Over the last few years, the horror genre has exploded in new and exciting ways. New horror films, TV shows, and novels dominate their respective mediums. Of course, this also applies to video games. Some of my favorite titles of the last few years, such as Alan Wake 2, have served as incredibly thrilling experiences that have mesmerized me and horrified me in equal measure. Whether it’s indie developers creating new IPs or AAA publishers resurrecting old franchises, the horror genre couldn’t be in better hands.
One of the most promising developers of this new era is Bloober Team. Last year, I was blown away by Bloober’s work on the Silent Hill 2 remake. It perfectly resurrected everything that made the original game so special, recapturing that magic for a new audience. It even managed to become one of my favorite horror games of all time. In the past, though, I wasn’t too on board with its other games, such as Layers of Fear and The Medium, and the way they handled its tone and gameplay styles.
So when Bloober announced its next major project, Cronos: The New Dawn, I was cautiously optimistic. Compared to Silent Hill and The Medium, Cronos takes on a more sci-fi tone, akin to the likes of Dead Space. In theory, the concept of the Silent Hill 2 remake team working on a sci-fi horror game sounds like a match made in heaven. In execution, while Chronos: The New Dawn has a solid foundation and premise, the actual game itself suffers from technical issues, a deeply flawed gameplay loop, and an often lackluster story, making it one of the more disappointing titles of the last few years.
“Such is Our Calling”
You begin Cronos: The New Dawn in a pod that has just landed in a post-apocalyptic Poland, into a city called New Dawn, which has been ravaged by currently unknown disasters. You take control of a hulking astronaut-looking being known as The Traveler. Her goal is to utilize time anomalies, undergo a “diving” procedure that takes her back in time, and harvest the essences (or souls) of select individuals to upload to The Collective, expanding the hive mind that sent The Traveler to her destination in the first place.
As the game progresses, your goals evolve as the terminal that uploads the essences to The Collective breaks down, forcing you to dive further and further back in time while you try to understand what truly caused the end of the world in the first place. Cronos grapples with a lot of heavy concepts, and the way it communicates those ideas to the player is actually quite inspired.
Cronos: The New Dawn weaves horror with the classic time travel concept. The horror comes from the source of the end of the world, a mysterious infection that spread years ago, leading to the creation of Orphans. Orphans are the monsters you will encounter throughout your journey; misshapen creatures with stretched out limbs, distorted faces, and pale skin. The designs themselves are pretty terrifying, though they’re not exactly the most interesting horror monsters that I’ve seen in the last few years.
What makes them unique is the idea of them merging. Every time you down an enemy, their body will remain there unless you burn it. If you don’t burn them and another enemy crosses their path, they will attempt to merge with the fallen corpse. If they are successful, they will gain more strength until they are a powerful monster that is nearly impossible to destroy. It’s a neat concept that is only strengthened by the world-building.
Exploring post-apocalyptic Poland has its own rewards, as it allows you to see how people in the past were impacted by this ongoing apocalypse. It gets into some interesting body horror territory, with audio logs and journal entries that detail the symptoms and effects of the “anomaly” on those people. You further see the impact of the infection when you travel back in time through the dives.
When you journey into the past, you can see a world that is on the cusp of disaster. The first time you make the jump, you enter an era where the monsters are hiding and people are only just beginning to feel the symptoms of the infection. Later, you will find the monsters starting to spread and invade the Steelworks or the Hospital, as what started as just a few stragglers roaming around transitions into a world-ending event. A world is only as good as its characters, however, and thankfully, the characters in Cronos are fairly compelling.
The characters in Cronos carry a sense of despair with them that’s uncommon for a game like this. When you harvest each essence, you get a chance to talk with them before attempting to upload them to The Collective. There are some dialogue options where you can ask them details about the infection, what they saw before this moment, and slowly learn that you were not the first Traveler to go back in time and interfere with the past. I really liked the late-game characters such as Dr. Zybert and Weronika, who both play a key role in helping you understand the ongoing cataclysm.
There’s also the protagonist herself. The Traveler has an ambiguous past, and it’s hard to tell sometimes if there is someone behind that bulky armor, or if it is simply an automaton with no sense of self. She does have a small bit of personality, especially as the story continues. What starts as her speaking in a monotone voice and briefly remarking on the events around her evolves into a character who is cheerfully interacting with cats and fighting through the influence of a growing madness that is gnawing at her.
