"Crow Country" Review

Publisher: SFB Games

Developer: SFB Games

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 5 (Reviewed for)

Unlike a lot of people, I feel no nostalgia for the likes of the original Resident Evil or Silent Hill titles. I was too young in those days, and I'm just not a fan of bad controls...so when nostalgia bait games in that vein come out, I'm never interested. Such was the case with Crow Country. But recently, Soulsborne YouTuber Billy S randomly put out a video where he was playing the game with his boyfriend in stark contrast with the usual From Software-centric content the channel is known for. Lo and Behold, it actually seemed pretty compelling....plus, the price tag was pretty modest. So yeah, in case you've been living under a rock, you should know that Crow Country is one of the best games of 2024 so far!

Crow Country sees the player take the role of Mara Forest, a young special agent en route to the titular theme park, Crow Country. This park is owned by a rich guy named Edward Crow, who Mara is seeking because he was recently reported missing by his daughter. However, what at first seems to be a routine mission quickly goes sideways as Mara finds the park infested with grotesque humanoid monsters seemingly hell-bent on killing her. From here, what we have is not necessarily an unpredictable story, but one that's sufficient to drive the game forward. What I'll say before I move on, though, is that despite the horror atmosphere, the game utilizes humor in a way that works surprisingly well without taking away from that atmosphere...think of the "Jill sandwich" line from the original Resident Evil, but crafted with care instead of a poor English translation. For one example, as the plot progresses, another cop shows up. However, he's as late to the party as he is because his car's tires were slashed and he had to use his bike instead. The bike in question? A gaudy pink thing unbecoming of such a masculine profession (especially given that the game takes place in the early 90's). So any time you see a horrifically pink bike outside a door, you know that your fellow officer is nearby. Clearly this isn't laugh-out-loud funny or anything, but it's amusing! The same goes for the rare one-liner that comes out. The humor is sparse and as effective as it needs to be.

When it comes to gameplay, Crow Country is a tale of four parts: combat, puzzles, scavenging, and secret hunting. 

Since combat is arguably the least important side of the experience, let's start with that. No matter which of the game's 4 base weapons you use, it's basically the same formula: you'll position yourself somewhere in a room or open space, hold a button to raise your weapon, move the weapon around to aim at enemies, and fire. If that sounds far too simple, remember that this is an homage to the early survival horror greats. Aiming is finnicky, you're pretty slow, enemies can catch up to you quickly, and ammo is limited. So while the basic building blocks of every encounter are the same, you'll need to perform well every time. There are other factors such as grenades and environmental hazards you can use to your advantage, but most of the combat is going to be what I've already described. Serviceable, but not bad by any stretch.

If you want combat to be a bit less stressful, then you'll want to do quite a bit of scavenging. This is about as simple as it sounds. When you enter an area, you'll want to check shelves, desks, filing cabinets, lockers, etc for things like ammo, med kits, and other useful things. In addition to this, there are also occasionally little glass bottles containing easily visible resources, but to get these resources, you'll have to expend a bullet. There are also large crates opened by expending a bullet, but these crates may very well not have anything in them at all. So, there are risk-free methods of scavenging and methods you'll need to be risk-conscious about. Obviously, the more scavenging you do, the more room for error you'll have in combat. But scavenging sometimes comes with its own complications! Sometimes you'll enter a new room and find it's full of enemies, in which case you'll either have to circumnavigate them and risk taking damage to get your resources or expend some bullets and potential health kits, possibly getting a lower return on investment when it comes to scavenging that room. More often than not, however, these complications come in the form of traps, not enemies. Glass containers on the ground that poison you, chandeliers that fall on you, explosive mimics of items, the list goes on, and the roster of traps you'll find in the world just expands as the plot progresses. This doesn't just apply to new areas, either. Areas you've already visited will have new traps added to them as well. So, as simple as the concept of scavenging is, you'll have to be just as smart about it as you'll have to be during the equally simple combat. 

