As we have often told you in the past, the period between 2023 and 2024 seems to represent a real return of the survival horror video game. This type of experience, very popular in the early 2000s, is returning en masse in the form of a remake and more. One of the most interesting experiments among those carried out by independent studios who want to pay homage to the golden age of horror titles, putting their own spin on it. this is precisely the subject of our review: Crow Country. Let’s discover together a title that promises to take us back in time, and give us a shiver… not just nostalgia.
There’s something wrong with the amusement park…
In Crow Country we impersonate Mara Forest: our special agent, who at the behest of the developers has polygonal models significantly inspired by those of Final Fantasy VII (a choice that we consider particular but apt), has a very difficult task to complete. She was in fact sent to Crow Country, a abandoned amusement parkat the search for the owner of the aforementioned park: Edward Crowa mysterious character whose traces were lost a few years earlier.
From the first minutes of the game we will be immersed innostalgic and disturbing atmosphere of the title: thanks to the polygonal models, rather unusual now in the imagery of modern horror video games, the title manages to generate a form of fear that we haven’t experienced for a long time.
The simple graphicsfiltered through a view that is almost blurred, do nothing enhance lights and disturbing details incredibly well located. We were pleasantly surprised by the care taken by the development studio in the scenarios and atmospheres: many titles with realistic graphics and large budgets have not been able to trigger similar anxiety in us.
Two different ways of approaching the adventure
We have not specified that they are there two possible game modes: we can choose whether to tackle the title “the old way”, thus counting on the presence of numerous and disturbing monsters to defeat, or whether to opt for a more exploratory mode, without enemies ready to kill us, to fully enjoy the experience offered by the narrative and atmosphere.
The PS1 style always has its charm
In both cases, the feeling of restlessness will hardly leave you. However, focusing on the characteristic that differentiates the two modes, namely the presence of hostile characters, we underline good inspiration, a simple but immediate character design and a good positioning of these creatures. On more than one occasion a monster will appear that will scare you both by its appearance and by the ways in which it will reveal itself to you.
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A dive into a “terrible” past
As per practice for survival horror, we will have various weapons to use, but we will not be forced to kill everything that comes in front of us: Mara can shoot her revolver (or other weapons that are unlocked throughout the adventure) only when stationarybut this will allow us to have complete control of the viewfinder, an aspect that makes the title much more fluid than expected.
Even those who decide to face the adventure without coming across disturbing creatures will find themselves faced with more than one challenge: one of the fundamental characteristics of the game is in fact the presence of numerous environmental puzzles.
The Crow Country setting is one of the best parts
The latter are very reminiscent of the experiences of the PS1 era. They almost seem to encourage us to take pen and paper to write down access codes, details of documents collected around and more. Looking around the small spaces of the amusement park will be essentialnot only to unlock the puzzles, but also to learn about the lore, told through documents, and other little secrets.
The elements that clearly refer to titles of the genre from the 2000s are not limited to the graphics and structure of the puzzles: the game menuas well as theinability to save whenever you want and obviously to take advantage of automatic saving, make Crow Country aabsolutely faithful experience to the reference titles, while managing to insert modern elements without forcing them that make the gaming experience deeper and more intriguing.
In general, we certainly cannot say that Crow Country is a title devoid of content. In fact, its longevity is well balanced (we’re about 10 hours into the game approximately) and we can enrich our experience with the modality New Game Plus, minigames scattered across the map, and beyond.
A very disturbing room, what is it hiding?
The side that has caused people to talk about Crow Country the most is certainly that artistic: lo PS1 style And faithfully captured in every detail, from the menus (complete with an old-style heart rate monitor to perceive Mara’s degree of tension) up to the music, obviously passing through the already widely praised graphic rendering.
If we really have to criticize an aspect of the artistic style of the game this is certainly the choice of music: anonymous, at times rather annoying. In the PS5 version we do not report any particular uses of the Dualshock, neither with regards to vibration nor for the internal microphone.
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