Crow Country

If you’re a guy who has talked to me in real life ever, you’ll know I enjoy the classic horror games of the late nineties and early 2000s, most exemplified by the Silent Hill and Resident Evil series on the PlayStation and the PS2. So, when the Super Flash Bros, developers of everyone’s favorite Switch launch title Snipperclips, announced a throwback game to it that showed well in trailers, I was interested. And hey, the Silent Hill 2 remake has yet to come out and Resident Evil is more action-focused at times, so a deliberate throwback may scratch an itch for classic “”””analog””” horror. Thus, I played through all of Crow Country in a night, and I have some thoughts.

Crow Country’s gameplay and plot will really come as no surprise to anyone who’s into the genre. A young woman shows up at an abandoned place to find a person, will have to avoid monsters as much as they do fight them because of limited supplies, and must find a crank of some kind to put in a crank-shaped hole or whatever. Specifically, Mara Forest shows up at the titular theme park to find the owner and discover the mysterious reasons behind the sudden closure of the park years ago. You roam around the park, find papers on the floor that tell you hints about puzzles and in-game lore, and collect items to unlock new parts of the park. All the while avoiding or fighting gross monsters and unlocking new weapons to do so. If you want any major point of difference between it and the games it's riffing on, it is that Crow Country has free aiming and full 3D camera control instead of a fixed camera angle and auto aim. 

I thought Crow Country was fine. Gameplay-wise I think it satisfyingly gets the itch for looking at papers on the floor and solving bizarre puzzles that always lead one to ask “Why would anybody build anything like this.” For example, If you accidentally locked yourself in a control room you wouldn’t build dice-faced pressure plates into the floor to step on in a particular order to get out. All that’s par for the course, but my two biggest gripes with the gameplay are the enemies and traps. Littered around the park are wall spikes, chandeliers of spikes, foot traps that release toxic gas, standing traps that release toxic gas when you walk past them, etc. Most of the time I was damaged it was by these things. They are everywhere and my issue with them, emblematic of the game as a whole, is that it is not scary. Traps that just spritz green febreze at you and need an antidote don’t really make me jump or create an interesting environment that feels hostile at every turn, it's just annoying. 

Similarly, the monsters are more annoying than scary. Their designs and functions are pretty rote and I never found them to be fucked up in the way I wanted. And by that, I mean, with one exception I never fought or engaged with, I never asked myself “Oh god what is that? what does it do? And how dead am I being near this thing?” That’s a great feeling for horror games. Every time there’s a new Lethal Company update, for example, I love playing with my friends, seeing a fucked up-looking thing, and going “Oh what the fuck is that!” I never felt that with Crow Country and you can avoid so many of the monsters. I found them to be more annoying than scary. Furthermore, the monsters don’t evolve really. 40 minutes in, of a four-hour game, so do that math however you want, I felt confident I had seen every monster design the game has and that any new one wouldn’t be a heavy enough deviation for me to be scared or interested or thrilled. Even the ones you do see never deviate from a red-goo look that at the end of the day just kind of looks like nothing.

The same goes for the environments, more or less. Horror, of any medium, lives and dies on pacing. The mastery of the genre is in build-up and intrigue. For example, in Resident Evil 2, by the time the player has been through the map enough times, the player becomes comfortable with moving around in it. It no longer is as scary as it was. The game solves this by throwing an indestructible monster after you. Silent Hill starts having transitions to an alternate dimension where the map's layouts change and the plot rises to have footage of burn victims kept alive by psychic hatred and characters bleeding to death spontaneously in front of you. My point is, you get the layout of Crow Country’s map pretty quickly and the game never sufficiently throws in new threats or cranks up the horror of the plot as time goes on to compensate. This is exacerbated by the upgrades you’ll get trivializing combat that is otherwise perfectly functional. Not to mention if you’ve been paying attention to the memos stapled to dogs or whatever, none of the story beats will come as a surprise. Even some plot twists you’ll probably see coming from anywhere as soon as 60 minutes in. By the end, without spoiling anything, I was confused about what the game was trying to accomplish emotionally with the story. 