This being a survival horror game, you'll want as many ways as possible to make things manageable. So, in addition to the scavenging aspect, you'll want to be on the lookout for secrets as often as possible! There are a total of 15 secrets to be found in the world. Some of these secrets are new weapons, some are upgrades for weapons or medicine, and one mid-game secret makes getting around a lot easier! I don't want to spoil anything else about the secrets, but in my opinion, the act of finding the secrets is one of the funnest parts of the game primarily because it's largely tied to puzzles.

And as that last paragraph implies, the puzzles are the best part of Crow Country. At worst, these puzzles involve going to someone's office and looking for a note with a passcode or something like that. But those are the exception to the rule. That isn't to say that the puzzles are much more complicated than this, just that most of the time the context is more compelling. For instance, one room features a series of locked cages that can only be opened by accessing a nearby computer. Accessing that computer is a puzzle in and of itself, but once you're able to, you'll be greeted with a series of sliders: one for arms, one for legs, one for heads, and one for eyes. Each cage is tied to a certain creature type, and in order to open a given cage, you'll have to set the sliders to match that creature. To give an example that isn't represented in the game, if you were needing to open up a Cerberus cage, you'd set the arm slider to 0, legs to 4, heads to 3, and eyes to 6. Like I said, not incredibly complicated. However, it's a fun bit of thought exercise that makes the good brain chemicals flow just right! 

One last thing to touch on is that if you really can't handle scary stuff or old school gameplay, you have the option of playing the game in "exploration" mode. In this mode, you won't find any enemies and you won't run into any traps. But that doesn't make the game any less good in this mode! I actually played in this mode the first time around because I thought I'd be too averse to the tank controls, and without the enemies, the game was simply an excellent point-and-click adventure game, rather than an excellent survival horror game. It was excellent both ways, so don't let the game's status as a survival horror title scare you away. The only caveat is that it's impossible to get many of the trophies in this mode, so chooswe accordingly.

Now, when it comes to technical strength, Crow Country is deceptively easy to judge. Yeah, the graphics are crap...but that's the point. Yeah, the controls are clunky...but it's implemented in a way that calls back to the games of yore without being a hindrance to the experience. So a lot of what typically gets judged in this segment isn't up for judgment as much. And smartly, everything outside of these intentionally not-great technical aspects is excellent. The framerate is unflinchingly solid, the soundtrack is equal parts creepy and beautiful, the sound design is punchy and impactful, I have literally no negative notes.

Folks, as I may have implied at the beginning, Crow Country is not a game that was made with me in mind. I have no nostalgia for the old survival horror greats, I value smoothness and free mobility in my games, things like that. But as you no doubt can tell, I loved my time with this game. It goes beyond that, however. I played this game three and a half times to get the platinum trophy. Why three and a half, you ask? Well, in playthrough #2 I was going for the achievement for finding all of the secrets. Halfway through, I realized that one of the 15 secrets had been locked off because I opened a door from the wrong side (this is the only secret that you can be locked out of). So, without skipping a beat, I simply started the game over. It didn't matter to me that I'd wasted half a playthrough. Starting all over again was basically no hassle at all because of how short the game is, and going through everything I'd already gone through twice for a third time still sounded fun. What's more, after I finished this playthrough and realized I'd need to do one more to get the last trophy, deciding to go in for one more round was basically a non-question to me. I don't like having my time wasted, so the fact that the game could waste my time like that and have me more or less thank it for the effort is nothing to sneeze at. I feel like that speaks to the game's quality far more than anything else I've written so far. Dear reader, even if you aren't this game's target demographic, I'd suggest you give it a try. I mean really, this game is getting the score I'm giving it while a game like Senua's Saga: Hellblade II, which was basically made for me, got under a 5/10. Crow Country is a game that will stick with me for a while, and it for sure has given me a far more open mind to go into the survival horror genre with in the future!

With no negatives to take off points for, the final score for Crow Country is 2024's first...

10/10 - Masterpiece

Bravo, SFB Games, bravo!