An unnerving experience.
By Ameer Ammar
After Bloober Team knocked it out of the park with the Silent Hill 2 remake, I was quite excited for their immediate next game just a year later, Cronos: The New Dawn, and while it doesn't hit the same highs and isn't as tightly perfected as Silent Hill 2 felt, Cronos is still a strong, albeit flawed, survival horror experience that's perfect for fans of the genre, especially if you missed when survival horror games were actually challenging.
You play as "The Traveller", a mysterious being sent by "The Collective" to find and locate people from the past to collect their "Essence" and upload that to the Collection through a process known as "Ascension" years after a disease called "The Change" swept the town of "New Dawn" located in Poland. Cronos' story is one large mystery that poses countless questions from the get-go. You are given no context on anything you are doing and must piece together what exactly is going on mainly through audio logs, notes and various cutscenes throughout the experience. It is a time travel tale as you traverse both present-day New Dawn in its completely ruined form covered by anomalies that have transformed the land and its past version, right as the apocalypse was beginning during Christmas 1981.
It is clear that the pandemic of 2020 was a large inspiration in how the disease spread in the Cronos universe; you'll find many notes mentioning "lockdowns" and people complaining about saving toilet paper. It brought back a lot of memories of those days, and it's pretty clear that the pandemic had a massive influence on how the infection in Cronos is portrayed, which sets it closer to reality.
I think the story here is a little mixed mainly because of the fact that the Traveller herself isn't very interesting or given much characterization until much later in the game, and while you do meet others during the story such as The Warden, the dialogue struggled to keep me emotionally invested in these characters especially considering how little time you spend with any of them, It left me wanting more by the end in terms of actual story writing but the lore here is awesome, everything that you uncover about the apocalypse, how it went down, The Collective and the central mystery of time travel is fascinating and I wished the character writing matched up to how interesting the universe that Cronos sets up is, It only truly picks up towards the last couple of hours and by the time I was fully invested into the characters, the game ends. It's a really stark contrast to how invested I felt in every character I encountered in Bloober's last game, Silent Hill 2; every single person you meet on that journey is important, and James Sunderland himself is a fascinating character that I loved playing as. There's a large disconnect here between the player and the Traveller, as the Traveller has a lot of information that the player pretty much never gets about the Collective, which ended up making me feel a bit disconnected from her as a protagonist.
There are dialogue options throughout the game; they don't affect the story deeply, but I did appreciate their inclusion, and there are multiple endings, with one exclusive to New Game+ that I highly recommend checking out after finishing the game yourself, as it is important to the overall narrative.
Gameplay-wise Cronos is absolutely a brutal experience; it feels like Resident Evil 2 Remake and Dead Space had a baby. You can expect mainly third-person shooting using a pretty large arsenal of guns, such as SMGs, ARs, pistols, shotguns and more, alongside simple puzzle-solving and a lot of exploration to gather various items to unlock some door or path forward. There are no difficulty options, and the only way you can really make the game easier is by turning on aim assist, which I do recommend on controller, as it is completely off by default. There's no denying I had a tonne of fun with Cronos; the shooting is satisfying. The main enemies are grotesque monsters called the Orphans. The main gimmick with these enemies is that they can merge together if you allow them to get near a corpse, turning a single enemy into potentially a much stronger threat. It is always a satisfying experience to take these guys down and prevent them from merging. One time I had missed an orphan in a room and moved on much further in the level; when I came back, I found a huge enemy that I reckon would've rivalled an actual boss fight, as that one orphan went on and merged with everyone I took down. It was a scary experience, but thankfully, with some smart manoeuvring, I managed to run past it. There's one enemy type that's stuck to walls and grabs you, requiring you to mash a button to escape, that I despised. This game would genuinely be better if this entire enemy type was deleted; it always felt cheap to be caught by this enemy and lose a heal over it.
Aside from that one enemy, there's a strong variety of normal Orphans that you will encounter; some throw poison, some have certain body parts shielded, and some go down in a single hit. Each one offers a unique challenge, especially when these enemies are paired together in specific encounters, forcing you to adapt entirely new strategies to clear out rooms.
Boss fights unfortunately fall into the pit of being too repetitive, there is a certain boss that I'm fairly certain is reused about 3 times, nothing is different about each fight aside from the arena and that was big let-down, this was one aspect of the experience that absolutely could've used more love as the Orphans' ability to morph together should've resulted in more horrifying boss designs that was just missed out here, as for the boss fights quality itself they are all pretty fun, mainly coming down to learning how to space yourself, move out of their attacks and figuring out what to target, Some have more of a gimmick that require you to burn them first and others spawn enemies around, All fairly fun fights that I just wish didn't repeat as often as they do.
