There’s nothing quite like a good survival horror game, especially this time of year when spooky season is on the uptick. There’s something fun about getting the crap scared out of you while struggling to stay alive in a light-limited environment. God, it’s good to be back with fall gaming horror romps.
Anyway, the launching point of this good feeling is this review for Cronos: The New Dawn from developer Bloober Team. The game brings some thick survival horror atmosphere, scary baddies that bring intense moments, and a completely hidden storyline that slowly unfolds as you go along. Not too bad for an original title from BT. The downside of the game lies within its linear style of play, a regretful old-school blueprint from survival horror of yesteryear, and an unbalanced difficulty that shifts quickly.
If that description of any survival horror game feels familiar, then you’ve played Resident Evil since the first PlayStation and understand the progression of the survival horror genre since its inception. Sometimes it’s good to kick back into the gaming past’s blueprints, but I think we’re long since past that point.
But! That doesn’t mean this game is bad in its execution of said blueprint and its ability to introduce interesting ways to make this genre far more entertaining. It just borrows a lot. Anyway, what it doesn’t borrow from is the story, which is actually quite good. Let’s begin there.
The story
You play a character called the Traveler who is transported to the future, where they find a horrible wasteland of destruction and mutated beings waiting for them. The character’s purpose is to seek out and correct anomalies, while also finding survivors and searching for time rifts that will take you back to the past.
The story is quite creative, with what seems like a heavy dose of Terry Gilliam’s influence (looking at you, 12 Monkeys). It really paints a bleak picture for the player and owns that picture with every destroyed and wrecked environment. The story helps to set the tone for the rest of the game, as it is built to keep gamers on guard, while blurring the lines of what’s real and what’s not. Playing with the tense emotions of players seems to be the goal of this story, and how it unfolds and what comes with it hits that play button perfectly.
As you progress through the game, you want to know more about what happened to everyone. Notes lying around and voice memos help to fill in those blanks, while painting a picture of survival, struggle, and unimaginable horror.
In short, it’s a good story that announces its presence from the moment you begin with systematic questioning, and will keep you on your toes throughout.
Gorgeousness and Gameplay
The gameplay for Cronos: The New Dawn is a mixed bag when it comes to design and execution. And don’t take that as a knock against the game; it’s just a point that compares what has been done before in other games of this type versus what changes were made to make it an original experience.
What has been done before
At its core, the gameplay in Cronos: The New Dawn is a traditional survival horror. It features a gritty main character caught in a world that is grotesque, fearful, and always playing tricks on your eyes. If you think about the latest RE title or something like Dead Space, then you understand the avenue you’re traveling with Cronos. This game contains all of these elements that made those series great, while not going beyond that with the scares. For example, early in the game, the Traveler will be traversing destroyed buildings that are only lit by their light. Occasionally, you will run across a moment where you’ll see a shadow break from the light in the background, which tips you off to something menacing on its way, possibly around the corner. That traditional survival horror trick is meant to make you less relaxed in the environment and to create anticipation that something is waiting for you around the corner. It’s simple in design, it’s been done a gazillion times before, and it’s a rampant element that reappears many times in this game.
Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, but it’s not as interesting as what you would find in Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake, where it’s a psychological trick that embeds a permanent insecurity and lack of trust in what you’re seeing. Of course, it’s unfair to compare the two games because SH2 was designed by another team that had just broken through with inventive ways to bend the genre to their will. Bloober did not think of those moments in SH2; rather, they helped to magnify them. With Cronos: The New Dawn, it never treads that territory of terror.
Cronos: The New Dawn uses very typical methods of getting your goat. While the shady shadows are a good starting point, there are also jump scares and intense moments when running is better than fighting. To continue the trend established by previous games, the game also restricts ammunition and health injection amounts, a classic Resident Evil element. Hell, there was one point in the game where those RE feelings were dug up again when I happened upon a room loaded with both. I knew that I was going to get quite the fight ahead of me, and I wasn’t wrong. Lots of ammo means that you’ve got lots of enemies ahead of you, which, again, is a classic element in a typical survival horror game.
In addition to the scares and the lack of necessary items to survive, the game also features some clunky movement and a slow offensive game, the latter of which is rectifiable. Staying with movement, the controls for the Traveler feel stiff, inaccurate, and on purpose. Again, this isn’t a knock, especially given the last reason; it’s acceptable to assume that the Traverler, who has a giant suit reminiscent of BioShock’s Big Daddy, would have a difficult time moving around in a messed-up, sometimes low-gravity environment. But! That doesn’t mean that it isn’t burdensome and a little overwhelming when trying to maneuver around or through enemies.