Look, I know a lot of this seems harsh, and it is, but I did like some of Crow Country. The gameplay updates to the formula, like a third-person camera felt like smart ways to get the most out of the environment by having the player really look for ammo and health pickups around every corner. The controls having a dedicated slowly step backwards button was smart and the free aiming allows for more nuance in combat even if I found myself wasting a few shells trying to aim. The soundtrack and sound design are also strengths the game has. There are appropriate horrified moans and squelching where need be, and while I don’t know if I’ll be listening to the soundtrack while I study, it worked for the areas it was in. Finally, for every complaint I have about the game plateauing really early on, there usually is something interesting to see as the game goes on even if minor. 

Battle of the Remakes: Resident Evil 4

  Last time on this blog nobody reads, I discussed my concerns for two remakes of genre-defining horror games from the sixth generation. Now that one has been released, I want to discuss Resident Evil 4. As much as I should discuss Resident Evil 4 on its own merits, fuck that. To be clear they are both great games and get perfect scores from me if you’re into numbers, but I will be spending most of my time comparing it to the original release. How has the gameplay and plot changes affected the transition? The two games are still pretty similar. Both are Resident Evil 4. The 2023 release is not “like a completely separate game.” At the end of the day it's the same, fucking awesome, game.

Resident Evil 4 (2023) vs Resident Evil 4 (2005)

Six years after the whole being in Resident Evil 2 kind of thing, Leon Kennedy arrives in the same region of Europe that still uses pesetas looking for the president of the United States’ daughter, Ashley. She has been kidnapped by a cult planning to do some resident evil type shit by infecting the region with a horrible virus that turns people into zombies, monsters, and sometimes zombie monsters. You spend most of the game running around the area shooting villagers, roundhouse-kicking monsters, and collecting treasure to buy new weapons. There are, of course, some classic Resident Evil puzzles of finding strangely shaped keys to fit into strangely shaped holes. Like finding the statue heads of different animals to slot into a statue to open a wooden door, for example. Both games keep this basic framework. 

So what's changed? The 2023 release swaps the tank controls of the original release for the familiar third-person action game controls that most people are used to. To compensate for the improved movement, the enemies are faster and a bit stronger. You still get to shoot them in certain spots to daze them which can lead to a follow-up melee attack with some splash damage thrown in there for a fun bonus. The controls are more modern and it’ll depend if you prefer them. On the one hand, it's nice to move freely but the combat isn’t any more intense than it was back in 2005. If anything, having to stop moving to shoot or stop shooting to move made it an interesting choice you had to make when being surrounded by enemies, which isn’t really here anymore. 

You do get new moves in this game too. There’s a stealth kill, which makes a lot of sense. Areas of the original were open enough but with enemies that didn’t notice you immediately. That said, you can’t just stealth kill your way to clear a room. No area in the game is designed for that. But it can lead to fewer bullets used when everyone does notice you and shit hits the fan. You also get a parry move, blocking incoming damage from most weapons. However, all these new moves degrade your knife and you have to choose whether you want your knife to whittle down or break just to save on health or ammo. Speaking of choices, the other new gameplay mechanic is minor crafting. Gunpowder and "resources" (which is just a sack full of metal) can drop from enemies and be found stuffed into pieces of furniture. Combining them makes different types of ammo depending on the amount. While it could be annoying, it isn’t. What ammo to craft depending on the enemies you’ve been fighting and your play style is a welcome option with a simple crafting mechanic. Perhaps you prefer using a shotgun for close combat or moving away from enemies and just using a rifle to take them out. The game now gives you the option to create ammo to fit your play style. Simple mechanics like one-button parries and two-item crafting make it so you have more choices, which is great. Overall, I’d say generalized gameplay is better in the remake because of those choices that make up for the removal of some fight-or-flight choices. 

    That said tons of minor changes to set pieces have been done that I don’t know if they add up to positives. The boss fights with “It,” the bit with the Salazar statue chase, the crane game, the laser room, the lava room, the dozer section, the underground ruins, the bit with the truck driving at you, and so on have been cut. The mine cart section, the section in the canyon, and most of the cutscenes have all been shortened. Some things have replaced these sections like a tiny fire-breathing Salazar statue and a wrecking ball instead of the chase and king of the hill dozer sections respectively. On the one hand, these changes make the game a bit shorter, for my playtimes at least, and lead to a tighter game without much faffing about. One of my complaints on the 2005 release was that it was a little bit long for my liking and cutting some non-essential stuff down or just out makes sense. The game’s pacing doesn’t really suffer from these cuts. 

