Due to decades of popularity, there’s always going to be new challengers stepping up to try and take the survival horror crown. Most fail, but when Bloober Team – fresh off the overwhelming success of their Silent Hill 2 remake – steps up with an original effort, you take notice. That’s why I was eager to try out Cronos: The New Dawn. But does this rusty sci-fi, set in a futuristic Eastern European dystopia, have what it takes to make its own mark, or does it just merge into the pack? After playing the first two hours, the signs are there that Bloober Team could have a new survival horror hit on its hands, even if I do have some slight reservations.
Cronos sees Bloober Team (briefly) stepping away from the established lore of Silent Hill to tell an original story, one set in a harsh, futuristic hellhole that was once called Poland. Taking inspiration from real locations, it tells the story of a character known as a “Traveller”, who explores this fallen world and time-travels into different eras on a mission to extract human souls from long-lost important people. It’s all suitably other-worldly and oppressive, complete with a sky coloured a constant moody hue and pockets of time oddities that defy the laws of nature. It’s a horrible place to be, but despite its nightmarish visuals, it’s still built on the foundation of a once-thriving city with European architecture. So much like Silent Hill 2, despite the horrors that lurk in the fog, significant sections like housing blocks and flower shops still feel strangely familiar to explore, unlike, say, the phallic-obsessed hallways of something like Scorn.
This sense of familiarity, despite the unique horror aesthetics, is an approach that permeates all throughout Cronos, right down to the gameplay. It feels like its genre peers, perhaps at times to a fault. The weight of the Traveller, the mantling animations, squeezing through gaps, reading notes, juggling inventory slots, safe rooms – it’s all second nature for anyone even just a little experienced in the genre. It feels great and immediately hits a quality bar that you’d expect, but at first I couldn’t help but be a little concerned that this is just essentially the same game I’ve played 20 times already with a fresh coat of paint. Fortunately, it eventually became apparent that Cronos comes with a distinct enough spin on ranged combat, demonstrating that there’s more to the game than just a unique-looking, by-the-numbers survival horror.
The bulk of enemies in Cronos are organic, slimy tendril monstrosities called Orphans. They’re not exactly unique in terms of visual design, but Cronos offers a fresh take on how you manage your foes. Like Resident Evil’s Crimson Heads, Orphan corpses need to be dealt with. Unlike Crimson Heads, Orphans don’t re-animate, but rather become available biomass for other Orphans to merge with, turning a regular foe into a suped-up beast. You only need to witness this process once to quickly learn how valuable it is to destroy their remains. With this mindset, the familiar survival horror rhythm that Cronos lures you into is completely altered. Enemy encounters are no longer run-and-gun, but rather a game of deliberate tactics. You need to make sure you don’t kill an enemy while it’s close to another that’s currently engaging you, otherwise you’ll quickly find yourself in even more trouble. And you’ll need to do that while also trying to crowd control in the extremely tight combat spaces. Each battle presents a constant question about where and when you fire your shots.
Much like Silent Hill 2, most of the combat is way more intimate than ranged, despite the presence of firearms. The Traveller comes equipped with a morphing handgun, not dissimilar to the service weapon in Remedy’s classic, Control, although upgrades (like the shotgun module called ‘The Hammer’) are mechanical objects that you can collect and attach. Once applied, these upgrades allow the firearm to easily morph in the form of your choosing.
Ammo, though, is scarce, and in this regard, Cronos is much more traditional horror than action horror. Once again, if you dive in expecting to mow down fodder like you’re playing Resident Evil 4, then expect to have a bad time. Enemies are tough, and merged enemies are significantly tougher. So perhaps more than ever, ammo is extremely precious and – at least from what I played – every shot truly does count. Like Dead Space’s Isaac Clarke, The Traveller can also stomp and swing a punch, but across my two-hour session, these moves felt largely like flourishes rather than useful combat techniques.
So, with a scarce amount of ammo and the possibility that even early enemies can quickly evolve into unstoppable beasts, you need to quickly learn a new playstyle that’s distinct from other survival horror games. From what I saw, the key to combat success in Cronos is a systematic approach utilising two extremely valuable abilities: charge and burn.
With both the handgun (dubbed ‘Sword’) and the shotgun, you can hold down the trigger to charge your shot, and I can imagine this being the case for the entire arsenal. Once I began experimenting with the power of a charged shot to the head (yes, this is a headshot game – there’s no great emphasis on dismemberment, despite it feeling like you’re playing Dead Space at times), I quickly realised firing off a weak normal round was ultimately as good as discarding it. From then on, every shot was charged. This, coupled with strategically taking down enemies to prevent merging, evolved my playstyle from the instant failure of run-and-gun to the overwhelming success of tactical consideration. Finally, burning fallen enemies became the third vital tool in that gameplay loop, whether that be during the action or post-battle.
You’ll find torch fuel at regular pick-up stations, and you can deploy it with a quick tap of the left bumper. At first, you can only carry one container of fuel at a time, but I managed to upgrade and add an additional slot during my short playthrough. Torch fuel is vital not only for destroying enemies’ corpses for good, but it also works as an emergency defence, igniting a ring of fire at your feet that not only wards off attacking Orphans, but will burn any corpses that may still be in your vicinity. Once again, this emphasises the importance of tactical positioning. Why waste a unit of torch fuel just burning a single body when you can damage an active foe at the same time?
Having all of this in play results in a combat system that rewards patience and well-considered tactics. And when I fitted all the individual mechanics together, it felt clear this was always Bloober’s intention, especially as, unlike its peers, Cronos lacks any kind of dodge mechanic. And after spending a lot of time with both Resident Evil 3 and Silent Hill 2 in recent years, a dodge was something I sorely missed at first, and led to some pretty close (and not-so-close) calls in combat encounters. But after getting to grips with the combat rhythm, I quickly realised that I could live without it, and the game was never designed with this in mind.
Outside of combat, Cronos settles into something that feels distinctly more traditional for the genre, ticking every box you’d expect for a modern survival horror game. The chapters I played were made up of a mostly linear path that pushes you through pockets of enemies and light puzzles, with frequent stops to collect resources and manage your inventory. There are even traditional safe rooms that include upgrade stations, storage boxes, and save points. It all immediately feels second nature, and while that’s potentially a bit unexciting and safe, it’s clear that Bloober has a firm grasp on the fundamentals of the genre.
What’s tougher to get a read on, however, is the quality of the original storytelling, something even Bloober might admit it has a mixed record with. My two-hour session began with a psychological test and a brief introduction to my mission, but from then on, I learnt very little about the story that you can’t already glean from trailers and the game’s Steam page. The Traveller is trying to harvest souls from the past before a cataclysmic event took place, taking orders from some no doubt shady organisation. There’s also another Traveller who’s failed a mission, and you’re sent in to learn more about their plight. Beyond that, though, it’s all a mystery. So although Cronos appears interesting on the surface, and I’m certainly itching to find out more, it’s hard to say right now if this tale will meet the standards of Silent Hill 2 – a story that Bloober can’t claim for itself, despite the good work it did with the remake.
With Cronos, it feels like Bloober Team has cherry-picked from the best of the genre and fashioned a survival horror beast of its own. From what I’ve played so far, the team has created something that’s incredibly faithful to the formula, which isn’t a complaint – I love this genre. I’m just hopeful the full game spends more time celebrating the unique combat loop and original storytelling so that Cronos can form its own identity, rather than merging into the pack.
Dale Driver is an Associate Director of Video Programming at IGN. Be thoroughly bored by following him on Bluesky at @daledriver.bsky.social
