Almost a year after the Silent Hill 2 remake was released, Bloober Team is back with another survival horror game and it's a brand new IP. Cronos: The New Dawn will be available in two days on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S but thanks to the Polish studio, we were able to get a review code about a week ago. As a result, not only can we share a high quality video of the PS5 Pro version, but we also have some detailed impressions about the game.
Since the release of Layers of Fear in 2016, which was followed by a sequel three years later, Bloober Team has explored the depths of horror through various settings. Observer, Blair Witch, The Medium, and of course, Silent Hill 2 were all very different games but they had one thing in common, they wanted you to be scared and feel uneasy. Not all of these projects have been unanimously acclaimed, but it's clear that these developers have undeniable expertise when it comes to creating horror and tension. By managing to honor the monument that was Silent Hill 2, when many predicted a bitter failure, the studio earned some stripes, and it is inevitably with a new eye that Cronos: The New Dawn has been followed ever since it was announced a little less than a year ago. The game features a mysterious woman wearing an imposing space suit and whose mission is to reach the temporal rifts that will allow her to dive into the past and bring back specific individuals. We don't know much about her mission when the adventure begins, except that she finds herself in the ruins of Krakow after an apocalyptic event called the Change. We quickly learn that the local population had to deal with a sudden epidemic that forced the authorities to place it under total lockdown, and judging by the places we go through, no one survived the terrible cataclysm that took place. This is what compels an organization called the Collective to send what they call Travelers to the site to retrieve a number of people who are apparently important to them. The game's opening scene and the first few hours of the adventure introduce us to a heroine who seems to be completely conditioned for the task she has been assigned to do, much like a preprogrammed robot. As in any good modern horror game, the player is bombarded with questions from the outset. Why are we being asked to take part in a Rorschach test? Will the answers have an impact on the experience to come? Why is the main character so emotionless? Bloober Team's developers once again demonstrates their mastery in creating heavy and intriguing atmospheres. Once she has reached her first target, the Traveler encounters a very strange mechanical character who also works for the Collective and she starts to ask herself some questions, especially since the system for bringing back those she has reached in the past is no longer working. That's basically the basis of a plot that relies on a particularly striking atmosphere. While it's difficult at first not to notice the studio's many sources of inspiration (Dead Space and The Callisto Protocol come to mind, of course, but also Resident Evil, Silent Hill, SOMA, and even Returnal to a much lesser extent), to the point where you get the feeling that the project clearly lacks personality. That said, after a while, you gradually discover that the title is perfectly capable of holding its own. While it clearly doesn't revolutionize the genre, it's still a worthy effort, and we'll try to explain why in the following paragraphs.
It will come as no surprise that Cronos: The New Dawn opts for a third-person perspective with the camera positioned directly behind the character to amplify the feeling of confinement and claustrophobia in certain passages. When you draw your weapon, the view shifts to shoulder level, a legacy of the original Resident Evil 4 back in 2005, and of course, there are no dodging, blocking or rolling moves in sight. The idea is obviously to impose movement constraints on the player to heighten the pressure and stress and make each passage nerve-wracking. Added to this is the deliberate choice to greatly limit the character's inventory, ammunition supply, and health items, forcing the player to constantly micromanage and often make difficult choices. We're not going to lie to you, and our French Gamersyde Offline video will attest to this, we didn't find the first few hours especially motivating because we had not expected such a radical welcome party. In most games in the genre, the first enemy you encounter is meant to be a mere formality, whose sole purpose is to serve as an introduction to weapon handling, but in Cronos, it's mainly there to make you understand that the adventure won't be a walk in the park. The character's hesitant aim reminding of Joel's is surprising, as is the weak impact of the bullets (even though it is possible to charge your shots to give them more power), and the resistance of the horrible creature quickly makes you realize that killing all the enemies is probably not going to be possible. The usual routine, some might say? Well, not quite, in our opinion. When we look at the latest Resident Evil games (VII, Village, the remakes of the second, third, and fourth episodes), we rarely found ourselves forced to run away to avoid confrontation, and apart from games designed specifically for this purpose, such as the two Outlast games, most survival horror games aiming for a larger audience give us the means to defend ourselves. Since Cronos: The New Dawn has no difficulty mode to make it more accessible, you need to be aware that it can be tough. The first Dead Space offered a fairly difficult challenge in Hard mode, sometimes forcing you to reload your previous save to try to better manage a tricky situation, but in its default difficulty mode, the lower resistance of the enemies made the experience much more accessible. Bloober Team's game opts for this radical approach without offering the player any other forms of alternatives. And if you think that the challenge it proposes will simply consist of running for your life while clutching your rear end tightly, think again, because despite the very small amount of ammo you will find, you will also have to face groups of enemies that you will be forced to defeat in order to move forward.
