Due to decades of popularity, there will always be new challengers stepping up their attempts to win the Crown of Survival Horror. Most failed, but when the Bloober team–just achieved the overwhelming success of the silent Hill 2 remake, you’ll notice the original effort. That's why I'm eager to try Cronos: New Dawn. But is this rusty science fiction set up in a futuristic Eastern European dystopia, what does it take to have its own mark, or is it just incorporated into the packaging? After playing for the first two hours, even though I did have some reservations, it suggests that the Bloober team could be subjected to a new survival terrorist attack.
Cronos: Screenshot of the new Dawn Bloober team
Cronos sees the Bloober team (for a brief time) breaking away from the established legend of Silent Hill, telling a primitive story of a demanding, futuristic hell once called Poland. It draws inspiration from real places, tells the story of a character known as the “Traveler”, who explores this fallen world and travels time to different times to allow his mission to draw human souls from long-lost important figures. Everything is properly otherworldly and oppressive, with the continuous moody tones of the sky color and the strange strangeness of time that disregard the laws of nature. It's a terrible place, but despite its nightmarish visuals, it's still built on European architecture in a once-crazy city. Like The Silent Mountain 2, despite the horror lurking in the fog, important areas such as housing blocks and flower shops still feel strange to explore, unlike penis-obsessed corridors like ridiculous.
Despite its unique horror aesthetic, this familiarity is a way to permeate the entire Cronos until the gameplay. It feels like its genre companion, sometimes at fault. Traveler weight, cape animation, crossing gaps, reading notes, juggling stock slots, safe rooms – It's all second nature for anyone who has a little experience in the genre. It felt great and immediately reached the quality bar you expected, but at first I couldn't help but worry that it was basically the same game as I've played 20 times with fresh paint. Fortunately, it was obvious in the end that Cronos had enough unique spins in ranged combat, which showed that there was more than just a unique look in the game, the survival horror in the numbers.
The enemy's encounter is no longer a running game, but a game of intentional tactics.
Most of the enemies in the cronos are organic, sticky tendril monsters called orphans. They aren't entirely unique when it comes to visual design, but Cronos can re-understand how you manage your enemies. Just like “The Crimson Head of Resident Evil”, the orphan corpses need to be dealt with. Different The head of the crimson, the orphans did not resurface, became the biomass of other orphans, turning the conventional enemy into a clumsy beast. You only need to witness the process once to quickly understand how valuable it is to destroy its remains. With this mindset, the familiar rhythm of survival horror that Cronos lures into you completely change. The enemy's encounter is no longer a running game, but a game of intentional tactics. You need to make sure you don't kill the enemy while approaching another enemy that is currently attracting you, or you will soon find yourself in more trouble. And, you need to do that while trying to control control in an extremely tight combat space. Each battle raises a constant question of when and where you shoot.
Like Silent Hill 2, most battles are closer than range despite guns. The traveler is equipped with a transformed pistol, unlike the service weapon in the classic control of remedies, although upgrades (such as the shotgun module called the “Hammer”) are mechanical objects you can collect and attach. Once applied, these upgrades make the gun easily deformed in the form of your choice.
Ammunition is scarce, though, and in this regard, Cronos is more traditional than action horror. Once again, if you want to mow feed like you did when you’re playing Resident Evil 4, expect a bad time. The enemy is tough, and the merger of enemies is even more difficult. So maybe more precious than ever, and at least from my performance, each shot really matters. Like Isaac Clarke in Dead Space, travelers can step on punches, but in my two-hour game, the moves were largely like thriving rather than useful combat techniques.
So, thanks to a small amount of ammunition, even early enemies can quickly develop into unstoppable beasts, you need to quickly learn a new style of play that is different from other survival horror games. As far as I know, the key to the success of Cronos is a systematic approach that utilizes two extremely valuable abilities: charging and burning.
With a pistol (called “sword”) and shotgun, you can hold the trigger to charge your shot, and I can imagine this is the case with the whole Arsenal. Once I started trying to hit the power of shooting (yes, it was a avatar game – although it felt like you would sometimes play Death Space, I quickly realized that eventually firing a weak normal turn, eventually as good as throwing it away. Since then, every shot has been accused of. Coupled with strategically shooting down enemies to prevent mergers, I turned my playstyle from instant failures of running and guns into overwhelming success in tactical considerations. Finally, both after action and after combat, the burning fallen enemy became the third important tool in this game loop.
I quickly realized that a normal turn that fired a weak launch ended up being as good as throwing it away. Since then, every shot has been charged.
You will find torch fuel at a regular pick-up station and can quickly tap the left bumper for deployment. First, you can only carry one fuel container at a time, but I managed to upgrade and add an extra slot in a short time. Not only is torch fuel essential to destroy enemy bodies forever, it can also serve as an emergency defense, ignite a circle of fire under your feet, not only in attacking orphans, but also burn any corpse that may still be around you. The importance of tactical positioning is once again emphasized. Why waste torch fuel just burning a single body when you can damage active enemies at the same time?
Putting all of this in the game results in a combat system rewarding patience and thoughtful tactics. When I fuse all the individual mechanics together, it's obvious that it's always Bloober's intention, especially unlike my peers, Cronos lacks any Dodge mechanic. After spending a lot of time with Resident Evil 3 and Silent Hill 2 in recent years, I missed Dodge very much from the start and led to some very close (and not that tight) calls in the battle encounter. However, after mastering the rhythm of the battle, I quickly realized that I could have no it and that the game never took that into account.
But I will real Still like Dodge. Especially when the tricky boss meets me at the end of my drama, this traps me in a very tight apartment, desperately trying to make room between myself and the anthropomorphic black slimy. I understand the thinking process, but I'm sorry, I'm still hiding from the team.
Outside of the battle, Cronos gets caught up in something more traditional in this genre, ticking every box that modern survival horror games expect. The chapters I play are made up of a mostly linear path that pushes you through the pockets of enemies and light puzzles and often stops to collect resources and manage inventory. There are even traditional secure rooms, including upgrade stations, storage boxes and storage points. It all feels second nature immediately, and while it may be a little unappreciative and safe, it is obvious that Bloober has a firm grasp of the fundamentals of the genre.
What is hard to read, however, is the quality of the original storytelling, and even Blober may admit that its records are mixed together. My two-hour class started with a psychological test and briefly covered my task, but since then I have learned very little about the story and you can't yet collect it from the trailer and the game's Steam pages. Travelers are trying to harvest souls from the past before catastrophic events, an unquestionable command. There is another traveler who fails to pass the mission and you will send you to learn more about their plight. However, other than that, it is a mystery. So while Cronos looks interesting on the surface, I'd certainly be eager to find more, it's hard to say now whether the story meets the criteria of Silent Mountain 2 – although it does a great job of remakes, Brober can't claim his story.
With Cronos, it feels like the Bloober team has picked cherries from the best genres and created their own survival horror beast. From what I have so far, the team has created something that is very loyal to the formula, and that's not a complaint – I like this type. I just hope the whole game will spend more time celebrating the unique battle loop and original storytelling so that Kronos can form his own identity rather than merge into the packaging.
Dale Driver is the deputy director of IGN video programming. By following him on the blues @daledriver.bsky.social