The word survival horror can mean a lot of things in this day and age. For me, when I hear those words I instantly think of Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Dead Space. Cronos: The New Dawn does bring together a lot of great ideas in that genre. While clunky and, do I dare say, typical/cliché at times, it still manages to bring a great story, creepy atmosphere, and some challenging gameplay.
You begin the game as someone or something called a Traveler, working for a mysterious organization known as The Collective, starting off inside some kind of (I’m guessing) time travel device. Your main mission is to harvest souls as you seek to uncover the origins of the apocalypse that wiped out humanity.
Environments are king:
Throughout the game, you’ll be taken through a torn, shattered future (set in Poland). Atmosphere is king here, and this for me is one of the game’s strong points.
It uses the environments well, but for me it didn’t feel scary.
You’ll be taken to deserted apartment blocks, old factories, hospitals, dust storms, and deep underground body-horror-style narrow corridors. All bring about a sense of loneliness, despair, and a genuine need to know what is going on.
You’ll see light shining through cracks in the walls, mist and dust everywhere. Bloober Team did a good job of nailing the overall feel, including its very creepy sound design (it’s outstanding — it’s so well done). You need to play with headphones.
Challenging Combat and Gameplay:
Combat and gameplay can be challenging. Look, in the end it is a survival horror game, and Cronos does not hold your hand along the way. You need to really pick and choose your fights. It can be done, but you just need to plan ahead.
Resources are scarce. As you progress forward you’ll start learning to use items and upgrades with the utmost precision, meaning you’ll know when to use, when to upgrade, and when is the best time to go all out and start killing everything in sight.
Tough as nails enemies:
Enemies can be tough as nails. As the game suggests, don’t let them merge. Once an enemy merges with another body, they become tougher to kill. I did feel the variety of enemies was limited, but that didn’t falter me in any way while I was enjoying what Cronos had to offer.
Also, as the game opens you’ll start getting more and more toys to play with — weapons, gadgets (loved getting the gravity-traversal equipment… trippy). And with the gadgets, you’ll get puzzles to solve that use the environment around you.
What’s the negatives:
My only negatives I would say are the lack of enemies (which I’ve mentioned). During some cutscenes, I felt the voice acting just didn’t really match, especially when extracting souls (not a game changer). Limited melee attacks, oh, and while I was working on my review I lost all my save files because of an update (was not impressed lol). But for the most part it’s a solid game.
My overall thoughts:
I think for me Cronos: The New Dawn is something special. You can see the vision Bloober Team set out to achieve with this original IP, and I’m all for it. I’m a fan of horror video games, and this game really scratched the itch I had for something creepy, challenging, and downright gorgeous to look at.
Bloober did a great job with the Silent Hill 2 remake, and Cronos is right up there with the leaders in the genre. Definitely I wanna see more of this torn, messed-up world.
Score: 8.5