Developer Bloober Team has directed its efforts to creating Cronos: The New Dawn, a snarling, spiritual sequel to the Dead Space series, after delivering a small-town, psychological scare-a-thon in 2024 with the excellent remake of Silent Hill 2. Despite Cronos being a respectable creep show, I was a little let down because it didn’t impress me as much as Silent Hill 2, which is a difficult act to follow.
Its rather uninspired combat fails to set this survival-horror shooter apart from the necromorph-dismembering series from which it obviously draws so much inspiration. The game is set in the ruined, futuristic hellscape of a plague-ridden Polish city, an intriguing and ominous expanse to set its slaughter in. It’s definitely not a fresh dawn for survival horror, but Cronos still manages to give a good chunk of creepy mutant-slaying action.
We enter the space suit of the Traveler, a detective who, when her buddy disappears, searches the bleak remains of the metropolis of New Dawn. Except for the oddly large number of amiable stray cats, it soon becomes evident that practically every surviving local is a hostile mutant who is more interested in blood than in conversation. Fortunately, the Traveler has an intriguing trick up her sleeve: the capacity to momentarily travel back in time through rifts to gather the essence of people living in New Dawn before to their deaths from the disease and question them for information regarding her fellow Traveler’s destiny. It turns out to be a gripping mystery told in a somewhat original manner.
Similar to a slightly more violent Mandalorian, the Traveler herself is brief, never removes her helmet, and ends every message with the same solemn phrase—in this case, “Such is our calling” rather than “This is the way.” But even though she didn’t have much personality at first, I found myself becoming more and more intrigued in her situation because it looks like every essence she extracts hurts her mental health. This takes the form of an increasingly disturbing psychotic state (similar to that experienced by Isaac Clarke in Dead Space) that infuses the already unstable reality around her with terrifying hallucinations.
The eerily fragmented architecture that seems imprisoned in some sort of purgatory between time and space gives each region a distinct and surreal vibe, even though many of Cronos’ haunted dwellings are right out of the survival-horror textbook, from deteriorating apartment buildings to the usual scary hospital. However, there is a substantial amount of padding that connects these intriguing big parts, adding needless bloat to its 14-hour length. I lost count of the times I had to slowly make my way through corridors of biomass covered in boils that felt like squeezing through Satan’s lower intestines, and the second time I had to put story progress on hold for up to an hour to gradually bring a trainline power generator back online, even the Traveler herself expressed my frustration.
Fighting Orphan Power Ragers
The carpenter’s inspiration is evident in the monsters who stalk Cronos’ bloodstained passageways, which appear to have been decorated by a butcher. John Carpenter, in particular. Cronos is teeming with twisted freaks that resemble wax figures that have been exposed to the sun for too long, and the renowned horror director’s influence has once again shown itself in a survival-horror adventure. It is difficult to keep these mutant humans, also referred to as “orphans,” in your iron sights because they can take many different forms. They can be stretched-out fiends with whipping tentacles for arms, towering, tank-like toughs that absorb multiple shotgun blasts before they drop, or spider-like messes of body parts that scurry erratically along walls and ceilings.
Later, nearly all enemy types are brought back in acid-spitting variants, emphasizing how crucial it is to remain mobile. If you want to do more damage on delay at the risk of opening yourself up to a lunging attack, your primary weapon for dealing with them is a rather basic but dependable pistol that can fire either ordinary rounds or charged-up bursts.
Taking on Orphan Power Ragers
The carpenter’s inspiration is evident in the monsters that stalk Cronos’ bloodstained passageways, which may appear to have been adorned by a butcher. In particular, Cronos is teeming with twisted freaks who resemble wax figures that have been exposed to the sun for too long, and the renowned horror director John Carpenter’s influence has once again shown up in a survival-horror adventure. It is difficult to keep these mutant humans, also referred to as “orphans,” in your iron sights because they can take many different forms. They can be stretched-out fiends with whipping tentacles for arms, towering, tank-like toughs that absorb multiple shotgun blasts before they drop, or spider-like messes of body parts that scurry erratically along walls and ceilings.
If you want to do more damage on delay at the risk of opening yourself up to a lunging attack, your primary weapon for dealing them is a rather basic but dependable pistol that can fire either ordinary rounds or charged-up bursts. Though it is possible to make extra ammunition on the spot using chemicals and environmental scrap, there is obviously some clever balancing going on behind the scenes to only ever present just enough resources to make you feel as though you have barely enough to survive, rather than ever having the luxury of a surplus. As a result, I was able to maintain a constant level of paranoia and remained alert whenever I walked into a new terror corridor.
Gun mods can be obtained throughout the adventure, both as part of the main plot and by breaking into locked doors to uncover mysteries. However, these are mainly very minor variations of the same assault rifle, shotgun, and pistol kinds. For example, a shotgun with a twin barrel can fire two blasts in rapid succession, while another shotgun variation can shoot powerful,l charged-up blasts. Instead of upgrading from one to the next, it’s more about letting you battle how you want to because it doesn’t seem to make a significant difference in terms of power.
I did manage to acquire a sort of high-powered railgun, but I was never able to make enough space in my inventory to carry it, so I kept it primarily locked up in the safe house storage chest. Speaking of which, I find it strange that each variation of the Traveler’s gun occupies a separate slot in her severely limited inventory space, even though it seems to shapeshift between weapon types while in her hand, much like the all-in-one firearm in Remedy’s Control. What sense does that make? It would be equivalent to keeping a single Swiss Army Knife in an entire cutlery drawer.
In any case, the main issue is that Cronos practically begs for comparisons to that groundbreaking survival-horror classic (and its fantastic 2023 remake) because it so obviously shows off its Dead Space influence. This includes the Traveler’s stomping through item crates, the messages written in blood on walls, and the zero-gravity sections where you must zip between drifting chunks of terra firma. Sadly, it is shorter than a zombie following a shotgun to the skull when viewed from head to toe. Cronos is a letdown in comparison to Dead Space, where the action is incredibly dynamic, adding to the already adaptable gunplay with telekinesis to convert their own detachable limbs into projectiles and stasis powers to impede the charge of swiftly moving monsters.
Verdict
Although Cronos: The New Dawn offers a compelling puzzle to solve and a spooky sci-fi hellscape to explore, its standard combat system keeps it from emerging from the shadows cast by survival-horror classics like Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space. Its depressingly bleak settings are full of fascinating details to explore, and some of its boss fights evoke a sense of desperation that makes them truly exciting to survive.
However, there is also obvious padding that slows down the plot for extended periods of time, and its clichéd shock tactics are a step down from the real scares in Silent Hill 2. The essence of survival horror is present in Cronos: The New Dawn, but it lacks the spark necessary to make it truly come to life, much like a Traveler’s corpse trapped inside a temporal apocalypse.
