Cronos: The New Dawn

Of the many studios I’ve heard about over the years Bloober Team is one of more infamous ones I’ve seen. Not because they’re well beloved, but for their wide array of titles ranging from okay to mediocre. Those last three words “okay to mediocre” being the highlight here because these guys have been making games since 2010. You’d think a studio with fifteen plus years of titles and development experience would make one stellar game by now. (We’ll get to that shortly.) Yet they seem to struggle every single time. They should’ve shut down by the fifth failure, but each time they kept improving. Learning lessons, trying to avoid them, and create finer works of art even if they weren’t perfect or completely f*cking nuts. 2016 saw the debut of their first major horror game Layers of Fear. You probably know what this game is or have heard about at some point from horror game content creators. A horror experience about the creation of art and people who make art. A game that tries to say something, but misses the mark. Then they did Observer, Blair Witch, Layers of Fear 2, The Medium, and a remake combining both Layers of Fear games even though they weren’t ten years old up until that point and were available on modern tech.

All ranging from okay to mediocre like I just mentioned. Before they made any of these games a majority of their work was shovelware and games designed for handheld. Each attempt at horror became weirder, more obtuse, and garnered more discussion from players. Not the good kind of discussions. The bad kind that makes you wonder what the writing team was smoking. Reaching a point where one year after The Medium released it became controversial, because of the way it handled the topics of abuse and trauma. Bloober Team just doesn't know when to quit, and that is the point I’m trying to make. They kept going despite all the criticism and eventually they were contracted by a massive game company. Big old Konami, and they wanted Bloober to remake one of their biggest games ever made. Silent Hill 2, and I’m just going to assume you know how this story played out. High level of skepticism upon being revealed with a majority of them being doubts. Why would you contract the guys who make walking-sim horror to make a full on video game? No one knows. They made the Silent Hill 2 remake, released it in 2024, and holy sh*t it ended up actually being good. With a lot of Silent Hill fans considering it one of the best entries to date, and best releases of the year respectively. Silent Hill 2 was a good remake. 

That is not the topic of today’s review though as I have not played Silent Hill 2, either versions of it. The Silent Hill 2 remake was a massive success, but alongside it Bloober Team were making their own game. A side project outside the work they were contracted to do, and it’s these two titles that honed their skills in making a proper survival horror game. One allowed them to hone their skills in the basics, and the next would push what this team could really handle. Revealed shortly after Silent Hill 2 came out was Cronos: The New Dawn. Their next attempt at the genre and their most ambitious game to date. The trailer wore its influences on its sleeves. A little bit of Dead Space, Metro 2033, Alan Wake, Edge of Tomorrow, etc. Cronos was shaping up to be an extremely promising title, but unfortunately the launch didn’t pan out very well. Technical issues surrounded the game at launch especially for PC players, and once you did get the game running you realized Cronos: The New Dawn is very different compared to most survival horror games. Demanding from the start and punishing players who aren’t constantly on their toes or taking the game seriously. Cronos was different, and like a majority of games trying to be different it would not settle well with a majority of people the same way Silent Hill 2 did. Look up the reviews for Cronos on Wikipedia. They were completely all over the place.

Cronos: The New Dawn was a different bread of survival horror…. and I knew I needed to play this game. Been on a survival horror binge lately, because even though it’s been almost two years since I played it, Alan Wake 2 hasn’t left my mind and I’m hungry for something weird & crazy. Just a few weeks back I played Dead Space 2 for the first time, loved it, and searched for games similar to Dead Space because I’m not ready for Dead Space 3 yet. This game was on the top of multiple recommendation lists, so I bought a physical copy. Spent the last few days blasting my way through, and can confidently say Cronos: The New Dawn is a good video game. It’s a really good f*cking game! I had low expectations going in, but Cronos managed to take me by surprise in a way I can only describe as being twatted in the face with a rake and given ice cream. I’m not joking when I say Cronos instantly became one of my favorite survival horror titles. Sandwiched between Alan Wake 2 and Resident Evil 7. It is a massive shame Cronos didn’t blow off the way Bloober Team were hoping for, because it’s a monument for everything they have learned over the past ten years of making horror games. Cronos: The New Dawn is peak sci-fi horror that uses the medium to explore deep human themes and topics. Today we’ll discuss why it’s great. 

