Bloober Team has an interesting style; the developer’s library consists mostly of horror, narrative-driven games, a point that led to them being chosen to remake Silent Hill 2 for Konami. It is a fantastic revamp of the original PlayStation 2 title and really shows Bloober has managed to raise the bar on its own development processes. Now, with all this newfound talent, they have branched out into a new IP with Cronos: The New Dawn.
This sci-fi action horror title is set in Poland (Bloober’s home turf) but with something dark writhing within. What is Cronos about, though? Well, players jump into the shoes of the “Traveler”, a space suit-wearing, knife- and gun-wielding soldier who has been dispatched to find the previous Traveler and continue their mission.
It is a slow burner; lots of the story is told through the environment and notes rather than direct interactions, though these ramp up as the game progresses for increased drama. Notably, Cronos heavily features interactive cats that the Traveler is smitten by. They have some relevance to the story and setting as well!
Felines aside, though, something has happened, and monsters, mutations, and fleshiness are to be found at every turn. These monsters are victims of something, and it’s up to the player to find out what – but how do they do that?
The gameplay of Cronos: The New Dawn is nothing particularly new; in fact, it uses well-practised and expected mechanics that combine into something quite satisfying. First of all, the game is in third-person with an over-the-shoulder camera that zooms in for aiming and pulls back for traversal. During traversal, the camera can be fully manipulated as well for better visibility.
Speaking of visibility, this is a very dark game with some extremely evocative lighting and fancy ray-tracing effects. This means that the way light works in environments is quite realistic, and things like the flashlight become extra important while also looking pretty cool. Of course, for anyone with a rig that can’t trace rays, the standard lighting is also excellently implemented.
Bloober seems to understand as well that combat can’t just be the same scenario every time, so they have created points where the player has to engage with the combat (not all players will like this choice) in small arenas and use the environment and their resources to defeat all of the enemies. These can be very difficult at times, and often, during review gameplay, there were multiple deaths due to mismanagement of health items.
This fun survival horror mechanic plays into the whole inventory too, not just battle resources. The Traveler only has limited item spaces and must use deposit boxes to store any excess. It helps force players to consider their options during the majority of play, only really stumbling in the arenas, which are resource sinks.
The gunplay itself is pretty good, with a focus on slowly charging pistol shots to stagger enemies; the early game can be quite tactical. Later, though, players will get more weapon modules, including a very fun-to-use shotgun.
For crowd control, players will also get access to a whole host of abilities, the most important being the fire bomb. This stuns enemies who are alive and burns corpses of the dead enemies, stopping them from being used by other enemies to power up. It is an interesting set of systems, and the enemy designs are excellent, with ample ways to challenge the player even at their strongest. In very Dead Space style too, it is possible to find cores that can be used to upgrade the Traveler’s suit and weapons for better combat ability, so finding these is important.
The exploratory gameplay is pretty good, requiring the player to solve both anomaly puzzles, which are all about environmental positioning, and more traditional puzzles. Both are well implemented, with the anomaly placement sometimes making traversal quite complex. Traditional puzzles have players listening to audio, reading notes and finding items to progress through locked areas or to find items that change the environment in some way. It’s very impressive just how integrated and smooth these functions are.
Being a horror game with so much darkness, Cronos: The New Dawn ran the risk of looking flat, but Bloober has pulled out all of the stops and created a fantastically consistent and interesting art style that permeates all corners of the experience. Their penchant for creating fictionally affected yet realistic Polish architecture is something to behold. Polish graffiti tells the story of the environment, the user interface has a sort of Eastern European industrialness to it, and everything is cohesive. With ample volumetric fog effects, this game can look very oppressive while it lamps the Silent Hill fog for scares.
Soundwise, the environments and music create a really cool atmosphere. It’s not quite as intense as Dead Space, but it has a lot of the same hallmarks. Squishy-sounding corruption, clanky footsteps from the Traveler’s suit, and a lot of heavy bass that stirs whenever something happens; it’s a really fun experience, yet a tense setup. Music is nice and varied too, but it tends to be more reserved, instead opting to use environmental sound as the main soundtrack.
One cool extra is the Traveler’s affection for cats. Listen out for their meows; the rewards are pretty great. Give them some scritches!
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