Crow Nation Evaluation (PS5) | Push Sq.

Developed by SFB Video games, survival horror journey Crow Nation sees you taking part in as Mara Forest, a younger girl hell-bent on discovering the now-missing Edward Crow, enigmatic proprietor of the recently-shuttered Crow Nation amusement park.

The sport has a beautiful retro graphical model that evokes the likes of PS1 classics Resident Evil and Silent Hill whereas including a powerful quantity of density and element to environments. This added degree of element does make it onerous to discern which gadgets will be picked up, nevertheless, particularly in areas the place the lighting is just too low, abetting the horror fairly than serving to it.

Whereas issues look recent out of the 90s, there’s a vastly superior diploma of consolation and playability. The sport controls just like the Resident Evils of yore, although there’s an choice to modify to a extra up to date management scheme. High quality of life concepts are in every single place within the sport, together with on the problem degree, which even gives an “exploration” mode that totally disables enemy encounters. Whereas this may occasionally upset purists, it’s an enormous accessibility win, particularly with a lot of the map being value exploring.

Turning off enemies does take away among the best sides of the title, although. Creature design is phenomenal, masterfully toeing the road between grotesque and deadly, making certain that each enemy encounter is a harrowing one. In a masterstroke, your gun offers greater injury the nearer enemies are to you, so the sport actively encourages placing your self in peril. It’s sensible.

Sound design additional enhances the temper, providing suitably creepy ambient tracks, distressing fight tracks — one observe specifically feels like composer Ockeroid was prompted with “horror castanets” and simply rolled with it — and naturally, the “save room” theme.

It’s actually spectacular what SFB Video games has achieved with such a small group. When you like 90s horror video games — Resident Evil particularly — then you definately owe it to your self to check out Crow Nation.