Story

You awaken to find yourself in a cold desolate pod. Strapped on a table and slowly positioned to the ground. Nothing but the sound of machinery and mechanisms turning around you. Your eyes can see, your hands can feel, and you want to get up to move your legs. You can feel all of these things, but your mind is numb. Unable to emote, speak for yourself, or hear yourself. You are not a person nor human. You are a machine, a being who was awakened to fulfill one purpose. One ultimate goal that you and all those before you have been chosen to succeed at or fail at doing. A cog to be thrown into the treacherous wilds or keep what little fire that burns. A voice begins to speak to you. It is not human but a representative of. It informs you of your purpose, makes sure your mind was built with said purpose in mind, and that you think of nothing but that purpose. It reaffirms it over and over before releasing you from your binds. Unveiling what it and should be the outside world. The earth which humanity has tamed and roamed. Reduced to nothing but a wasteland teaming with no life to speak of. The world we once knew is long gone. An infectious disease transformed all of humanity into raging blood thirsty monsters. Creatures unable to feel or speak for themselves. Nobody knew how this disease started or where it came from. It just happened one day, and scientists attempted to find a cure. No cure was ever made, so then they tried to contain it. That didn’t happen and here we are.

Our protagonist is one of many, a “Traveler” is what they are referred to as. Awakened to locate an Essence, a glowing anomaly that serves as a gateway between the past and now. The Traveler navigate their way through ruined streets, acquire the equipment of past brethren, and reach the Essence. There they enter the gateway and transport themselves to humanity’s past, our past. The target is a middle aged male living in a residential area. He is to join the Collective, the hivemind which you assume has created you and give your purpose. A machine containing the memories of all past life who were there when the world was slowly falling apart. The Collective’s goal is to go through all these uploaded memories and slowly determine what exactly happened. So the man you're after is named Edward Wisniewski, and you find him holed in a homemade bunker. Next comes extracting the target, and how exactly does that work? Mental claws emit from your left hand, and reach towards the person’s skull. Digging deep into their skin as they scream in agony. Flashes of their past and all they’ve witnessed growing up. Until you’re kicked out of the past and returned to the presence. The cycle repeats, but there is an ultimate goal in the end. Try to unravel how it all came down. Prevent it, or at least preserve what is left.

Gameplay

There’s been a plethora of third person survival horror games in the last seven years, and if you have played any of them then you’ll feel right at home with Cronos. Navigate the world, search for resources, and make every shot count as you never know when you’ll run dry or if it’ll take a bit before you pick up more. What’s different about Cronos is how combat and enemies work. It plays functionally like Dead Space in my opinion, but you don’t play exactly like Dead Space. Guns can be shot normally, but you’re encouraged to use their charged shot. Maximizing their damage output and cutting down the ruthless monsters faster. If not you’re doing BB gun damage and that’s not good as enemies are tanky even the normal blokes. Enemies can have a decent range of flavors, and they need to be shot in specific weak points. Red signals a meaty flesh to go blast away at, and gray means it’s armored skin. Reflecting any damage dealt to that point. Some enemies run towards you and others move slowly but when up close they deal melee attacks. You have enemies who spit toxins at you, tiny buggers who explode, and the big chunky dudes for if you don’t learn how to manage, can mess you up in seconds alongside those who fight alongside them. Arenas are also varied and contain environmental hazards to use to your advantage.

Guns aren’t your only tools in Cronos. You have two sidearms, those being the Torch and Pyre. Both can either ignite enemies which stuns them for a few seconds and applies extra damage, or burn enemy corpses lying on the ground. Burning corpses can be saving moments at times as the most unique feature about the combat of Cronos is mutation. Enemies can run up to corpses on the ground, and begin merging with them. You can either burn the corpses beforehand, or kill a merging enemy before they do so because if you let them merge they grow stronger. Mutating to stronger variants and unlocking deadlier skills to whip out. You either fight deadlier, adapt to the current situation, or always be thinking on the fly. Leading to a fun combat loop where you are always on your toes and coming up with different strategies. Pulling out the right guns for your job, or prioritizing who to kill next. If you can’t find more resources you can also craft, but you can only carry so many resources and better equipment costs more chemicals/gears. Enemies and the environment will also give the player Energy, which is your main currency. Every save point contains a shop players can use to purchase ammo, supplies, or sell trinkets they found to earn more energy. This energy can then be spent to upgrade your guns. Increase their firepower, their charge speed, clip capacity, stability, or how effective their charge shot is. You also can upgrade your suit, but these require Cores. Valuable items that are either found or rewarded every time you find a new save point. Further encouraging players to carefully check their surroundings for what they need. Cronos is a game that will constantly demand more from you, and all you can do to keep up. Fight on for what chance you got.

