With low-poly chibi characters ripped right out ofMidgarand a heartbeat monitor for a health bar,Crow Countryis like walking through a magical doorway into the fuzzy CRT-filtered ‘90s. It’s unapologetically authentic, and it’s made clear from the moment you step foot into its haunted theme park full of gooey red monsters lunging after you despite swallowing ten rounds to the head.
While it faithfully embraces the PS1 era, so much of the awkward clunkiness of classic survival horror has been tidied away. Like the old-school games it proudly takes inspiration from (Resident Evil,Silent Hill), Crow Country has tank controls, but you’re able to still move the camera to take in your surroundings more clearly. What’s more, movement isn’t nearly as stiff since you’re not locked onto an invisible grid. Crow Country delves into the past without relying on nostalgia alone to cover the awkward cracks.
It also allows you to swap guns on the fly without using the inventory, marks every single doorway with arrows, and has a modernised map that explicitly tells you which keys are needed where.
Aiming is where the slicker modern coat of paint really stands out. As it uses tank controls, Crow Country forces you to stand still and aim your gun before firing, so you can’t spray and pray while running around screaming. But the snap from movement to aiming is so fluid that you don’t sacrifice momentum, taking the more refined shooting ofResident Evil 4and transplanting it into a top-down ‘90s-styled survival horror effortlessly.
Crow Country’s Story Is Simple And To The Point
The most crucial part of any good survival horror is its opening hook. The best ones are simple and to the point—Leon Kennedy is searching for the president’s daughter,James Sunderlandis looking for his wife, Isaac Clarke is investigating a distress signal from an abandoned spaceship. The most memorable narratives are ones we uncover firsthand, sleuthing in the ruins as monsters lurk around every corner; Crow Country understands that.
We waste no time entering the theme park in search of its owner, Edward Crow. Without delving into spoilers, the plot that unravels is equal parts camp as it is intriguing. We meet Crow’s old colleagues, uncover the park’s true purpose, and figure out the origins of the creatures crawling out of the woodwork.
This compelling narrative is told through sparing interactions, making the entire experience feel oppressively lonely. Most of the story comes to life in the environment.
Right at the beginning, we enter the park by shooting a padlock off a chain fence gate plastered with employee only, private property, and no trespassing signs, completely juxtaposing the usual imagery of a grand theme park entrance. We don’t get that until we’re further in, but even then, the colours are muted and trash is scattered everywhere. The place has been hastily abandoned, but that’s inviting in itself; the urge to find out what happened is every bit as enticing as a typewriter at the end of a blood-soaked corridor.
Crow Country’s Resident Evil 2 Inspirations
All of this is told in a tight-knit, small map. The emphasis is placed on backtracking and becoming truly familiar with every part of the park, which is where Crow Country is most faithful to the classics.
Its layout is unbelievably intuitive, reminding me of my first time in the Raccoon City police station inResident Evil 2. Very early on, we find a lobby area that splits into three new doorways, making it the centrepiece of the entire park. Each path leads to distinctly unique zones, one aquatic-themed, the other resembling a suburban street on Halloween, and the last a cutesy fantasy town with giant mushrooms and fairies.
It’s hard to get lost when the map is made up of such memorable zones, and backtracking is far less tedious given that they all interconnect via shortcuts. you may even delve underground and use elevators to reach each quadrant, split up nicely into north, east, south, and west. Crow Country often makes the old mechanics more approachable, but it hasn’t needed to update survival horror’s classic map-making. The genre has always boasted small maps that are made to feel larger by filling them to the brim with detail and looping them back in on themselves.
Crow Country doesn’t just emulate its inspirations, it understands the fundamentals of a survival horror classic. Its map isn’t a 1:1 of RCPD, but it recognises that the best in the genre stand tall because backtracking is satisfying and woven into the level design with purpose. Uncovering doorways that lead to old areas where you can use newfound items to open up previously blocked passages for hidden treasure is what makes exploration so rewarding, and that DNA is as rich in Crow Country as it is in the heights of survival horror.
Say Goodbye To Resource Management
Crow Country only falters in one major area: inventory. A core pillar of the genre is resource management. You have to carefully pick what you will take with you because you only have so many pockets. A handgun uses less space but is less effective, whereas a flamethrower is enormous but can shred through enemies. You have to pick and choose what to bring with you between save points, and taking the bulkier items often means having little room to hoard the goods you find on your way.
I never ran out of space in Crow Country. Over the course of my first run, I found 12 of the 15 secrets and still had slots to spare. By the end, I was carrying a pistol, a magnum, a flamethrower, and a shotgun, to name a few. This meant I had more than enough weaponry and ammo to tear apart the final boss with little resistance. By contrast, when I started, I had so few bullets for my pistol that a corridor of just two enemies overwhelmed me. Keeping the inventory sparse would’ve ensured that the feeling of vulnerability permeated throughout the entire experience, but the more I hoarded, the more it faded.
Regardless, Crow Country gets everything else about survival horror right, and it does so with style. The visuals are faithful to the era but stand out on their own, using cutesy characters and iconography to contrast the bleaker story and more unsettling body horror. The short runtime of just four hours also means that it never overstays its welcome—it’s tightly paced, making the rush to uncover the mystery behind Edward Crow akin to curling up in bed with a thrilling page-turner.
It does all of this with the trappings of the classics, yet makes the genre approachable to newcomers. It’s a must-play for fans of survival horror, whether you’re put off by the ‘90s games or itching for that old-school experience all these years later.
