Survival horror enthusiasts will be glad to hear that Cronos: The New Dawn has all the markings of some of the genre's biggest cult classics: Dead Space, Resident Evil, Alan Wake, and Silent Hill are pulsing through the roots of the biomass-coated environments you'll be battling with here. But don't be fooled: this is no Dead Space clone, and despite initial appearances, in no way are Cronos' borrowed elements done on the cheap.
Bloober Team has successfully created something wholly distinct, mixing the best parts of these games into something authentically new, and in turn showcasing everything it has learnt from the development of the exceptional
Silent Hill 2 Remake. In many ways this is Bloober Team's strongest original work yet.
Storytelling especially - through notes, newspaper clippings, the environment, and the souls of those who remain trapped in the past - is where Cronos shines, with the most attentive of players being rewarded for truly immersing themselves, and taking the time to explore everything this haunting world has to offer. Stepping into the hefty boots of Traveler ND-3576, you'll travel back in time to reclaim the trapped souls of those who died to The Change, all at the whims of the mysterious Collective. This organisation and their goals are never truly explained; instead, it's left to you - and ultimately the Traveler - to figure out what their real goal is. As the Traveler initially adheres to the commands of The Collective mindlessly and robotically, those that she meets begin to make this morph into a much more personal story of the implications of The Change, and the fact that many refuse to move on from it.
As is to be expected from Bloober Team by now - who are growing from a slightly hit-and-miss studio to one with genuine expertise in psychological horror - there's a lot more that lurks beneath the surface. Nothing is as it first seems, and by the end your expectations of this story will have been upturned for the better.
Many of the answers you'll be searching for here won't be given to you, but found, by carefully taking in your environment and paying close attention to decorations, graffiti, littered debris, and more. Some of these are small, pointed moments - take, for example, a fellow traveller you meet with a prosthetic, robotic arm and leg; in the next area he sends you to, just a short walk away, you'll find something that looks an awful lot like a pair of dismembered traveller's limbs. Others are more significant to the story at large; countless theories about The Change can be found in intimate diary entries from the deceased, with your own theories forming as you encounter audio logs from fellow Traveler's, scientists, and military personnel, or graffiti and comic-books depicting artistic representations of the experience of The Change... and the Traveler's part in it.
While wading through decaying buildings and diving through time and space, it's your job to track down people who were key to the Change to extract their souls with a device called the harvester, a contraption that could be straight out of A Nightmare on Elm Street which sees needle-sharp blades extend like claws from the traveler's suit. As you make your way through this ruined take on 80s Poland - accompanied by a synthy, 80s-era soundtrack, as well as the guttural noises of foes to constantly put you on edge - you'll meet the elusive Warden, a guide to other Travelers who immediately appears to have motives of his own. But what exactly are those motives? It's queries like this that'll keep you enthusiastically pressing on.
Image credit: Bloober Team
ND-3576's bid to awaken those lost to The Change soon becomes a quest to extract whoever can give her the most answers about this affliction, her role in it, and her true identity. It's selfish, really, but you'll soon find that a lot of the characters in this harrowing tale are only out to serve themselves (for the most part). You can't trust anyone. Through the influence of The Warden, and the questions raised by the lost souls she meets, this stoic Traveler - who often feels robotic - slowly becomes more human. She stops blindly following orders to extract specific targets and starts to question what The Collective's real motives are, whether she could have been responsible for The Change, and who she really is under that heavy-metal suit.
Without sharing too much, as you meet more people it becomes apparent that you're playing as the person that everyone thinks is the bad guy (which I find quite interesting - it's something we don't often get to do in a genre usually intent on casting you as the everyman-slash-cop-slash-special agent that's typically at least trying to come to the rescue). People are hostile towards the Traveler, scared of her, and convinced she's the one who's responsible for The Change that has robbed them of their lives. As a result, you're constantly battling with whether or not you're helping these people, or whether you're the monster they've been led to believe you are. As the Traveler slowly becomes less robotic, and more intent on getting answers about The Change and her employer, The Collective's part in it, so do you. This slow and steady development from robotic worker to human - of both the Traveler and the Warden, as they grow to learn more about the human experience - is heartwarming, but also concerning. You're prompted to wonder who these characters really are beneath the suit, and what their true intentions may be. (I'd love to elaborate here but, alas: spoilers).