On the offensive side of the tracks, I found the controls to be loosey-goosey at times. While the design of how to switch between items via the directional pad, and the assigning of buttons to take care of health needs is solid, the aiming and executing of a firearm is not comfortable. I think I may have wasted more ammo than enemies because I just couldn’t get the crosshairs straight. Now, that could be a ‘me’ issue, as I get older, it’s tough to keep crosshairs in games straight, but I also believe that it was going through a RE-type gameplay offensive structure, where the shooting isn’t meant to be easy. That one element creates an additional layer of panic-pushing, especially with the variety of vicious enemies.
The overall formula here is spot on for what a traditional survival horror game would be. It has forced scares, a constant feeling of uncertainty, and shaky controls that feel intentional. There is no good medium of comfort during gameplay. So, as a whole, Cronos: The New Dawn works well as a traditional survival horror.
New hotness
While there are few and far between huge changes, the game does bring some interesting elements to the genre it represents. The first one is how the living creatures and the dead are still very much dangerous. How Bloober manages to make the latter a dangerous gameplay element is by allowing creatures that hadn’t been mutilated by the Traveler’s gunfire to absorb the creatures that had been mutilated. This does a couple of things.
The first result from this gameplay element is that it creates a more intense battle that forces the player to be more aware of their surroundings. Because the game features restrictive lighting that creates an initial layer of discomfort, the player will always be on a constant lookout for more baddies.
To further that uncomfortable sentiment, the game takes the audio and pairs it perfectly with the lack of lighting. For example, if you’re walking past a grotesque wall of mutated humans, you might hear a small moan, then a noise indicating something has made it through said wall, then hear its moan getting closer. The lack of light mixed with the scary audio configuration helps put the possibility of one creature merging with another into the forefront of the mind, which forces the player to frantically look around and make sure they’re not about to be destroyed by a preventable powerful predator.
This combination of lack of light and good sound, mixed with this new gameplay element of creature recreation into something more powerful, is a consistent worry during gameplay. It certainly puts you on the defensive and causes some beautiful survival horror stress that can always crop up at any given moment. It’s a great way to keep the player on their toes and not relaxed.
The second result of this merging of monsters is decision-making on ammo, environment, and how you’re going to quickly strategize to balance ammo and prevent merging monsters. It’s a mental juggling act that, much like the previous comment, adds another layer of stress to the game, thus making this more than just the standard survival horror gameplay. It’s deep this way and clever as hell.
What is also deep and clever as hell with this game are the weapons and upgrades. Weapon upgrades may not be new to the survival horror genre, but Cronos: The New Dawn does a great job of bringing interesting weapons into the mix, while also providing some interesting ways to dispose of baddies. The weapons in the game range from handguns to powerful items that I won’t describe because you’ll just have to discover them yourself. The weapons bring their pros and cons with them, which adds more gameplay elements to consider when you’re thinking about ammo and game progression.
On the upgrade side of the tracks, the game allows you a simple skills tree at certain rest stops in the game that can improve armor, gunplay, and a variety of other Traveler features. I love this portion of the game because it eventually helps overcome the difficulty hump the game has you climbing at its initial start, but as soon as you start opening many upgrades, the game becomes maybe too easy, and a wee bit unbalanced. I’m not complaining too much, though, because I got my ass handed to me so many times at the beginning of this adventure. Having the ability to relax just a bit in a constantly stressful environment is a blessing. And, honestly, I love some fun games, even when they’re unbalanced in favor of me. Games are meant to be fun.
Outside of the above, there are some additional features to the gameplay that add some psychological horror elements, which add more trickiness to the survival horror adventure. Those are interesting. Enjoy discovering them.
Environments and action
There are two ways you can look at this. The first way is understanding that this genre is known for its slow and methodical movement, which brings cautious and less-than-fast-moving gameplay. What that means is you will have less action, more lock on the environments, and more horror build-up to the moment. Since I’m an old-ass gamer, I expect this type of gameplay. It works for Cronos: The New Dawn. If you’re looking for creepy horror, then you get it with this game’s pace.
The other way to look at this is that the game has large spaces of nothing, which is made worse by the linear path the game mostly keeps you on. Nowadays, I know that gamers expect a bit more action rather than the slow and methodical typical survival horror; some might be turned off by this game’s pacing.
As I stated, I think having this typical structure piece in the game helps to magnify the horror and make the gameplay incredibly uncomfortable. I love it and expect it. This also allows for the environments to be appreciated. They’re pure art, even though at times there are repetitive elements of it. The more you can get immersed in the environments, the greater the horror experience is going to be, which means Cronos: The New Dawn delivers some great horror because of this method of gameplay.
Now, on that sweet note, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
Cronos: The New Dawn, from developer Bloober Team, is representative and respectful of the traditional survival horror genre. It brings gameplay elements that any gamer should expect from a survival horror experience, while testing out minor methods to improve an old formula. At the end of the day, the game is beautifully unsettling, gorgeous to take in, and does enough to make it worth your time. Is it reinventing the genre? Not really, but it’s still quite fun.
