Today marks a brand-new day for review pieces, as I will be reviewing Crow Country through memes and pictographs. Hopefully, this will be the most fun you will have reading a game review.
Crow Country: The Story
Mara Forest investigates a creepy theme park, Crow Country, in search of its missing owner. All is not well, as something dangerous is living in the attractions.
Through mysterious phone calls, news articles, and interviews, Mara unveils the demise of Crow Country and the sinister plot behind the theme park’s opening. The story’s grand finale is revealed in the last scene.
8/10
Graphics
CC goes back to the PS1/N64 days with pixelated graphics, simple polygon people, and fixed camera angles. The game screams. CC unapologetically revisits the grit and grime of a 32-bit game, trying to survive on your 1080 HD television.
Monsters are cartoony but still convey a sense of gritty death and horror. The atmosphere is creepy, but not so scary that you can’t enjoy it.
The graphics purposefully try to unimpress you with their simple designs, but that is not a knock on the game. The artistic choice to make a demake is part of the whole package that makes Crow Country stand out.
8/10
Combat
Mara comes with a pistol, and she can find ammo for it in trunks, garbage cans, and vending machines. The game is bountiful in ammo, but not so much that it loses its survival sense. There are more enemies lurking than bullets, so escaping a bunch of baddies is a good plan. Later in the game, Mara will get a magnum, a shotgun, and a flamethrower, but ammo for them is very limited. The added twist is that reloading, aiming, and finishing off a baddie is a cumbersome process, making the player choose to use combat as a last resort. While Resident Evil and Silent Hill use auto-aim and instant reloading for fighting, Crow Country makes you do all the work, creating a nervous tension when confronted by an enemy.
And Mara does not have a melee move, so the finite shots in her pistol are your only self-defense. Even if the player wants to break open a glass bottle or crate to get an object, they need to manage their ammo supply. Heck, there are even puzzles where you need to have enough ammo to complete them. There are no official bosses in this game, but a few rooms will unleash a giant monster that Mara will have to escape through by guessing a padlock number or stepping on the right tiles. The finale of the game gives you a boss that must be defeated, but by then, you should be an expert at the gunplay.
As the game progresses, old hallways and rooms will fill up with new baddies, bigger threats, and traps. Learning how to avoid them is tricky, and Mara dies easily (even on easy). Keeping a surplus of medkits and antidotes is a must.
The frustration of self-defense and ammo management is part of the package that makes CC a throwback to unfair 90s games, but it’s not so merciless as to be unplayable.
7/10
Puzzles and Riddles
This is the bread and butter of CC, taking up most of the three-hour gameplay. The map is relatively small, but each room is packed with secrets, locked doors, padlocks, and clues. Mara is expected to figure out gas pump levels, calculate arcade scores, decipher clues from cryptic notes, and remember numbers splattered on walls. A few times, it was easy to get lost, but the game mercifully gives Mara 8 clues to reach the next part of her adventure. The tricky part is remembering which door needs which key. If the player really wants to be a completionist, they can solve all the riddles, getting gun upgrades and gear for avoiding enemies.
Moving through the obstacles in CC is its greatest strength, making the player want to come back for more.
9/10
The Whole Experience
Crow Country feels like Rob Zombie made his own survival horror game, but he only had the assets of Banjo-Kazooie. It has an authentic, creepy, and macabre feel while still honoring the limitations of 32-bit games. This will take you no more than 3-hours to beat, and the story unravels into your lap like a severed limb.
