has been abandoned for a couple of years now and you can see the remnants of it. You can see the notes to help them learn how to help the kids solve the puzzles the park had and break rooms these employees were relaxing in, as well as what shady businesses the park owner was in that resulted in this place getting brought down. As you go through the place, you get to bring some life back to the amusement park and get a sense of how things used to be before it all went wrong. Its spectacle storytelling that shines in the spotlight brightly.
It also doesn’t hurt that the main character we are playing is charming and feels like a real person. Mara Forest talks less as if she was a straightforward no-nonsense police officer and sounds more like she still has a sense of childlike innocence to her. She interacts with the park as if she still believes in some sort of magic the place has. From interrogating crow animatronics about where their boss is, refusing to smoke, and even thanking the fairy animatronic for helping her get a key, we can see that there is more to her than just solving this case. The twists and turns this character has in store all feel organic and make you look back at her interactions with the world with a new lens to see how this newly discovered side of her was always there.
The rest of the story and characters are just as lovely crafted. The characters you meet in each area are easily distinguishable from one another, with their looks and personalities both being easy to tell apart. The roles they all serve in the story help the world feel more alive and fleshed out. Not once did I groan or roll my eyes in annoyance at seeing a returning face. In fact, with some characters, I was wishing there was more to them. Take Arthur for example; we can see him as a wannabe journalist who wanted to prove that the monsters here were the real deal. Being able to help him with that and be rewarded with an upgrade of some kind could have been a fun bonus challenge, but I guess that’s what the ranks are for, giving you a new powerful crow-based item for each letter grade you get.
These upgrades you get for having a high enough score allow you to have a melee attack, a grenade launcher with infinite ammo, and even fast travel between save points, all without affecting your rank, so replayability is highly encouraged. There is even another objective you get after beating the main story where you need to shoot 42 glass crow statues, where you unlock a new skin and a laser gun with infinite ammo, which is another fun incentive to go through. A hard mode is also being worked on to be implemented into the game, which should hopefully fix the issue of lack of difficulty present in the game.
Crow Country, regardless of difficulty, remains a fun and charming experience from start to end. It delivers on the PS1 stylized horror experience it sells itself as. The graphics and sound all look and hear like something you would see on the PS1. The gameplay, while easy, is still fun in terms of solving puzzles or shooting enemies. The controls have been enhanced with modern polish while offering the old retro controls for those who grew up in that era and want to challenge themselves with tank controls. The characters, especially the main lead, are all charming and easy to love. For such a simple game that isn’t in a genre I have that much experience in, it’s still one that managed to worm its way into my heart. It’s an easy recommendation for those who not only want to get into the genre of survival horror, or for those who want something new to experience. It’s not as grand or challenging as Resident Evil but saying that this game isn’t worth the price of admission is evil in its own right.