Easily my favorite mechanic that is woven into the story is the harvesting of essences. Every time you harvest an essence, a short cutscene plays that combines live action and in-engine cutscenes, showing a little bit of the character’s memories. You see people, marching soldiers, Orphans piled on top of each other, and occasionally, even the Traveler herself watching from a distance. The cutscene was always so fascinating to witness, especially as someone who has always loved games that find a way to fit in live action footage in a way that feels unnerving rather than distracting.
The best part is that each essence has gameplay benefits. Some of them allow you to do more damage to Orphans who are burning, some give you more melee strength, and so on. Further, you can only hold three essences at a time, but you will encounter six essences in total throughout your playtime. Occasionally, you will need to make a choice on which essence to delete. When you make that choice, the deleted essence will make one final remark or scream before they disappear forever. The concept is fantastic, but it’s one that I wish had been explored further and had a greater impact on the story’s finale.
There are other issues with the story as well. For one, on a technical level, I think the cutscenes look fairly lousy. Characters overact and flail their arms around too much, to the point that it’s hard to take them seriously. It’s unfortunately not quite on the level of other horror games released in the last few years.
Additionally, while the story has a great premise, the final act is quite poor. It’s very rushed, with a lot of key questions being left unanswered in favor of a final confrontation that feels unearned and confusing. Now, there is a New Game Plus option, which is likely where a lot of the story continues to expand, and players can unlock multiple endings. That said, I unfortunately had no desire to venture back into Cronos for a second playthrough. This is partly due to the previously mentioned issues with the story, but mostly due to how frustrating the actual moment-to-moment gameplay is.
“This is Getting Repetitive”
Halfway through the game, there’s a section where The Traveler must turn on a pair of generators in order to power up a tram. This tram will allow her to get to the next section of New Dawn and further uncover the mystery of the Orphans and where they came from. This is actually the second time that you are forced to do this exact same style of objective, and at one point, the Traveler literally says, “This is getting repetitive.” That sentiment perfectly captures all of my frustrations with Cronos: The New Dawn‘s gameplay loop.
At a glance, the game looks like your average third-person horror shooter. In fact, it’s likely that you will be coming into this game expecting something akin to either Dead Space or Silent Hill 2. I can freely confess that I myself had that expectation going in, but instead, what I was left with is a game that is filled to the brim with frustrating design choices. Whether it’s regarding the gunplay, the combat, the enemy balancing, and the rate of resources, I frequently found myself more annoyed with Cronos than scared.
To start, there’s the actual gunplay. There are about 5-6 discoverable weapons throughout the game, each of which can be upgraded with an abundant resource known as energy. Those weapons all have a charge functionality. For instance, if you just press the trigger button on the shotgun, the shotgun will do a small amount of damage. If you charge it up for about five seconds, it will do quite a large amount of devastation to an enemy. While this may seem like a fun high-risk/high-reward mechanic, in practice, it makes the gunplay far more clunky than anything else.
None of the weapons has any sense of punch behind them, especially when they’re uncharged. It doesn’t help that all of the enemies are essentially bullet sponges, who sometimes take dozens of bullets at a time with no sign of damage whatsoever. It doesn’t help that, unlike a lot of recent horror games, there’s no visible damage when you shoot an enemy in a certain limb. It’s a small touch, but it goes a long way in making the weapons feel impactful. The combat felt quite unsatisfying, and I felt really weak in the grand scheme of things.
I do understand that horror games are meant to make you feel powerless. However, with a protagonist that looks like a walking tank, there’s only so much I can suspend my disbelief. Take the melee, for example. In some horror games, melee is your last resort if you run out of ammo, such as with Resident Evil. In the case of Silent Hill, melee is your main source of damage that carries high risks and high rewards. Here, it is effectively useless.
There was a point late in the game where I had completely run out of ammo, and a giant Orphan which was chasing me had gotten stuck in a door. My only option in this instance was to continue hitting it with my melee attack, which took a whole minute of me continuously tapping the melee button over and over again. It doesn’t make sense for a character who moves so slowly due to her increased size to have such weak physical attacks. Plus, it’s not like this could be upgraded at later points. The weak melee wouldn’t be a problem if there were enough resources nearby, but because of the pacing and structure of combat encounters, you will frequently find yourself running out of ammo.
Here’s an example of a problem you’ll frequently run into. Occasionally, you will be forced into an arena with multiple monsters that will constantly rush you. In any other horror game, you would have two approaches to this situation that depend on the status of your character at that time. If they have low health and low ammo, your best course of action is to run, but you risk leaving that enemy alive to attack you when you least expect it. If they have a lot of ammo and max health, you can stand and fight, and risk losing your ammo.