That said, those weird bits in the game were fun. I liked shooting a dude in the driver’s seat of a truck as he floored it toward me, I liked running away from a weird statue, and I liked the bits where the game would pause so Leon Kennedy and the villains would roast each other. It was just fun. I can’t help but feel like with a lot of fun bits taken out that Resident Evil 4 Remake is blander because of it. Also, the core combat is better here but I found it can get a bit more repetitive without those bits to break up the standard area clearing out gameplay. Some bits that were added also make the game blander. For example, there’s a section where Leon is dying and slowly walks while staggering through a room. Like that bit in Batman Arkham City, Dead Space, Gears of War, Spec-Ops: The Line, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, etc. Or the new exciting bits where you squeeze through a narrow crack in the wall like in God of War 2018, The Last of Us, Uncharted, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc. Tons of modern cinematic techniques used in a game so action-focused just made me roll my eyes. They are overused to the point that those tropes lose all effectiveness. All those small changes are still small, but they add up to a slightly different experience that I can’t confidently say is for the better. 

    The game’s tone is also a bit different. Everything is a bit more serious now and played a lot less like a B-level horror movie. I found the results of this to be mixed. The secondary villain Krauser is less cartoonish, more threatening, more memorable, and has a motivation that’s more easily understandable. His boss fights as well are better this time around by being centered around parrying instead of quick time events. However, another secondary villain, Salazar, is much worse. He has less screen time, less fun things to say, has a worse boss fight, and is just generally less memorable this time around. The main villain suffers much of the same fate. In fact, I don’t know if the game ever implicitly or explicitly states his endgame in the 2023 release. Luis, a side character, gets better motivation and screen time on the other hand.

All the characters worked in the 2005 release but they were different. Ashley is more of a screaming girl in a horror movie originally, and now she’s more serious and calm. Ada Wong seems more regretful of her actions with a bigger attraction to Leon rather than just a strict femme fatale. The mysterious allegiance of Ada in the original worked for its cheesy vibe and the more serious tone in the remake has an Ada that’s more complex and better suited for that tone. It makes more sense to keep a more serious tone especially if we’re going for an altered Resident Evil canon in the remakes. But the 2005 release was a stand-alone title, more or less, and the 2023 remake makes some characters way more boring. I’m not confident in saying that the remake’s tone is better, you just gotta pick which one you prefer.

    That’s how I feel overall about Resident Evil 4 Remake. Both are excellent games with stellar gameplay and a more jovial tone than most AAA games right now that will be worth your purchase. Especially once the remake matches the price of the original over time from price drops and sales. I think in the future I’ll play the original over the remake. The remake is more mechanically interesting, more serious, tighter, and has some smarter characterization. The original is more fun in tone and characterization, has more content, and is more important to video games as an art form. Of course, the newer one also looks better, but you can get the old graphics with an HD texture mod on PC so take your pick really. In many ways, I would consider it a success that Resident Evil 4 doesn’t have a definitive version post-remake. Except for the Zeebo release of course

5/5

Oh this shit rules

Resident Evil 4 on the Brazillian console, The Zeebo

Battle of the Remakes: Before the Release

    Oh, boy do I love the Nintendo Gamecube. Never before has there been so much game in one cube. The only thing that competes with the Gamecube is the Sony Playstation 2, which made a second attempt to fit as much play as it could in a single station. Both consoles were a part of the sixth generation and included two timed-exclusives that revolutionized horror in video games. Those games were Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill 2. Two decades later, the games industry is completely out of ideas and is becoming nostalgic for those sweet glorious years shortly after 9/11. So, both games are getting remakes for the Playstation 5 and PC. However, games are a lot different now than they were back then. In 2023, Silent Hill couldn’t be worse and Resident Evil couldn’t be better. With that said, I would like to write about how I feel about these two remakes in the time leading up to their (likely) 2023 release. Discussing what made both games great and the hurdles they have to overcome in their remake.

SILENT HILL 2

What Made it Great?

