It's October, go play Crow Country. I'm not joking, you don't need this recommendation, if you like survival horror or cool retro stuff - it's worth it.
If you're still here, I'll be brief with the story introduction, because it's best experiencing it yourself. As Agent Mara you come by car to a closed down theme park - Crow Country. You look for the owner - Mr. Crow. Armed with a pistol, you enter the premises and somehow you bump into some body horror, human shaped beings that seem to be aggressive. While other people you meet in the theme park, somehow at the same time as you decided to come, are shocked by their presence - you, Mara, were expecting them... are almost familiar. Keeping to yourself, you explore the Crows Country secrets, learning what's been going on here really. There is one reason you came here - you need to find Mr. Crow.
Aesthetics
Big selling point are the original PlayStation graphics or rather how they look in our nostalgic memories. Truth be told, there is no way PS1 could do something like that, but we somehow remember is so fondly that it clouds our memories and the designer capitalized on this by making this very close what we do seem to remember. There are low poly characters, simpler backgrounds and objects, all low resolution-alike and covered with veneer of dithering that looks very convincing. It looks like a Chibi Resident Evil (Super Deformed). For me it's a very comfortable spot in gaming and while survival horror can put me on edge at times, the aesthetics are so pleasing, it keeps the game on more engaging and fun side rather than anxious.
Truth is, PS1 game like that could only run with much lower resolution and pre-rendered backgrounds and it would have the wobbly polygons effect. Muddy graphics with wobbly polygons could add to the atmosphere, but at the time it was really annoying, not being able to make out blurry shape on your 14" CRT TV. I think they made a very good design decisions - it's retro enough and you can play with "classic" tank controls, but I'm almost sure this is just a nod and only few people would actually use this and want to struggle with controls... like someone not used to a gun. What I like about this - it has all the modern sensibilities and doesn't require some insane menu tax like actual PS1 games would.
Mechanics
You view world via third person, isometric free camera view. You run and can look around. You need to stop and aim if you want to shoot or throw a grenade. You collect stuff and have rather robust inventory, where the only cap is max amount of items of each type. This means no need for RE4 Leon style inventory tetris. This makes for smooth and intuitive gameplay without any hitches as it's a story first game. You can even play story mode without the enemies, which is a great idea for people who like puzzles but don't like the survival aspect.
It truly takes the best aspects of survival horror games and it wants you to succeed. There are trash cans and breakable crates where you can (but not always) find more consumables. You can dig through some trash cans again as the story progress and get even more times this way. There are also vending machines that you can kick for a chance of getting some items. The consumables really feel like they're semi-randomized for balancing the game. If you're loaded to teeth, all you'll find is trash, but if you don't have any pistol bullets, you can be almost certain you'll find some, by giving a good kick to a nearest vending machine. Did I mention gun upgrades? Be on a careful lookout for those.
Saving is great too - you can save at any fire in the game and the calming music is a must have for all games of this genre.
Puzzles and Exploration
Puzzles are fairly original and fun in sense that they'll never make you stuck for ages and at the same time challenging enough to give you a good *thonk* at times. If you get stuck, there's always fortune teller where you have 10 credits to spent - careful though, it affects the score. Game is a big key chase, but it's varied enough that you'll want to actually do it and you usually have some hints where to go next. Thanks to developing story and interesting idea of setting it all in theme park, the environments are fairly varied so it's easy to know exactly where you are.
Any cons?
Well... nitpicks. Story, at lest for me, could be a tiny bit better. You quickly get an idea what's going on and the ending feels like it's a little rushed with quick tying in all the loose ends. Not as satisfying as the whole game prepared me for, but maybe it's right on point considering the length? As I said, it's a nitpick, because it's by no means bad. I would like to see more characterization from workers that we got at the beginning and a little more fleshed out some characters, but overall for experience of that length - it's great. I rather have some parts too edited than Kojima text dumps, so I'd say, it's still a strong point. One more nitpick? Maybe interface and interactions, it's all pretty boiled down. Again, this is much better than a menu tax and running round back to chest, but a little more variety with puzzles and items wouldn't hurt.
Go play Crow Country, it's October
It's really a good game and I hope to see more like it. 6 hours of extremely pleasant experience. They made amazing amount of good design choices and editing it just right to make it engaging while keeping the right pace. Support the developers and hopefully we will see many more!
Image source: https://wall.alphacoders.com/big.php?i=1362122
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