Cronos effectively cuts out one of those options: when you enter that encounter, all doors are immediately locked. Sure, there are ammo crates and resources you can find around the arena, but you’ll eventually run out of those resources. At that point, all you can do is frantically run around to try and find a resource you missed, or see if it’s possible to corner them for a melee loop. If you do run around, you leave the Orphans to continue merging endlessly, making themselves stronger and stronger.
This is the sort of decision reserved for horror games that emphasize combat, like The Callisto Protocol. It doesn’t work in a game that has enemies that absorb damage, less-than-effective weapons, and melee that simply doesn’t work. Plus, multiple technical issues hinder the combat design. A lot of times, enemies will trap you into a corner, leaving you helpless to do anything other than die quickly. Not to mention that, in the final boss, my enemy completely disappeared, leaving me to restart the entire encounter all over again.
Exploration doesn’t help either. When you’re trying to find ammo, you instead get more energy to use in the shop. This creates a constant loop where you have to backtrack in order to buy more ammo at the shop, go back out to use it again, then go backwards when you run out once more. In general, Cronos will ask you to backtrack quite frequently. One section in particular asks you to get a set of anti-gravity boots.
This mission may seem trivial, but in reality, you need to find a passcode to open a door, which leads to an area containing another passcode. When you get that second passcode, you have to go back to where you started, progress a little further, then get the boots. Then, and only then, can you once again go back to where you started and use the boots to get to your destination. While the design of the world is quite interesting, having to see the same set piece multiple times back to back quickly diluted any and all enjoyment for me when it comes to the skybox.
As mentioned previously, tedium is the main problem at the core of Cronos: The New Dawn. Every once in a while, the game will introduce you to a concept that is admittedly very cool and exciting. These include moments such as the very first encounter with the orphans, using the anti-gravity boots to walk up walls, or manipulating time using an emitter. However, you will constantly be asked to do these tasks over and over and over again, ad nauseam, to the point that what may have started as a great idea quickly becomes a repetitive chore.
Further, the game is just too technically flawed to make completing anything other than exhausting. Every time I thought I was getting somewhere with the combat, a glitch would appear with the framerate or a character being able to hit me through a wall somehow. While the new version I was sent helped mitigate these problems, it certainly didn’t solve them outright.
Even if all of these issues are resolved, though, at the end of the day, there were very few moments where I was having fun with Cronos: The New Dawn. Due to the combat, the technical problems, and the pacing of traversal and exploration, every time an Orphan would show up, I never felt scared. Instead, I just felt exhausted, because I knew it was time for yet another tedious encounter. As a result of the tedium, any potential enjoyment I found in Cronos‘ story and gameplay quickly ran dry by the time the credits rolled.
A Less Than Stellar Showing
After I played Silent Hill 2 and saw the first trailer for Cronos: The New Dawn soon after, I hoped it would turn out to be something special. It seemed to combine psychological horror with science fiction in ways that haven’t really been seen since Dead Space, and I was so eager to dive in. Every trailer and insight that Bloober offered into the title had me extremely curious and intrigued, but when I actually got the game in my hands, I quickly found myself disappointed with the finished product.
There is a great foundation at the core of this game. The story has promise and does a brilliant job of building its atmosphere and worldbuilding through its mechanics and characters. In particular, the way the game was built on the 60s-esque fear of aliens and what they would do to people was an ingenious way to integrate the mechanic of harvesting essences for a greater cause. However, the lack of execution of these concepts, combined with the gameplay, detracts from that foundation.
The combat is profoundly frustrating due to the clunky gunplay and melee, the erratic difficulty spikes thanks to enemies that tank damage, and the constant glitches. Plus, even though the world of New Dawn is interesting, having to constantly backtrack between areas in order to progress ruined any of my enjoyment. Cronos beats you over the head with concepts that are exciting at first, but quickly become tedious due to the sheer number of times you’ll be running through the exact same gameplay and combat scenarios over and over again.
Yes, there is a New Game Plus, additional endings, and combined with unlockable costumes to chew through once you beat the game for the first time. These additions may even resolve all of my unanswered questions from the story. However, I didn’t have enough fun with Cronos: The New Dawn to justify playing through the game a second time. As such, it’s hard to recommend this game for players who have been riding on the high of the horror genre’s success, since this doesn’t really come close to matching the quality of other entries in the genre.
Disclaimer: Bloober Team provided a PlayStation 5 copy of Cronos: The New Dawn for review purposes.
