Crow Country is a classic horror game in the style of titles like Resident Evil and Silent Hill from the late 90s and early 2000s. It gives you just enough resources to get through the game, but not enough to kill all the enemies. As you play, you will also pick up various items and read various notes, which you then have to use to solve puzzles in order to progress further. The game does a decent job of pointing the player where to go while the map marks any found, but unresolved puzzles. This should at least prevent the player from getting stuck without knowing where to go. In emergency cases, there is also the crow hint system, which allows you to get a maximum of 10 hints per playthrough that tell you where to go and what you need to solve a puzzle (without giving you a direct solution). Even with all these systems, I did get stuck on one puzzle in the game and I needed help from the community to figure out a solution to it. In another puzzle it also took me a while to notice the numbers needed to solve it. So, keep that in mind when you're deciding whether or not to buy the game.

In terms of horror elements this one is a bit weird. It is surprising how with the game's camera perspective, the game actually manages to create a pretty good atmosphere and make occasional jump scares work. I also think the pixelated, low resolution rendering style, helps the game in the end. The whole idea of the story and the ultimate plot twist (that you can see for coming for a while) works very well. Abandoned amusement park certainly works well for a horror setting and this kind of story. Worth of note is also the game's length, which will take you - most likely - between 5 and 8 hours on first playthrough.

As for the issues with the game - I think the default controls are bad. You can flip the shoot and reload buttons - that already makes them better, but switch layout to modern controller layout - I think makes even more sense. I have tried playing the game with the default controls, but after 4 hours, I was still dropping grenades and shooting instead of reloading, because of how illogical the default mappings are. Switching to modern layout for the last 2 hours of my playthrough made entire experience significently more smooth.

On technical sides there are some bigger issues, though. One of the biggest annoyances being the way this game approaches fullscreen, trying to enforce - now abandoned by Unity - Exclusive Fullscreen mode. I have no idea how even, as trying to set ExclusiveFullscreen in Unity 2022, should result in it falling back to FullScreenWindow. But in the case of this game it doesn't and instead, my Samsung monitor blanks out for like 2 seconds when switching to the game - which is a pain in the ass, when you actually use 2 monitors and have to alt+tab from the game.

Finally the keyboard and mouse support is atrocious and borderline unplayable and I don't think there is an excuse for it releasing in such a bad state (although with indie games and limited budgets - it is understandable, to prioritize one over the other). Still, this again isn't one of those games, where getting a decent keyboard and mouse support is impossible - it requires creating some branches in code, to have different behaviours for mouse and keyboard cause you can't just remap control to keyboard on the fly, but it certainly can be done. And by that I am NOT saying breaking the logic of how you can not move when aiming a weapon etc.

At the end of the day - I recommend Crow Country - it's a good survival horror game. However, make sure you have a controller laying around - otherwise it's going to be a really bad time.

In some parts the writing sucks - everyone is just super trustworthy, especially early in the game or just straight up insane. In other, it's full of very precise item descriptions and occasional really good dialogs. It's weird... and that's not where the weirdness end. How the game plays with trolling the player when the protagonist is low on sanity (or just in scripted segments) is something else and it is FANTASTIC!

Gameplay-wise - it plays like an old horror games. Fixed camera perspectives, where you run picking up items figuring out what to use and where - I don't think it's particularly scary, despite having some scary visuals - but then, according to interviews - it never was meant to be. If it really was suppose to be a B-horror-like - it certainly nails that absurdity and it certainly makes sense why sometimes the characters react in some nonsensical ways. It apparently was also never supposed to end up being another survival horror - and in that sense, I can see that. As - I think - there is a single section in the game, where there is a chance you can end up in a state when it's impossible to progress because of you running out of items - and even then, you can still use "Damage Field" magick to work around it - totally unlike other horror games around that time. If it wasn't for how hard it sometimes gets to figure out what to use and where - this would a very accessible spin on early 2000 horror games... but sadly - the puzzles still will likely make you check internet at times, especially late in the game. And speaking of magic system - it's really good. It never got old to using the magic in the game, despite each spell slowing the progress and forcing me to wait for the spell to finish.

I can clearly see why so many people hold this game in such high regard. It's really solid and it aged for the most part gracefully.

I think people who tout this as an "immersive sim" have done a significantly more damage than the game's hideous art style itself. Not every game that mixes stealth with open-ended mission design is an immersive sim and Cruelty Squad is a prime example of that - it's a miserable experience if you try to approach this like other immersive sim! But... if you throw that whole idea outside of the window and don't try to approach it as immersive sim, but just a mix of a shooter and stealth game, where you are hired to eliminate targets and then try to figure out what works and what doesn't for each mission, when stop carrying about whatever enemies are onto you and you stop carrying about not abusing their simplistic AI - then the game becomes actually very enjoyable and satisfying to play. And then its "shitpost" ideas also start fitting significantly better to the entier concept of the game... and only then you get hooked on the idea of trying to see what else the game is hiding and replaying levels to make later levels easier for yourself.

This is technically a very competent game as far as designing missions, gameplay and graphics go. Probably - despite the lack of Michael Ironside (which also resulted in very different Sam Fisher) - one of the games that realizes the content of a Splinter Cell best... but the Ubisoft's utter incompetency with designing network systems and stable games, this is almost unplayable at PC to a point, where you just have to play in offline mode with Direct3D 9 rendering... and this will still crash from time to time anyway. Hence the rating.

While the beginning was alright, the further you go into the game, the more you start to realize how unfinished this game is - with developers breaking even most basic game design ideas for seemingly no reason - like for example, if you miss a rocket launcher in one of the levels, you will be given ammunition for it all the time later in the game, but you'll never find the weapon itself ever again aside from that ONE SINGLE point in the game. Or for example making sure, when - if you've just completed a driving section and now you are in a smaller section where you have to finds elements to progress, to lock the player into the area in order to not make him drive for like 5 min to the beginning of the level. Then of course you have bugs, story that goes nowhere and generally you ever forget exists until some cutscene happens after like 2 or 3 levels. This would be a mediocre shooter with a cool aesthetic - but Slipgate yet again managed to mess it up.