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Image credit: Bloober Team
Cronos' darker truth is where the real meat of this story lies, the thing that sees you constantly pressing forward in search of answers ("Tell me, what exactly happened in the Steelworks?"). Or at least pressing forward in-between moments spent petting the collectable cats, a much-needed bit of respite in this otherwise lawless land, where nowhere and nobody is safe.
While Cronos: The New Dawn stands out where its story and character development is concerned, gameplay sometimes left a little more to be desired. Cronos plays most similarly to a Resident Evil game, where inventory management is incredibly important and resources are scarce, and while I welcome the challenge, Cronos falls into the frustrating category rather than fun more often than I'd like.
The upside is, as I mentioned above, that Cronos: The New Dawn may borrow plenty of things from other horror series, but it rarely feels derivative. In fact the end result feels genuinely refreshing in a genre that so often sticks to its trusted formats. One of the more unique elements, for instance, is that merge system, which is effectively the direct opposite of Dead Space's dismemberment system - and something you will need to give very careful consideration to throughout Cronos. By leaving the corpses of Orphans behind - Orphans being the range of enemies you face, those who have been sadly inflicted by the plague that was The Change - you run the risk of new ones merging with their bodies, becoming even more formidable in the process. And you don't want to be wasting ammunition in Cronos by any means.
Image credit: Bloober Team
Likewise, extracting the essences of people, the Traveler's main objective, isn't as redundant as you first think; these essences offer different perks for your build, such as one character's essence letting you deal more damage to burning enemies, or another allowing you to retrieve 10 percent more Energy (your in-game currency), with trade-offs coming from the limit to how many of these you can store. These also lead to some of Cronos' most interesting, hallucinatory moments: the souls that the Traveler harvests ultimately haunt her physically, with their frustrations - and therefore their presence - only becoming more prevalent throughout the game. Be prepared for jump-scares (not that you ever can be).
By the same token, those who dismiss the merge system will soon find it comes to bite them. There's a reason the game is constantly reminding you "don't let them merge" and "burn their bodies"; adhere to that, or you might as well be playing on hard mode. And the unique tools provided in Cronos are again part of that sense of newness - an Emitter that lets you manipulate time oddities to traverse new terrain, Gravity Boots that let you walk on walls and fly from platform to platform, a Conductor that creates electrical paths to power generators. All provide puzzle-solving aspects to an otherwise combat-heavy game, and grant some relief from otherwise brutal fights. That said, the Gravity Boots and Platforms are perhaps the weakest of these, sometimes feeling quite repetitive and maybe a tad gimmicky. The game is self-aware of what it's doing though; it knows it can be repetitive in places (especially where turning on generators is concerned) and the Traveler says as much. And those tools - and new weapons - are at least provided at a pace that keeps things from getting tiring.
Image credit: Bloober Team
Similarly important to concentrate on is your inventory, which is again where some minor frustrations can creep in. Games that focus on inventory and resource management aren't new by any means, but it's taken to a whole new level here, and for the most part forms the kind of challenge I think survival horror veterans will welcome. Those less well versed might find themselves struggling, however. You can only carry a select amount of crafting materials and items (which can be upgraded over time using an upgrade item, found through exploration, called Cores), and it means you must strategically plan your enemy encounters. You don't want to waste ammunition on uncharged shots, nor do you want to waste explosives, so you're very quickly forced to take combat a little slower and learn from any mistakes you make (such as letting them merge!). Mastering this then makes encounters easier, and it's rewarding to feel your character become more powerful - not just because of the upgrades offered to you, but because you're learning that the combat priority here isn't always just shooting. (And when ammunition does get low and things do get ropey, the environment's always there to be used to your advantage; more often than not, there's a canister or two waiting to be blown up.)
