Cronos: The New Dawn Review

Fresh off the success that was the Silent Hill 2 remake, Bloober Team had everyone wondering if they were back and better than ever. With previous titles of Bloober Team including Layers of Fear and Blair Witch never quite reaching high critical acclaim, it begs the question of where the remake’s success stems from. Cronos: The New Dawn was Bloober’s chance to prove that they can make magic from scratch, and while the game isn’t bad, I unfortunately don’t think they’ve proved that here.

Tapping into both the action and survival-horror genres, Cronos succeeds wonderfully in some aspects and fails quite miserably in others. This culmination ends up being a game that exceeds expectations while still having a wealth of room to grow.

A lone, disposable soldier awoken after their predecessor is KIA, The Traveler roams the desolate and derelict city of New Dawn in search of their body to continue the mission. Beset by bloodthirsty mutants dubbed Orphans, The Traveler must travel through various rifts in time and extract the “essence” of particular citizens to unravel the origin of The Change, an infection that has decimated the population. Cronos: The New Dawn harbours an intensely compelling premise that remains so throughout the game’s runtime, despite an ambitious and confusing narrative involving time travel and underwhelming performances.

New Dawn itself is haunting in its appearance and atmosphere; there is a grave sense of death and despair that permeates every piece of ground you walk upon and building you enter, that’s before you come across walls plastered with living flesh. The game’s world-building is strewn about the environment on various missives in the form of typical diary entries or PSAs detailing the attitudes of New Dawn citizenry around the time of the pandemic. Aside from the odd voice memo found around the place, I found these notes to be the least engaging form of world-building and more of a nuisance when accidentally reading the same letter 3 times in a row instead of picking up the ammo that’s sitting next to it.

Adding to this air of despair is the game’s oppressive level and enemy design. Much of the game is made up of tight hallways and corners, with an ever-present danger of Orphans lurking nearby. Combat sometimes felt akin to The House of the Dead games at times, tensely holding my ground as these grotesqueries shamble towards me in a narrow walkway. In other moments, the game’s arena will open up, allowing for more freedom of movement. Either way, the game’s combat is solid, with an exquisite resource economy that begs you to plan out encounters as best as you can ahead of time. 

There’s a certain decisiveness when in the heat of the moment, where you take a split second to choose between really lining up shots and charging your weapon, allowing Orphans to inch dangerously close, or getting some pot shots in and avoiding the risk of damage. The way you play will ultimately determine how much energy you have when you finally reach a safe space. Weapon upgrades are scant but powerful, provided you can gather enough currency and avoid spending it on much-needed ammunition. Separating the requirements for Weapon and Suit/Utility upgrades is a nice touch, too, allowing me to focus on exactly what I need to survive without choosing between survivability and lethality. 

There were many times during my playthrough that I conserved a comfortable stockpile of ammo, only for it to be fully depleted in the next. The Orphans are a threatening and powerful force, especially when multiple of them are thrown at you. By assimilating corpses, Orphans can grow both more powerful and more durable, and I learned early on that it was better to take on 100 Mutated Men than it was to take on 1 Ghastly Gorilla. This innovative mechanic had me carefully timing my one-use flamethrower in a battle to maximise the corpses I could incinerate, and often it was the difference between a knock-down drag-out bout or a quick and efficient fight.

In an ambitious move, Bloober Team decided to dip into the often-convoluted world of time travel shenanigans. Being a temporal agent of sorts, The Traveler has the ability to manipulate Time Oddities and enter through Time Rifts. Moment-to-moment time-travel mechanics include a handful of ‘puzzles’ that involve you recalling debris that’s blocking your way, like you’re Link in Tears of the Kingdom, or replenishing explosive barrels that you’ve already blown up during a fight. With this ability, along with Gravity Boots you equip further into the campaign, it’s disappointing to find there aren’t any further interesting uses for this tech moment-to-moment. 

Despite the story often being quite vague and confusing, the compulsion to press on and discover the events of the game outweighed any narrative shortcomings. I didn’t mind Kelly Burke’s portrayal of The Traveler, but I was certainly less convinced by the rest of the characters. Culminating in an unsatisfying conclusion that left me with more questions than anything, the narrative is a much easier write-off than the far better game design.