A number of hours into taking part in Cronos: The New Dawn, whereas I used to be creeping round a desolate and nightmarish world full of dilapidated buildings and creepy, fleshy monsters, I heard a cat meow from behind a locked door. Later, after killing some nasty horrors and fixing a puzzle, I returned with bolt cutters and freed the cat. In alternate, it granted me a helpful merchandise. All future cats I discovered in Cronos did the identical. It was good to have a military of cats as allies on this unusual, hellish world. Additionally good: Cronos: The New Daybreak, the most recent horror sport from Bloober Workforce.
Last year’s Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team proved that the studio, which has generally been criticized for making sloppy, dangerous horror video games, may knock it out of the park if given the possibility. However remaking one of many biggest scary video games of all time into one thing that’s additionally scary and good, whereas spectacular, arguably isn’t as exhausting as creating one thing distinctive and contemporary that can be memorable and creepy in its personal proper.
So I was both excited and nervous about Cronos. May Bloober ship a worthy follow-up to the Silent Hill 2 remake that was additionally a sport wholly of its personal creation? Properly, the reply is usually sure. Whereas Cronos isn’t pretty much as good as Silent Hill 2 (however like, what’s?), it’s nonetheless a fantastically nasty third-person horror sport that may be a excellent post-apocalyptic, sci-fi survival expertise that followers of Resident Evil 4 will really feel proper at dwelling with.
Cronos: The New Daybreak is a third-person horror sport that locations you within the huge, lumbering boots of The Traveler. This unusual character is a time traveler of types with superior weaponry and tech. Her mission, or “vocation,” is seemingly to battle again in opposition to a harmful, unnatural virus that turns individuals into sickly, decaying monsters that solely wish to kill you and merge their flesh along with different monsters and corpses. Doing so lets them develop stronger, and also you’ll wish to burn our bodies to cease that from occurring. In some unspecified time in the future within the ’80s, as seen throughout sections of the sport during which you return in time briefly, this horrible virus unfold throughout the planet and destroyed the whole lot. Now you and your fellow Vacationers work tirelessly to cease it, comprise it, and study extra about it. Or possibly, you all are accountable…
The narrative Cronos weaves is bizarre and stored me guessing for many of my time taking part in it. Sadly, I wasn’t capable of end the sport and needed to restart it on account of some technical points involving the sport’s PS5 construct (don’t fear, this gained’t occur to you), however from what I used to be capable of play (and later re-play), Cronos tells an odd story that isn’t like that in any horror sport I’ve performed in current reminiscence. It doesn’t all the time work and it could possibly generally really feel such as you go lengthy stretches with out the narrative shifting ahead, however I largely loved peeling again one other bloody layer of flesh from this disgusting onion.
The true meat of Cronos is discovered exterior of the cutscenes and dialogue. A lot of the sport is spent creeping round horrible locations with restricted ammo, well being objects, and different sources, making an attempt desperately to not die to some nasty flesh-ghoul in the dead of night. Fight in Cronos is hard at instances, particularly in the event you let any of the monsters merge with useless monsters or different corpses. Larger enemies simply made me burn by most of my ammo and generally proved more durable than the precise boss fights. Fortunately, you should use the surroundings to your benefit; there are a lot of oil tanks and crimson barrels dotted across the wasteland, which may be very helpful for scaling down the herds of enemies the sport generally throws at you.
I do count on some shall be postpone by how a lot fight is in Cronos and the way exhausting it may be, particularly in the event you aren’t hoarding sources like a crazed survivalist who has spent too many weeks listening to Joe Rogan podcasts. I favored the tough-as-nails encounters, particularly as I began to improve my go well with and weapons and will put up a greater battle, however your mileage might fluctuate.
Between these fights and scrapping for provides, you often remedy environmental puzzles by utilizing an odd power tether software that may allow you to manipulate time by both rewinding or fast-forwarding particular areas of the map by the timeline. So a set of collapsed stairs may be rewound to after they had been complete once more, or a fallen piece of flooring may be introduced again to its unique location and raised like an elevator within the course of. It’s a neat trick that appears cool, but it surely generally felt just like the designers forgot it was part of Cronos, and I’d go a very long time between these time shenanigans. Nonetheless, I loved messing with the movement of time, and having the ability to rewind it to carry again a crimson barrel and use it once more in opposition to flesh monsters was enjoyable.
What I didn’t take pleasure in had been the technical points I encountered taking part in Cronos. Whereas issues tremendously improved after Bloober Workforce despatched me a brand new construct of the sport operating on PS5, I nonetheless encountered efficiency spikes, bizarre animation bugs, damaged subtitles, and a few basic Bloober Workforce jank. The standard of character dialogue additionally varies wildly. Generally of us you encounter sound like actual individuals, with nice performances supporting glorious writing, and different instances you would possibly suppose you’re watching a tacky Thriller Science Theater 3000 horror film, simply with out the bots and Joel riffing excessive of the dangerous performing and clunky dialogue. Fortunately, the sport is usually the Traveler speaking to herself and the cats she finds whereas recording and documenting the whole lot.
I’m excited to return to Cronos: The New Daybreak and end it, as the big chunk of the sport I performed, whereas at instances tough, was an earnest and devoted try by Bloober to create one thing new and creepy. Not each a part of Cronos succeeds at what Bloober got down to do, however most of it does, and sometimes in a approach that units it other than different current horror video games. This might not be as good as the Silent Hill 2 remake, however these craving a brand new third-person survival horror sport that’s extra shooty-shooty, like RE4 or Useless House, will wish to try Cronos when it launches on September 5 on PS5, Xbox Collection X/S, Swap 2 and PC.