Prioritise your inventory upgrades early, as well as the firepower of your weapons, and you'll be off to a good start, but without careful consideration of your upgrades and resources, Cronos: The New Dawn can later become a matter of constantly running back and forth from save points, simply because you've found yet another key item and once again have no room for it. Add the horrors that are the Orphans - and the Merge mechanic - into the mix, and you'll regularly find yourself in some very troubling situations. Fortunately, while mistakes can and very likely will be made here, the opportunity to re-spec your build or simply change your approach is available and encouraged.
Between inventory management and the merge system, Cronos requires strategic approaches to fights, and you'll want to be prepared to die plenty. Various bouts with waves of Orphans saw me coming back with new strategies (and more explosives). Rewarding as that can be, the pitfall that Cronos falls into is that some of these combat sequences, where there are an abundance of Orphans on your tail or you're forced to fight many in a closed space, are more difficult than boss encounters. Perhaps this is intentional, but it made a few boss fights (excluding two later fights in the game, which you should otherwise definitely look forward to) feel underwhelming.
Image credit: Bloober Team
At the best of times, combat and traversal is punchy and satisfying. Firing off charged shots, switching between powerful weapons and tools, watching enemies explode as you kite around beautifully, faithfully crafted environments that, despite their decay, display the beauty of Poland - it's all good fun. At the worst of times, however, Cronos is a real test of patience, and can lead you to lean into cheesing certain moves for survival. Stomping is mapped to the same button as shooting, which means accidentally slamming your foot on things is easily done, while it's easy to fall into simply kiting enemies to explosive canisters.
Without careful resource management, too, you can find yourself trapped in some very challenging combat sequences without enough ammo or explosives to navigate them - Orphans everywhere, merging away with abandon. This often saw me spending my hard-earned Energy on ammunition, rather than saving for the upgrades I wanted, and that was with real concentration on preventing enemies from merging to the best of my ability. I'll be the first to admit I could've always managed my resources better - don't make the same mistakes I did! - and maybe this is simply a skill issue. But this still feels like it can get a little out of hand.
Cronos: The New Dawn accessibility options
Aim assist, revisitable tutorials, and colourblind options. Customisable subtitles (size, transparency, dyslexia-friendly font), adjustable sensitivity and fully remappable inputs for keyboard and controllers. Independent sliders for music, dialogue, and sound effects. Adjustable interaction indicators, toggles for sprinting, and QTEs input method can be adjusted. There are flashing light effects that cannot be turned off. Camera shake and sway can be turned off. Motion blur can also be turned off, though there are scenes later in the game where this seems to occur regardless of this setting. No lower difficulty modes.
While I have my qualms with some aspects of Cronos: The New Dawn's combat and inventory systems (and even had a less-than-pleasant issue that saw the final boss despawn mid-fight for me) what I absolutely can't deny is that Bloober Team has created an incredibly immersive adventure - one that can test your concentration and strategy as much as your patience. Persevere through demanding fights and use the environment to your advantage, and you'll find plenty to enjoy here. Cronos' jumpscares got me on more than once occasion; its story of disease, identity, and companionship will tug at your heartstrings between all the horror; and through the exquisite execution of 1980s Poland - Bloober Team's home country - and it's detailed environmental storytelling, you can see just how much passion has gone into this brutal excursion. Cronos: The New Dawn is ultimately a showcase of Bloober Team's strengths; both the lessons it's learned from previous games and the major success of the Silent Hill 2 Remake. And crucially it's also something new, a game where you have to bring something of your own to it, to piece together and find meaning in its elusive story, and to devise strategies for survival. The end result is worth all the struggle.
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