In fact, you'll regularly end up in a confined area that suddenly goes into lockdown until the threat that has just appeared there is fully eliminated. While defeated opponents can sometimes drop a few precious bullets, it's worth remembering that they already take quite a few before finally biting the dust. Fortunately, the arena in which you find yourself trapped, however small, may sometimes contain a few gas cylinders or other explosive containers to make your life a little easier. However, it's best not to rush in, so check out your surroundings (but keep running when doing so), and try to gather as many creatures as possible near the "red barrels" equivalents before targeting them. And then, Cronos: The New Dawn adds its own vicious twist to the survival horror equation, with a result that is designed to make your life even more complicated. These former humans, now bloodthirsty mutants, have the ability to merge with any inert body within their reach. Whether it's corpses already in the area or the remains of the monsters you killed seconds earlier, they should all be considered potential threats. This merging process is not a mere way for the creatures to regenerate, it actually allows them to change shape, become even more resistant, and much more powerful and dangerous. It is therefore particularly important to do everything you can to prevent them from merging before it is too late. You can do so by firing at them or punching them in the face. However, there is another possibility, provided once again that you have managed your inventory well enough. The heroine is able to use a kind of mini flamethrower that burns the ground around her and can therefore destroy the remains at her feet, or even stun an opponent for a few seconds to give her time to line up her shot, reload her weapon, or make a quick getaway. Vending machines provide free refills with no limit on usage as long as you don't already have one in your inventory, so in order to carry several in your inventory, you have to craft the next ones yourself with the appropriate resources (there are only two types in the game, but more about that later). Fire is essential for saving yourself a lot of trouble, making the use of the torch, once again, a matter of strategic choice. On the one hand, having several reloads is undeniably more reassuring, as the area you're in does not necessarily offer other means of setting enemies on fire, but on the other hand, it means carrying less ammunition or health injectors. Players are also free to try to take down their opponents with a well-placed shot to the legs and then stomp on them while they get back up, or even attack them with their fists at their own risk (there is no dodging or blocking to limit the risks as we mentioned before). However, there are a few passages where you can rely on the layout of the place where you find yourself into, usually with crates that can be destroyed with a kick or punch in the hope of finding some ammo (although note that there content is always random and there is sometimes nothing to be found) and various flammable objects (gas cylinders, small cans of gasoline, or containers - note that, as a snub to the clichés of the genre, not all of them are red, contrary so what we're used to in the medium). This is the case, for example, in certain encounters with stronger enemies that can be considered as bosses.