As James Sunderland wanders around the open streets of Silent Hill, the sounds of radio static, monsters, and an overwhelming fog creates an unnerving sense of claustrophobia. This is what made Silent Hill 2 stand above the rest; its atmosphere. Akira Yamaoka’s score is incredible with a moody and muffled detachment that leads to a game all about getting to the center of a man’s psyche realize the haunting experience the plot makes it out to be. Everything in the town is rotten and covered in washed out colors. The monsters animate like they’re not really alive, with movements and behavior that makes them seem more like wind-up toys. Add all this with a great story acted out by amateur actors whose dialogue is always subtly off, and we are left with an experience that feels haunting and where you feel unease even when safe. It is a psychological horror yet to be matched in video games. Almost all aspects of it are perfect. 

What Made it Suck Ass?

What wasn’t perfect was the gameplay. The camera in the game is dog shit and never seems to manually find an angle that feels comfortable to play in. Not in a way that helps with the horror either, with the exception of a few sections. To make the camera more palatable you have to hold the left trigger down for as long as you want the camera to suck less. When the left trigger gets held down the camera swings wildly to the back of the player. Combat is a bit clunky as well, but that can be excused more. The player character’s attacks are awkward and a lot of times just don’t do what you want. There’s a difference between the usual tank controls of the games like it that add to a sense of vulnerability but Silent Hill 2 pushes it a little far. While it makes sense in context why the player character isn’t proficient in armed combat, his attacks could have more impact nonetheless. 

Who is Developing it?

Bloober Team loudly proclaimed that they will take on the task of remaking Silent Hill 2 and also proclaimed that they’d like to be considered the frontrunner for modern horror games. What hurts that statement is that Bloober Team has made five horror games in the past decade. While opinions range, rarely is a game rated above an 8/10 and usually averages around a 6/10. So not bad but certainly not memorable and they’ve garnered a reputation for making some laughable horror games with viral clips of bugs from Layers of Fear, and mockery directed at their adaption of The Blair Witch Project. Taking on the most famed psychological horror game of all time, after failing to be the name in horror makes it come across as a desperate attempt to nab the title. Some people who worked on Silent Hill 2, like composer Akira Yamaoka, worked with them on some previous works and those creatives are coming back to oversee production on this remake. While that does bode well, those creatives simply being back to do some old stuff doesn’t guarantee quality. Even worse, nobody quite knows what Konami is like since they dissolved all their game developing divisions and now seek just to pay people to do shit with their IP. How much are they supervising? Is that good if they are? No idea. There’s a lot to be worried about here with Bloober Team and Konami’s spotty at best track record. 

What to Look Out For. 

Silent Hill 2’s tone is very specific and it is very easy in re-doing it to fail in capturing the same experience. In trying to make an old game seem new it's possible to create more detail, a cleaner look, and more expressiveness that the original benefited from a lack of. Take when the main character realizes what’s actually happening when he witnesses another character die. In the original, he slowly falls to his knees and says in a somber tone “I know why I needed you.” In the trailer for the remake, he falls quickly screaming his head off and pounding the floor with his fists. In 2023 and in Unreal Engine 5 you can create that explosive reaction, but is it an improvement? 

What if it Sucks?

Two years ago, the GTA Trilogy got remasters that were generally regarded as buggy and ugly to look at. Knowing this, Rockstar delisted the originals from Steam so no one could just go back to play the older and superior versions. Assuming that 2023 Silent Hill 2 comes out and the 2001 release is still better, how can you play the original now? Silent Hill 2 has no official ways of purchase. You could always emulate it and there is a fan mod pack for the 2001 PC release that you can spend an afternoon on recompiling so it can run and look great. Otherwise you’re gonna have to drop around two hundred dollars for a good copy of the game on PS2 (or Xbox) and the console you want it on. There is a PS3 release I wouldn’t recommend because it is buggy with numerous audio glitches and, famously, all the in-game text font replaced with comic sans. Unless you’re a pirate or are the son of an oil baron, you are shit out of luck with playing the original experience. 

RESIDENT EVIL 4

What Made it Great?

