Cronos: The New Dawn Review – Moody and Masterful Horror

In a genre often brimming with remakes and sequels, Bloober Team is looking to shake up the survival horror scene with a brand new IP. Known for their work with more psychological horror titles like The Medium and the exceptional Silent Hill 2 Remake, the latter of which put the developer on everyone’s radar, Bloober Team is ready to flex their muscle with an original idea all their own, one that leans more towards Resident Evil than Konami’s foggy hellscape. It’s a bold move, one that doesn’t rely on nostalgia and brand familiarity to sell its experience, making Cronos: The New Dawn the most exciting arrival in the genre in recent memory. It brings with it a terrifyingly beautiful blend of retrofuturism, body horror, and time travel, even if there are visible blemishes that prevent it from consistently maintaining the same greatness of the classics it so clearly emulates.

Cronos: The New Dawn conceals players in the all-metal suit of the Traveler, specifically ND-3576, a faceless agent working for a mysterious organization known as the Collective. The mission: navigate a ravaged, plague-ridden Polish city in the future and utilize time rifts to leap back to the year 1980 to extract key personnel, thus preventing their demise at the monstrous hands of those who mutated into Orphans via “The Change.” The player isn’t the first Traveler to take on this exacting task, and they will need to leverage the efforts of the preceding Travelers who… ceased their functioning… to succeed, as well as learn the true intentions of the shadowy Collective.

Gripping Atmos-fear

Due to the power of time travel, the narrative essentially begins at the end of it all, presenting a quarantined world that lost the battle against the abominations roaming the dilapidated structures once rife with human inhabitance. Bloober Team puts their environmental storytelling and world-building prowess on full display throughout these depressive environments dripping in moody atmosphere. Audio logs, notes and a whole heap of horrors are spread across decaying, brutalist apartments and unsettling research facilities. Despite adhering to a largely linear design, there are secrets to be found off the beaten path and even anomalies with which the Traveler can interact to manipulate the state of their surroundings. The flow isn’t dissimilar to the developer’s other efforts, brimming with keys to be found for locked pathways and puzzles to be solved. As a point of reference, Cronos: The New Dawn balances nicely between the likes of the original Dead Space and Resident Evil 4.

Adding to the environmental weight is the effective auditory assault that keeps players on edge through each bump, crack, thud and so on. Every suffocatingly dark corridor is host to eerie silences broken up by heart-pounding noises reminding the player that they are far from alone. Once again the team’s capabilities for masterfully crafting oppressive conditions is reinforced; Bloober Team is clearly growing into their own and refining their approach to horror.

This brings us to the core of the experience: the combat. Cronos is not a terribly forgiving game, even by the standards of its inspirations. Resources are notably scarce, and every shot counts. The Traveler packs a weapon that can transform into alternate types, ranging from a handgun to a shotgun and more to meet the demands of different situations. And there a wide array of situations on offer thanks to the various enemy types filling out the gruesome ranks standing in the way of our protagonist. Engaging monstrosities with the growing loadout are tense, but not always for the right reasons. It became clear early on that charged shots were the way to go to dispatch enemies efficiently with the limited ammunition, despite the extra seconds required, making the standard fire feel ineffective by comparison. Although melee exists in the form of a punch and stomp (a la Isaac Clarke), both are intentionally weak to maintain the sense of vulnerability and discourage letting the monsters close the gap.

There’s also a corpse-burning mechanic at play, somewhat reminiscent of The Evil Within, that eliminates enemies from the playing field. If the corpses of these haunting foes are left alone—Torch ammo isn’t limitless, making the decision to fry certain corpses a strategic one—they can merge with each other, becoming far more formidable opposition for the Traveler. These moments bring to mind the encounters with Infectors in Dead Space, but dialed up to 11. However, there are times when such confrontations occurred that seemed to far exceed the available resources, resulting in reloading an earlier save to better prepare. That sentiment is especially underlined going into some boss encounters. Cronos: The New Dawn is far from impossible, but it felt as if the resource management was slightly off of that desired perfect balance between punishing rash behavior and adequately rewarding careful preparation.

Not a New Dawn for UE5

In regards to performance, Cronos: The New Dawn is a mixed bag, an unfortunately all too common component of Unreal Engine 5 games. While the game is graphically impressive, bringing its harsh and cruel aesthetics to life with stunning detail, the optimization at launch is disappointingly inconsistent. Even on high-end hardware, significant frame rate drops and stuttering are present when entering new areas or during intense combat encounters. In a game where precision and quick reactions are paramount to survival, these hiccups can be frustrating. Admittedly, the issues aren’t so severe as to upend the entire experience, but they do chip away at its excellence.

Clocking in at a respectable 16 to 20 hours, Cronos: The New Dawn offers a substantial and challenging journey. It’s a tense, rewarding experience that (mostly) succeeds in pivoting Bloober Team from psychological horror to a more action-oriented style, proving their versatility as developers. The combat is tense and deliberate, the world-building is top-tier, and the atmosphere is all-consuming. While performance issues are a frustrating hurdle to overcome, and combat could do with another pass, it is, without a doubt, a great survival horror game and a glimpse of things to come from Bloober Team.

Cronos: The New Dawn Review Verdict

[Editor’s Note: Cronos: The New Dawn was reviewed on PC, and a copy was provided to us for review purposes.]