I really wanted to buy and play a game this week and I picked the perfect game. I played the demo and knew that it was going to be a great game and on Sunday I delved into the world of Crow Country and came out with a new understanding of what a great horror game is. This week is Crow Country.

Crow Country is a survival horror game from SFB Games. The game was released in May for Xbox, PlayStation, and the PC. It retails for 20 bones.

You play as Agent Mara, or Mara Forest, or Agent Mara Forest and her adventure into the long-closed amusement park Crow Country. A guest had gotten hurt while in the park and Mr. Crow decided to close the park amongst other increasingly bad incidents and media attention.

Figures have been seen wandering the park at night frequently enough for the police to send an agent to investigate. Agent Mara arrives on the scene to find an injured man and a mystery that will intrigue any player hoping for a good story. There are notes from various players in the game’s story and how they managed to tackle the weird shit that is happening within the park all the while keeping it secret from the public up until the point Crow Country closed forever.

Crow Country had me going until the very end where I looked at my wife in awe that I didn’t see any of the things coming. Great storytelling.

Crow Country is a straight homage to old Resident Evil and Silent Hill games. You have the camera so far behind Mara that it can see so much but with little nooks and crannies, the camera is just an aerial view of what Mara can in fact see. You have the pause menu with the heartbeat that tells you when to heal, the item inventory with a bunch of vague information about the importance of the item, the manual reloading and switching of weapons, the infinite goofy puzzles, THE WHOLE THING.

Just like the games Crow Country is nostalgic for, you are picking up ammo and health items, solving puzzles, and combating the seemingly undead only on certain occasions. There is plenty of ammunition but these “guests” are hard to drop. Optional guns and ammo are littered around the amusement park but require some finesse to acquire. For instance, the shotgun can be acquired by doing some math and wasting some ammo in a kid’s game. You have to weigh how much ammo you can spare if you cannot complete the puzzle correctly which gives acquiring the guns even more “risk vs reward.”

SFB Games nailed the optional combat. The spooky baddies are there and they want to hurt you but the player does not need to fire a bullet. When engaging in combat, aiming and reloading are manual, so it is important to keep track of bullet count for easy deaths can occur from not being able to count. Baddies approach Mara usually at a slow pace but the optional mini-bosses usually are running right at you.

Crow Country has got the Roblox Ps1 locked down pat. The character models are goofy but the theme park is creepy as all hell. Each area feels like it was chosen to be as creepy as possible. You have the main drag of Cro Country filled with gift shops, and eateries and acts as a hub world. The haunted house area covers baddies in a fog, the faerie forest has a lot of charm with forest backdrops, giant mushrooms, little houses, and a faerie fountain, and the underwater area has fish, a fun-themed restaurant, and a submarine. Each area has so much charm to it while monsters are walking around.

The audio design in Crow Country is limited but it invokes such fear. Crow Country is a quiet game; soft spooky melodies are playing in the background, but it really feels like you are wandering something of an abandoned space. Footsteps land so much harder and they echo throughout the space that you are in and when “guests” arrive their grunt is guttural, it makes me shiver every time I encounter them. You truly feel isolated when playing the game.

Crow Country is probably in the top five of my favorite games this year. Everything about it from the gameplay to the graphics, and the atmosphere really ties the whole game together. The puzzles challenge that player without making anything frustrating. Knowing that games like Crow Country can trump any modern AAA horror game is mesmerizing. They create a great setting, believable, in-depth characters that have motivations for what they are doing and tell a story that engages the player up until the very end and for that matter, beyond.

I sat down, the power went out twice but I wanted to keep playing the game and see what the hell was happening, and when I finished the game I still wanted to play more. It took me about three and a half hours to complete the game the first time and I left a lot of stuff out.

Easiest 9/10 I could ever give a video game.