The constant tension that reigns in Cronos and the challenging nature of certain sequences may therefore be a little intimidating at first, even for those familiar with the genre. It's not uncommon to have to restart the same passage several times, either because you've ended up biting the dust, or because you've done things so wrong that you decide to restart the last save, automatic or manual, provided you were able to make one at one of the dedicated terminals just before. It's been a long time since we felt the urge to make a few trips back and forth to the nearest safe room after defeating each enemy without taking too much damage. This isn't mandatory, of course, as after all, doing so sort of breaks the pace of the game somewhat, but it does have the advantage of lowering down pressure for those with weaker nerves. Progress through the adventure is therefore regularly punctuated by moments when you desperately wait to come across a room where you can not only save your progress to take a breather, but also upgrade your equipment. To do this, you'll come across two types of currency during your travels. To modify weapons, you need to have accumulated enough energy, which is actually the game's name for the credits you could collect in Dead Space. As mentioned above, it can be found randomly in wooden crates that can be smashed with a simple melee attack, but it is often simply placed on tables, shelves, and other pieces of furniture. Weapon modifications include firepower, charging and reloading speed, aiming stability, and magazine size, with each improvement making the next one more expensive, of course. Given some of the prices, the game once again requires you to make choices, but with the effects on weapons' effectiveness clearly visible, there is a real sense of progression. The combination of the character and their torch can also be modified to make your life easier, but to do so, you'll need to collect a much rarer commodity: cores. Initially, each upgrade will only cost you one at a time, but to improve the various stats more, you'll need several of them. Once again, it's clearly worth the effort/cost, as you'll be able to increase the burn time of your torch attacks, increase the number of fire charges you can craft at once, strengthen your armor's damage resistance, and increase the size of your inventory or the amount of resources you can carry around. As mentioned above, there are two types of ressources: chemicals and spare parts. Depending on what you want to make (ammunition for the different weapons; refills for torches; medical injectors, etc.), you will need more or less of each, which is why it is important to be able to store as much of them as possible. More than ever, exploration remains essential to avoid finding yourself too ill-equipped, although you shouldn't underestimate the risks involved in snooping around everywhere, or sometimes retracing your steps to access certain optional locations once you've recovered the pliers. No decision is insignificant in Cronos: The New Dawn, but remember that when running for your life is an option, there's no shame in not being a hero.
It's therefore not surprising to see Dark Souls mentioned among the game's sources of inspiration. Since the incommensurable success of From Software's productions, difficulty and challenge are no longer taboo subjects in video games, and Cronos: The New Dawn clearly takes advantage of this to return to the original definition of the genre it claims to be the heir to. Here, you have to survive in a horrific setting populated by creatures as dangerous as they are ruthless, you can do nothing but to progress with a knot in your stomach because of the lack of ammunition, you die repeatedly because you didn't react as you should have. The beginning is difficult, even merciless, due to the fact that the main character is heavy and kind of clumsy, in the grand tradition of the other heroes of the genre, but if you persevere enough and learn from your mistakes, the progression becomes rewarding. The equipment upgrade system contributes to a feeling of growing power that will gradually reassure you, while never ensuring total serenity. Sometimes you will choose to use the energy you've acquired to buy ammuo and healing items rather than saving it for an additional upgrade. You might have to delete a healing injector in your inventory to pick up a rare item that can be sold at a high price later, promising yourselves that you'll use one or more cores to increase the size of our inventory the next time around (until you change your mind for another upgrade when the time comes). You'll move forward in fear of what might happen to you at the next corner, each meter traveled without losing a life becoming a small victory. Basically, there is nothing very original there, you might say, but the fact is that Cronos: The New Dawn will not leave you indifferent. The game also has a fairly distinctive artistic direction, even if, once again, the influences are noticeable. Exploring the dilapidated buildings of Poland devastated by the Change is reminiscent of Silent Hill or The Medium, and when you discover areas infested with corpses, bloody goo and local abominations, it's hard not to think of The Thing, Dead Space, or The Callisto Protocol. However, little by little, the singularities of the game world imagined by Bloober fall into place and it makes you want to see more. Technically, the game certainly doesn't do anything spectacular in terms of graphics, but the Quality and Performance modes perform well, with beautiful volumetric effects and shadows and a generally stable frame rate on PS5 Pro (we encountered some areas with notable drops in Performance mode though so keep that in mind). The visual differences aren't necessarily obvious though, making the second mode more interesting in our opinion, despite a few minor slowdowns we spotted on a few occasions. Many players will be glad to know that chromatic aberration can be turned off or left on during gameplay or cutscenes (separately), a nice touch. As for the soundtrack and sound design, the cornerstone of any survival horror game, it is so striking that the studio recommends playing with headphones to be able to detect all the subtleties and be fully immersed (sound effects and musical atmospheres play a big part in creating tension). Last but not least, the English voice-acting is very well done and, as is often the case, you can also count on discovering the notes left by the unfortunate inhabitants of Krakow to add to the overall immersion.
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