Although the first games I played as a child were on the Super Nintendo, my first real console was the PlayStation 1. It marked the dawn of the 3d era of gaming, and it felt like such a huge leap forward in what games could look like. Final Fantasy 7, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid and Tomb Raider, were graphical marvels at the time but now graphics have evolved far beyond the distorted, jagged, blocky characters of 1997. Retro graphics have always been a big thing in indies, but for a long while, most games have been emulating the timeless pixel art games of the early 90s. However, time has moved in a full circle again and now more and more games are paying homage to the early 3d era of games. Crow Country, a game by indie dev SFB, is one of these, and the trailer and pictures I saw, immediately filled me with nostalgia, with its blocky character models moving across detailed pre-rendered backgrounds. It was reminiscent of the games from my youth, but with some modern gaming improvements, one of which was a shiny Platinum Trophy. So let’s take a look, and see what it takes to earn the platinum trophy in Crow Country.
As I’ve already made clear, Crow Country takes a lot of graphical inspiration from the PS1 era. It works really well for the game though, the static backgrounds, are detailed and full of things to interact with, contrasting sharply with the blocky and less detailed character models. There is an almost CRT-like grain over it, that when combined with the clever use of lighting ensures the visuals offer so much atmosphere. Unlike most PS1 horrors the camera is not fixed, one of the many modern conveniences Crow Country wisely chose to stick to. Despite being able to move though, its position mimics titles like Resident Evil, offering an isometric view of your surroundings. This does a great job of strategically keeping just enough of the path ahead of you out of sight, encouraging caution because you never know what is hiding around the next corner.
The things that are usually hiding around the corners are Crow Country’s monstrous enemies, known as “Guests”. These warped creatures are surprisingly grotesque, and horrifying despite their blocky shapes. The way they all shamble towards you, some fast, others slow but persistent but all of the twisted and malformed. Mostly you can choose to run from and around these monsters, without too much difficulty, but the further you go through the game, the more the park fills up with a variety of new Guests, and it makes it hard to weave through them when the areas start to get quite crowded. On top of this, the game also adds traps to your path, in quite high numbers. Bear traps, poison traps and chandeliers that fall on top of you if you are not careful among many others. All of these can be dealt with with a single bullet from your handgun, but if you have a corridor full of gruesome creatures and traps littering your only escape route, it can lead to some tense moments, dodging and weaving your way through the park.
The park itself is so well designed and fun to explore, with four different wings to explore. Crow Country has been shut for a long time now, and the abandoned areas of the park are full of puzzles to solve and key items to pick up. Like the best survival horror games, your exploration of the park is halted at every turn by oddly specific items you need to find. Keys of different metals to unlock different doors, or items unable to be accessed until you have found an item on the opposite side of the park. I love puzzles, and although the ones in Crow Country aren’t too difficult, they are fun to figure out. Only one puzzle in the game stumped me for more than a few minutes, and that was because I was so focused on reading the text that was coming up, looking for a clue, that I completely missed the solution appearing on the screen in front of me. There’s a part of the game where Mara tells one of the characters that she solved his stupid puzzle, and he retorts “Be honest, you loved it”, and honestly yeah you got me.
The game is also full of things to read, bits of story and worldbuilding to understand the guests, and what has happened to Crow Country and its enigmatic owner Edward Crow. These notes also contain hints and solutions to puzzles too though, hints to where a key item to get into a room might have been stashed, or the code to a keypad. It’s good to make notes of these clues and codes though, as there is no way to re-read them from your menu or anything as you are exploring. The only way to see them again is either to go back to the original note or in the game’s few safe rooms, which usually have a book with all the collected little notes inside.
The story is pretty good too. It is not something that made me think and analyse for hours after, the way a game like Signalis did, but the story was good enough for me to be curious about what was going on, and where the Guests had come from. There are a handful of side characters Mara can interact with and help as you explore, and coming across these was always a nice little break from the exploration to sit and talk for a while.
Crow Country is a classic survival horror in a lot of ways, but its puzzles are not the only things that lean towards the easier side of things. Like most survival horrors, you are limited on resources, only able to find and carry so much ammo and healing items. Unlike some games you are able to carry all of your key items at once, there is still a limit on how many consumables you can carry, and although there are safe rooms, there are no item boxes to store things in for later. This was rarely a problem though. I played my first run on the game on normal difficulty and didn’t come close to running out of ammo because I rarely had to kill anything. Most of the healing I had to do, was because I wasn’t paying attention, and got poisoned by running into traps or losing half my health because I walked under a stupid chandelier. Only one monster managed to kill me, and that was because I didn’t realise how little health I had after being poisoned. This isn’t a negative thing at all, the game still manages to feel atmospheric, and it has a few jump scares, but it did give the game a much more, cosy horror vibe than I expected going into it.
The trophy list is quite simple too, and getting the Platinum trophy, which is just called Platinum is a breeze. There are 15 Secrets, hidden around the Crow Country Theme Park, and the bulk of the trophy comes from ferreting these secrets out as you explore. Most of them are hidden behind puzzles or knowing what item to use where. These secrets actually include some of the other things you need for trophies, such as the magnum and flamethrower weapons that you will need to collect, as well as finding the little mushroom boys that grant wishes. These wishes will upgrade your weapons and unlocks another trophy at the same time.
Some of the other things you will need to find, some of which are secrets as well, are the shotgun, the medkit upgrade, running shoes and of course the Map that shows you where all the secrets are. If you are not following a guide, then it is best to keep notes of the clues you pick up, as many of these are hints to finding the secrets, instead of just straightforward progression through the game. The only other two trophies to look at for are “Looking out for a friend” which involves you helping the first person you find in the park, very early on in the game. If you return to the car after helping them and exhaust their dialogue you will get this trophy. The other is “Quizmaster” in which you need to get 5 points on Mermaids Quiz, a game in the arcade part of the park. This isn’t a tricky thing to manage, but you need to be aware of one thing that caught me out at first. The game is actually set in 1990, and the Arcade Machines questions reflect this, so don’t forget.
The last of the trophies comes from the rank you earn when you finish the game. Not only does each rank have its own trophy but it also provides you with an unlockable for your next run. The ranks are B, A and S, and the requirements are not too difficult. To get an S rank you need to make sure you play the game on Survival Difficulty, which is normal, make sure you have turned off extra lives, as you can only use one life. You also need to find 14/15 secrets and heal less than 8 times. I don’t think this would be difficult to do on one playthrough, but I wanted to play through the game without a guide first anyway. I still managed to find all of the secrets thanks to the map, but because I got poisoned so much, I ended up using 34 heals. This still got me the A rank though, so it shows how lenient the scoring is. Getting A rank gives you the Crowbar, and the Crowlauncher which is like an infinite rocket launcher that fires little Crow heads that explode. It is very cute.
Getting the Platinum only took me about 5 hours, and the second playthrough, knowing where everything was and having my notes from the first run made things so much quicker as I could just breeze through so much of the game.
Crow Country is a comfortable survival horror game. It is a game that has done an incredible job of wrapping itself up in an image of nostalgia while avoiding some of the clunkier and frustrating parts that many older games had when they were first released. It’s not the scariest game by a mile, but it is atmospheric and at moments can be quite tense. Its a nice homage to the era it is emulating, and the studio did a great job making it look and feel so visually interesting within the limitations it set itself. It is definitely something I would recommend if you enjoy survival horror games, even if it is on the easier side.
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