It is important to note that Cronos is hard. I don't mind difficult games one bit, so Cronos kept me locked in throughout the entire experience; however, there are moments where the difficulty feels more unfair than challenging, especially with how rarely it auto-saves. For example, resources are scarce as is usual with survival horror games, but in Cronos it feels especially more scarce than usual. It gets to a point where while you have no resources left, every box you break just gives you Energy (this game's currency) rather than anything else that would be helpful. It makes it a requirement to make sure you waste next to no bullets, making some sections of the game a trial of doing everything absolutely perfectly with no mistakes rather than a natural difficulty spike. It led to a lot of frustration, especially early on before I could get any of the upgrades that make the mid- to late game much more reasonably difficult. I also hated the lack of a map screen here; instead, Cronos uses a compass to guide the player, and I just didn't like it. There's a deeply satisfying aspect about survival horror games as you go through room to room clearing everything out that Bloober's last game, Silent Hill 2, got perfectly. The lack of a map led to getting lost quite a few times and a general feeling that I was missing out on side rooms too often just because they blended in with the environment or in the darkness.
Another aspect is inventory management, a staple of the genre that here was overdone; story items take up inventory space, and you already have so few slots that you are required to sacrifice some important items to carry forward. This as an idea isn't bad, but it does make it a requirement that you focus your early game upgrades on inventory space; however, towards later parts, there are sections where it genuinely feels like you can't pick up anything, and if you missed a bit too many bullets, it means you are required to go back to a save point, put things into storage, and then run back again to pick up whatever you missed. This is a design philosophy that has died in the genre as time has gone on by making story-related items not take up storage space so as not to frustrate the player with having to run back and forth if they want to pick things up, but Cronos doesn't adhere to that, and overall this was a flaw in my experience.
I do want to talk about horror. Generally, I've become quite good with horror games over the years. Silent Hill 2 didn't exactly scare me. Alan Wake 2 was creepy, but I found it more fascinating than anything else, so I feel I don't get scared much by horror games nowadays, but something about Cronos' abandoned Poland town setting just unsettled me the entire way through. The Orphans and the way they've just taken over quietly reminded me a lot of the Flood in Halo, but if they took over the entire planet, the loneliness, knowing I was basically alone in this completely infected world, just got under my skin. Just thinking about the world of Cronos makes me shiver a bit, I'll be honest. Horror is very subjective, but this particular one got me. There are very few jumpscares, which I appreciate, so generally horror here is portrayed through environment design, audio and the enemies themselves, combined with a very sci-fi-sounding soundtrack that reminded me quite a bit of Dead Space's.
Graphically, Cronos: The New Dawn is gorgeous; every environment is intricately detailed. I adore the Soviet-era Poland setting. Going through Brutalist-architecture apartment complexes and various other settings, I was never bored by the visuals of Cronos; it utilises HDR perfectly, making darkness look completely pitch black. The realism of how everything looks alongside the anomalies that cut right through the world results in extremely creepy yet fantastic visuals. Enemy designs reminded me a tonne of Dead Space's necromorphs; the Orphans are almost a bit too detailed for my liking, making them unsettling to even look at.
This game does utilize Unreal Engine 5 which nowadays means performance issues, Overall in my own experience playing this on the PS5 Pro via Performance Mode, I actually had a nearly flawless experience, with only extremely rare FPS drops only while running through a couple of rooms in the early game, I have heard of performance issues on other platforms especially PC which I highly recommend looking up if you're planning to pick up the game there but my personal experience on the PS5 Pro was pretty much flawless with extremely sharp visuals despite not having an actual PS5 Pro enhancement, I think the Performance Mode here stays to its maximum resolution much more often on the Pro, resulting in a sharp image, this is pretty much the opposite case from Metal Gear Solid Delta, which looks like a blurry mess compared to the great work done here.
Accessiblity Features:
Color-Blind Modes: Three options for green, red, and blue color deficiencies.
Interaction Indicators: Clear indicators to highlight usable items or elements.
Subtitles: Customizable subtitles in multiple languages—adjust size and color.
Difficulty Customization: Only one mode, Hard Mode unlocked in NG+
Customizable aim assist (strong works as almost aim-bot levels)
Quick-time event (QTE) behavior (hold vs. tap)
Comfort Options: Center dot option to ease motion sickness + Ability to reduce or disable camera shake and sway
FINAL VERDICT
Cronos: The New Dawn is a great brutal horror game from Bloober Team; while it doesn't hit the same highs as Silent Hill 2, it delivers a world that genuinely unnerved me, excellently written lore and solid gameplay, its flaws being the lack of a map screen, certain difficulty spikes, inventory management feeling too punishing and character writing that failed to grab me until towards the end of the game.
I highly recommend picking up Cronos: The New Dawn at full price (currently $59.99) if you're a fan of the survival horror genre, especially if you miss when these games were actually challenging. If you aren't a fan of the genre but want to play it, I'd recommend waiting for a sale.
Cronos The New Dawn - 7.5/10 - BUY/WAIT-FOR-SALE
Special thanks to Bloober Team for providing a review copy.