It feels as though Bloober Team has turned a corner since Silent Hill 2 Remake. While they always made good games, they were never truly great. Cronos: The New Dawn is one of the only games since the original boom of survival horror that understands the genre completely. The sense of dread never left me. Every area in the brutal and bleak environments had me holding my breath until the next terrifying encounter. You’re restricted, scared, and vulnerable, and I loved every second of it.
You play as a Traveler who can move between the past and the future. Cronos: The New Dawn takes place between a devastated Poland where a cataclysmic event known as The Change destroyed everything and a future where deformed monsters lurk in the wastelands. By reading notes and listening to voice recordings, you start to piece together what happened. While the bigger story begins to reveal itself, there are personal stories littered throughout, showing you how small pockets of humanity were affected by such a horrifying event.
As if it isn’t terrifying enough that you have to fight these abominations, you’re own sanity is at risk. One of the Traveler’s goals is to harvest Essences of the people who were important in the past. However, they can affect gameplay in good and bad ways best experienced for yourself. When you think you’ve got a good grasp on things, the encroaching madness can impact how you play. Throw that into the tense encounters with these monsters and you’re in for one hell of a time. It’s so unnerving and scary, along with being hard as nails at times.
When you encounter these hellish entities, bullets never feel enough. You’re managing a limited inventory where ammo is scarce. Knowing when to fire and when to run is always unpredictable. You’re seldom prepared for these encounters because you never know how many of these monsters you’ll come upon at any given time. This is yet another feature that makes Cronos: The New Dawn feel like such a pure survival horror game. Even facing one enemy can feel overwhelming if you don’t have what you need to kill it.
While bullets can put them on the ground, there’s still an impending fear that they’ll rise again. In order to truly kill one of them, you need to burn them. Gaining access to a flamethrower helps, but they can only hold one charge at a time. This makes knowing when to use it unclear in the best way. In one of the earlier sections, I fell into this horrifying pit of flesh and blood. As I tried to run past one of these creatures, two more were spat out of the gooey walls, then another, then another. There were gas cylinders scattered around, but the room was restricted.
I had enough ammo to take down two, or maybe three. But I had six running after me and the electronic door wouldn’t open until they were all dead. I had to decide quickly how to use my bullets, when to use my flameflower, and which cylinders should be shot for maximum effect. It was here that I saw how effective their regeneration was: I put two of them down, but another came past and consumed them, turning into a much more powerful and deadly enemy that needed even more resources to kill it.
This happens a lot in Cronos: The New Dawn. You’re living in a constant state of dread. While you are presented with opportunities to upgrade your reload speed, damage output, and more, it never feels enough. The currency needed to spend on upgrades can be found all over the place, but you have to plan how to spend them effectively. It takes time to really see an improvement in the Traveler’s abilities. This will either break you or keep you persistent – I just hope it’s the latter.
Some players crave this kind of experience. It’s easy to forget just how hard this type of survival horror used to be. Managing limited resources, walking through apparently isolated hallways and streets until hell is unleashed, and feeling vulnerable against a horrific enemy. Yet, as much as I had to play in shorter bursts due to that fear, it’s the main reason I enjoyed Cronos: The New Dawn so much. It’s Bloober Team at their finest, and proof they can make excellent single player horrors base on original ideas.
Scattered around the grim yet fascinating environments are opportunities to manipulate bridges and walkways. You can fire off your weapon to change platforms to escape enemies. It’s yet another aspect of its gameplay that defies the easy comparison to games like Dead Space. Bloober Team always try to offer something extra in its games, and Cronos: The New Dawn is no different. They give you that extra bit of help when all hope feels lost.
Cronos: The New Dawn is pure survival horror. It never lets you breathe. You’re always on edge and scared of what’s coming next. Monsters are hard to take down, growing even more grotesque as the story progresses – a story that gets more and more interesting as you journey through. Finding fallen humans before the apocalypse and watching what happens to the Traveler is equal parts fascinating and terrifying, with combat that straddles the line between giving you a fighting chance and making you feel helpless.