Thoughts

In the intro I stated that Cronos: The New Dawn was a divisive game when released, and despite loving the entirety of it I do understand why it got the reception it deserved. Cronos is clear on what it took influence from and is trying to live up to. Alan Wake, Dead Space, and you need to remember that a year before this the Silent Hill 2 remake came out. Not to mention the dozens of indie survival horror games that have come out. Cronos: The New Dawn was a cool idea albeit taking dozens of influences, and most players going in expected it to be another standard genre entry. Only to be beaten over the head within the first hour and experience a sharp difficult curve.  Cronos is a game designed for hardcore survival horror game players. It is challenging from the start, and if you do not meet this difficulty curve immediately you’re gonna have a rough time. I have seen people bounce off this game in the first five hours because they were either running out of ammo too quickly, couldn’t keep up with dozens of enemies on screen, or got used to the combat mechanics. It makes sense for a boss fight to get stronger as we’ve been conditioned to have the knowledge of multi-phased boss fights. We have not been conditioned to deal with basic enemies getting strength from corpses. Something our brains have learned to ignore as once an enemy is dead they can’t really do anything. Combine this with small inventory space from the start and gun upgrades costing more than any genre entry I’ve played.

Cronos is a brutal game, but I’m here to challenge that opinion. It’s challenging, but I wouldn’t say Cronos is as challenging as a lot of people are saying. I think the game is extremely fair and gives enough to the player to counter any enemies thrown their way. Your inventory is small, but it’s not unreasonably small. It’s enough to carry around everything you need, and when it is full and you find something you want to carry it’s not annoying. Signalis is annoying personally as it gives the player too little. One gun at all times sucks, and you need to constantly move back and forth between the save room so you can carry pieces to multi-pieced puzzles. When I find ammo, supplies, or an item I may want in Cronos it instead leads to me making a careful consideration. What in my inventory space can I sacrifice to carry this crucial object I need? One spot is taken up by a single shotgun shell, so maybe that is worth giving up. However, what if I need that extra blast during a chaotic combat encounter. The shotgun to me was my most powerful weapon. It allowed me to cut down stronger enemies more quickly. Okay, so what about giving up a Pyre or Torch. There’s not many things that need to be burned right now, but what if something that does need to be burned comes around. Like a room blocked off by a substance that can only be burned or corpses. I could use a healing, but maybe save it up for later. These thoughts flooded my mind whenever I found an item I needed, and instead of being annoying I found them engaging. It led to me taking risks or being rewarded. 

The boltcutters are especially interesting. In most survival horror games they open a few doors, but in Cronos they open multiple doors. Each contained extra resources, but you never knew if one would appear. I always carried the boltcutters around despite them taking a whole item slot, and was rewarded for doing so. I gave up a slot that could be dedicated toward an extra gun or supplies in favor of having what is essentially a master key. Exploration in Cronos is peak as it will always give you something you don’t expect you need, but then do. Such as those Cores to upgrade your suit, Energy for gun upgrades, or valuables to sell for Energy. The game has a loot system similar to Dead Space where crates and enemies will occasionally drop items. Items are random each time, and sometimes they drop nothing. Leading to moments of, “Well, I guess all I can do is deal with it and move on.” Cronos strikes that nice balance of giving the player enough but not too much or little. I’ve never played a survival horror game where being gifted just two shotgun shells rather than four felt like a saving grace. You never feel under or overpowered, and when the game does start loading you with ammunition it’s during the endgame. When they’ve thrown every gun, enemy, and mechanic they could and start pushing them.

Combat in Cronos is exceptionally well designed too. With enough enemy and arena variety that will always keep you moving. I love how enemy weaknesses work. Another thing similar to how Dead Space works, but instead of cutting limbs you gotta strike weak points. Sometimes it’s the chest, and other times it’s the arms or legs. Fire and environmental hazards are as effective as the main guns, so you’re encouraged to use them when it’s best. Waiting for a strong opponent or a group of weaker enemies to run by before you light them all up by shooting a canister. I forgot to mention the little time beam your character has. A beam that can interact with anomalies to then reverse certain, but it takes time and during that time you may be attacked. It’s a combat loop that always remains engaging despite not being the most mechanically deep. Knowing when to save your resources or whip out the right tools. That along with the well balanced inventory led me to further self satisfaction. Of being rewarded for playing wisely and deadly. Guns pack the right punch and even though I only ran around with the first three I would say there’s no bad gun in the game. All of them have their own use, and investing in them is rewarding. Upgrades are costly, so when you do purchase one it’s an investment. A conscious choice of this being the gun you want to use and move further with. It’s also nice how there are three gun types, so ammo isn’t too far spread out. Letting you decide what two types to master.

