Crow County was sold to me as a throwback to 1990s era survival horror. Immediate buy for me. I've fallen for this trick before, and most of the time it doesn't pay off. (I think notoriously about a game called Back in 1995 that had game ending bugs) Every time there's a new one, I come back to suckle on that which is familiar and comforting to me.
Crow County takes place completely in an abandoned amusement park. The McGuffin is the park owner who had disappeared and reports of some weird stuff happening at the park. Shortly after entering, you run into the first NPC that has no business being there and not surprisingly, is injured. We're officially hooked. Barry is looking at the blood on the ground and Jill is wandering into the first zombie hallway.
It's an interesting environment. One that as far as I can remember has only been done in Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3 for relatively short periods of time. Horror games work best when they take place in the familiar. Something you can immediately drop your 10 year old self into and feel the fear. Most of us have at least one childhood experience at an amusement park.
But I don't think they use it to the fullest extent. You sort of ride a dark ride for a room before you bump into something that blocks your way, but otherwise, you interact with carnival games a few times. This didn't need to take place at an amusement park. Could've been a quarry, state park, factory.
Where Resident Evil and Silent Hill create claustrophobia by having mostly closed in areas, fog, or tall buildings lining the streets, the park feels open. It feels like you could climb the fence at any time to get out. And those damn camera angles in those PS1 games did a lot of work for building the horror. Crow County does none of that, which is probably for the better, but was part of the "feel" that wasn't quite right.
Whereas Resident Evil 1-3, Silent Hill, even B-tier PS1 games like Countdown Vampires and Overblood, have somewhat logical backtracking, Crow County sends you back and forth across the parts of the park for no other reason than the key is there.
This had the ridiculous puzzles that fall into the, "definitely doesn't exist in the real world, but somehow feels like it could." Where Resident Evil eventually explained it away by Spencer being a paranoid, psychotic, puzzle guy, there's something nice about the simplicity of just shrugging and saying, "yeah, why not."
One of the more annoying things were the traps. Whether it was a mine that was hidden among all the debris on the ground, or a chandelier that pops in at the last second when you're already in a full sprint, or a booby trapped health pack on the ground, the traps didn't feel particularly fun or deadly. Mostly just annoying. Resident Evil gave you the option to back out when you trigger a trap (Besides a notorious one at the end of Code Veronica). Think of the shotgun that causes the ceiling to close in for RE1. Or the gas filling the armor room. You have a chance to back out of the trap and rethink how to go about it.
And I absolutely hated the shooting in this game. You held aim down and then had to navigate your laser site in 360 degrees from a third person perspective.
There was one enemy in particular that was very short and quick moving. The hit box wasn't forgiving at all. I just kept shooting and aiming down hoping to hit it. Combat was never fun in these games, but it was at least doable. Crow County is maybe the one game I'd say play on the story mode first, and then play 30 minutes to on combat mode just to see what it's like.
The end boss was probably the most "throwback" they really nailed. With tank controls, the bosses had to move in very strict patterns or stay in one place and hurl stuff at you because you were not very mobile. And that's exactly what this boss does. It takes maybe a health pack to figure out all the patterns and then you just gotta shoot.
Crow County gets closer than most, but it still feels like those "Boomer Shooters" that were popular a year or two ago. It's almost as if an alien mimic sees the game for a short period and does it's best impression. The look is right. The feel is close. The music is good. The plot almost there. But there entire package doesn't quite land.
Still, I had a lot of fun over my four hour playthrough and would recommend this to anyone that played those old survival horror games.