By the time James Sunderland is wandering around being sad, Leon Kennedy has suplexed some dumb mother fucker into the pavement after shooting his kneecaps off and going on about bingo or whatever. Resident Evil 4 is incredible for the exact opposite reason as Silent Hill 2. After numerous installments of weird dialogue and a dumb story, Capcom said fuck it, and intentionally made a game with a horror B-Movie edge. RE4 is filled with dumb but fun one-liners, hyper violence, big monsters, and a plot to save the president’s daughter that makes little sense. While you may hesitate to call it a horror game, its sense of horror comes from moments of pure relentlessness. Being chased around a village by ten guys with pitchforks, and one extremely angry guy with a chainsaw makes you feel panicked and tense when you have the controller in your hand. That said, RE4 knows when to take a moment to calm down and uses quiet time to enhance the pacing. What elevated this game’s profile was that it was one of the first 3rd person action games with a free camera. Game historians have put it alongside innovative titles that inspired generations of games and developers alike such as Super Mario 64, Half-Life, Doom, and Super Metroid. Without, Resident Evil 4 video games just wouldn’t be where they are now. 

What Made it Suck

Resident Evil 4’s main campaign is the longest out of any other Resident Evil game. Maybe a bit too long. By the time you enter the island section the game has more or less shown you its full hand and goes on for another few hours. Every Resident Evil game starts to lose steam when you enter the lab at the end of every game and Resident Evil 4 is no exception. Although Resident Evil 4 certainly suffers a little bit less than other games in the series. Additionally, the game is not great to look at for most of it. The sections in the castle fare better, especially in the fan remastered texture pack, but most of the game’s visuals feel washed out and covered in brown and gray hues. Not saying everything has to be colorful, but I wouldn’t call it a game that’s visually pleasing in the slightest even in a horror aesthetic. This is especially true of the low resolution textures in all official releases. 

Who is Developing It?

Capcom, and to an extent, the RE team have been doing pretty well. The remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3, as well as the new releases; 7 & 8, have all been well received and were included in GOTY lists when they were released. There’s not really any expectation that Capcom will make a bad video game. However, they may not make a great Resident Evil 4. Resident Evil 3 was heavily criticized for not being a good remake of the original game and lesser critiques were leveled at its prequel. Despite them both being good games they may not have a lot of the stuff anybody liked about the original. At least you can pretty much ensure it will still be a good video game though. 

What to Look Out For

Resident Evil 4 is considered revolutionary and you can’t exactly revolutionize an industry by doing the same shit twice. By default the RE4make, as fans have dubbed it, will be popular but wont set the world of video games ablaze with grand new ideas. Thus inherently making it inferior to the original in terms of significance. The recent Resident Evil remakes have gone with a more serious tone and that threatens to remove the fun of Resident Evil 4. For example, in the 2005 release, the player can save a dog stuck in a bear trap. If they do, hours later the dog will jump in to assist in killing a boss with the main character exclaiming “hey… it’s that dog from earlier!” In the 2023 release, the dog has already died when you come across it in the bear trap so that fun moment is removed. Take out the lava rooms, giant statues, and weird bouts of Leon Kennedy and the villains roasting each other and you just have a blander time. And if there’s one thing modern games don’t need more of; its being fucking bland. 

What if it Sucks?

Luckily for us, Resident Evil 4 is on every console known to man seemingly. You can play a pretty good fan remaster on PC, but if you can’t be bothered to indulge the work of passionate fans you could always play it on your GameCube, PlayStation 2, PC, Wii, iPhone, Zeebo, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Android, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, or Oculus Quest 2 if you’re that kind of guy. If you want to play the revolutionary game as god intended, or even with motion controls and/or VR support, you have tons of options that are inexpensive at your disposal. It's on sale all the time too, so you can play it for five dollars if you wait for one of the sales to come around. 

CONCLUSION

It appears neither game will have the side campaigns that came out in later releases of both titles, or at least you’ll have to pay extra for them as DLC you nice little consumer. Asides from that your best bet for a better game will be Resident Evil 4, despite the fun tone perhaps being lost. Silent Hill 2 is certainly going to be the most interesting to come back to when it releases because it has the most at risk. I will revisit these games and discuss them later in the year. Until then I shall play this year's Metroid Prime and Dead Space. Two other mid 2000s games with 2023 remakes. Man, everybody really is out of ideas.