Level design ranges from being linear to having traditional survival horror areas. With pathways that loop back to where you just came from, or cutting down the amount of backtracking. What I’m surprised by is how well paced Cronos: The New Dawn is. Knowing when to switch between these two level design types without letting one overburden the other.The game took me roughly twelve hours to beat on normal mode, and I would say it’s the perfect length for what this game is trying to go for. Despite how much action there is, Cronos is still a damn good horror game. I’d say it’s due to masterful audio design. Knowing when to use silence and building up tension immediately. I could slowly be navigating a target room. Nothingness rings through the air, but then I hear something in the background. A sign of movement or an object being knocked over. Raising my gun up and slowly inching towards it. Maybe an enemy pops up, or nothing at all. I played this game in the same way I played Alan Wake 2. Always being aware of what could then happen, and reacting accordingly. The only time the horror doesn’t work well for me is when the game uses a jumpscare. That’s not horror. That’s the game getting five seconds of reaction from me, and sometimes it’s very cheap. Compared to an empty dark hallway being unnerving. 

The boss fights are well designed, and even though they’re mainly giant monsters that’ll charge toward the player with different arenas each time I like how they work. One of my favorites is being set in cramped hallways, and you gotta make frequent turns because the monster can easily catch up to you. Cronos is just a very well designed game overall and I don’t have any complaints. It’s not for everyone, but it was certainly for me and I hadn't had this much fun with a game of this genre since Alan Wake 2. There’s good enough replay value thanks to different choices the player can make throughout the game, upgrades to experiment with, and an alternate ending if you decide to go for a new game plus immediately. Speaking of which, the story of this game is a lot better than I had hoped. It’s on the same level of Alan Wake 2 where a game being weird led to it being more memorable. As it uses the concept of art to explore human ideas and topics. Cronos is about a lot of things, but what it’s mainly about is love and humanity.

The opening is perfect, establishing our protagonist as a machine. A lifeless being who doesn’t  think for themselves and only obeys to those of a higher will. Unable to experience empathy, get mad, be happy or sad. They simply do their job and “extract” the people they’re sent to find. It’s with time though that Cronos explores what makes us human. As the Traveler in between each of their journeys communicates with the only other person alive in the present day, the Warden. A person similar to her, but lives within a contained hole filled with human artifacts. One moment I specifically remember was a room containing objects formerly belonging to a diner. The Warden has placed paintings, statues, and instruments about and he can’t help but question why humanity valued such things despite not being needed to survive. He talks about the value of art, the ability to connect, and find comfort during trying times. How art and one’s interests can tell us more about a person than what they do on a day to day basis. An idea the Traveler is not able to pick up on immediately as valuable, but does understand. Beyond this there’s massive plot revelations that make us question our protagonist. Their ultimate goal, purpose, and everything that came before them. The question of what brought the disease, and if truly came from the past. What if the disease came from your world, and are you to blame?

Not all these questions are answered, and it’s something I hope Bloober Team explores more on if they ever return to this intriguing universe they created. You are going to meet this important character around the third area, and from here on the game gets psychological. It plays tricks on the player, and uses everything around you as symbolism. It’s not Alan Wake 2 levels of crazy, but the themes and subject matters are ones I found worth digging into. I find the story of Cronos hard to discuss without spoilers, but essentially it’s about love and learning to let go. That time is not something that lasts forever, and nothing can stay the same. That attempt to keep everything the same will only make things worse in the long run. The harm it either does to the people you love or to yourself. Moving on doesn’t mean you fix those problems. They are always going to be there and leave scars behind, but it’s a step forward. A step forward not just for yourself, but for everyone else including the person you were with. A signal that both of you need to spread apart so that you may grow as individuals. The title of this game, Cronos: The New Dawn, is a weird title that makes sense once you play this game. Cronos was the titan of time in Greek myth, and The New Dawn isn’t resembling the sun you wish to enlighten upon this broken dark world but one you step onto on your own. A sign that things can be different.

I love this story a lot more than I really should. How it explores what makes us human, the value of art, love, loss, and the ability to move on. The only thing I dislike is how the game ends. The endings could be better. You get two choices on the first run and rather than be determined from what you do it’s made at the moment. You base it off of what you experienced and went through, but both outcomes aren’t great. It’s not Clair Obscur, but both have their ups and down. No, both endings lead to bad results in my opinion. The true ending is locked behind going through new game plus. Something I never really liked in games, because even though I enjoy replaying games, especially those who plot revelations that lead to different interpretations of early events, I'd rather just let an alternate ending be locked behind certain choices and secrets. It makes the reward of getting that true ending more worth it, because sometimes those choices add up to the true ending like the ones in Sifu or Nine Sols. This game it’s “play it again” and that’s not very interesting. Shame really, because I looked up the true ending and it’s more satisfying than the ones I got. Aside from that there’s nothing truly bad I can say about Cronos: The New Dawn. It gets a strong recommendation. A very fun survival horror game that’s well paced, designed, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. If you love Alan Wake, Dead Space, Silent Hill, or games with deep themes this is for you. I give Cronos: The New Dawn a 9.5/10 for being superb.

9.5/10, Superb