- 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 08/Sep 03:27

Cronos: The New Dawn – Review

Bloober Team has been making waves these last few years with cool titles such as Layers of Fear and Blair Witch, which also led the Polish developer to remake Silent Hill 2 for Konami. The latter put the developer on the map even more, and this leads us to the topic of today’s review: Cronos: The New Dawn. This new horror IP promises a tough-as-nails survival horror experience that throws players into a spooky, desolate future as the Traveler. We were curious if this one lived up to the hype, and for the most part, it did. Story The story of Cronos: The New Dawn isn’t that very clear from the beginning. You’ll be playing as the Traveler, who goes back in time to track down targets to preserve their essence. The world has become a barren place, as humanity has been nearly wiped out due to a disease called the ‘Change’. This disease has turned humans into monster-like beings, who add another threat on top of the actual virus. As you progress through the game, small pieces of the puzzle will slowly start to fall into place. This is a game that is best to go in blind, as explaining everything would kind of ruin the overall experience. Cronos: The New Dawn is a story-driven game after all. Graphics Cronos: The New Dawn is a visually appealing game that hits all the right notes for atmospheric horror enthusiasts. The character designs looked great, but it was the monsters that truly had unsettling but impressive visuals. Every time we encountered a monster, we did feel a few chills creeping up our spine, which is always great in a horror title. The environments also looked rather detailed and fun to explore, even though most of the assets were sadly static objects. We would have loved to be able to destroy a bit more of our surroundings. One thing we did find a bit more exhausting for our eyes was that the game is often a bit too dark to make out things in the distance. We understand that this is obviously a design choice, but as yours truly has easily exhausted eyes, it became harder to play the game for longer periods of time. Some better accessibility settings could have done a lot here. Sound As a whole, the sound design of Cronos: The New Dawn is great. The music is somewhat understated, but it goes up in volume when the in-game situation requires it. There is some voice acting present, which is of great quality. It’s mainly the sound effects here that do the trick, as they add great audio feedback when gunning down enemies or when hearing your footsteps in eerily quiet locations. The monsters also have fitting, unsettling sounds, further heightening the atmosphere. Gameplay Cronos: The New Dawn is a survival horror game in which you’ll be playing as the Traveler, braving the destroyed wastelands to track down targets to extract their essence. The game follows a typical survival horror format, where you’ll navigate through various terrains and buildings with limited ammunition while creepy monsters lurk in the darkness. The offset is very straightforward, but the game doesn’t hold its punches, as you’ll be thrown in the deep end from the very first minute. Enemies are tough, ammo is scarce, and health packs are limited. As stated above, the game is rather hard, and there are no real difficulty settings. You can add some aim assistance, but other than that, you’ll be on your own. The aim assist does help a bit, but it’s still not that amazing. The game also relies on manual save points, so if you die, you’ll start back from that last save. Luckily, these points are not spread too thinly, but you might have to redo tough battles a few times in a row to reach the next one. For the most part, we didn’t mind the higher difficulty, but there were a few hurdles to overcome, and it did take us a short while to just get used to the immediate high difficulty level. Luckily, the game offers you options to upgrade your weapons and armor, making things a bit easier in the long run. Burning fallen enemies also helps you, as it makes sure that the living enemies can’t merge with the dead ones, turning them into an even more powerful foe. There are also some puzzle mechanics present in the way of changing the environment, but these are often fairly easy to figure out. All in all, Cronos isn’t a very long game, and depending on how many times you die during combat, you could probably clear the game in roughly 15 hours. The game is a fairly linear affair, with a few small segments that stray away from the beaten path. We didn’t mind a more focused experience such as this, as it does keep things interesting and doesn’t add another layer of difficulty on top of an already fairly challenging gameplay loop. There are a few design choices here and there that feel a bit clunky, such as not being able to get additional Torch Fuel (for burning corpses) from a dispenser, even if you have additional empty slots. This makes the Torch Fuel inventory upgrade a bit more useless, even though you can craft additional Torch Fuel via your inventory. Of course, having more than one charge on hand might help you when getting swarmed by multiple enemies. Conclusion Cronos: The New Dawn is an interesting new horror experience by Bloober Team, and we enjoyed every single minute of it. While fairly linear, the gameplay loop proved to be entertaining, with spooky enemies, interesting weapons, and just that feeling of satisfaction when you defeat a cluster of enemies. Games like this are a modern take on going back to basics for the genre, and we’re all for it. Cronos: The New Dawn doesn’t have too many bells and whistles and focuses on a polished experience instead, which the genre certainly needs more of. We are certainly looking for more Bloober Team projects in the future.