Cronos: The New Dawn Review (PS5) – Fresh from its escapades with Konami and Silent Hill, developer Bloober Team has taken a detour from the eponymous town in order to try its hand at something a little less psychological but perhaps equally as unsettling. Being left to its own devices, the Polish-based studio has again opted to craft a world wrought with peril and desolation. No sunshine and rainbows just yet.
Cronos: The New Dawn Review (PS5) – A Chip Off The Old Bloc
Bloober’s Storytelling Chops Come To The Fore
Having started development in 2021 in the context of a worldwide pandemic, Cronos: The New Dawn taps into those feelings very well, while at the same time borrowing liberally in game design terms from what’s come before in the genre, be it with smashing crates with a foot stomp or having to source fuses to reactivate doors. That’s a tad unfair in truth, as the common ground it does share is treaded with a degree of finesse that speaks to a developer nearing the full swing of its power. Indeed, a broader focus on action was outlined by the studio’s CEO some years ago and that mission statement has come to pass without question.
But what’s most compelling here is that of the game’s story. A common complaint of time-travelling stories is that as they progress and layers of logic are added on top of one another, the waters can get muddied and it can lose sight of its focus. Thankfully, that’s not the case here. Set against a backdrop of 1980s Poland during its time under the Eastern Bloc, the game sees you play as the Traveler, a mysterious being who is tasked by an organization called the Collective to travel back in time in order to extract certain individuals who may hold the key to undoing the results of an event that has wreaked havoc on the world called the ‘Change’.
Time-traveling by itself is a bit of a stomach turner, but here it’s made worse by the fact that the world in its present form is now populated with a whole manner of creatures hell-bent on stopping you in your tracks. One positive is the gameplay considerations such traveling permits, like the ability to equip ‘essences’ of the targets you extract, which in turn grants you buffs such as increased shotgun damage to enemies on fire or moving quicker whilst aiming with a particular weapon.
The atmosphere is thick and piercing, and is complemented by a soundtrack that remains on point throughout its runtime. As with similar games, there are supplemental audio logs and documents strewn across the areas to help pad out additional details about the immediate aftermath of the event. Matching this up with the general combat and structure makes for a good time for the most part.
Throughout the game’s 10-or-so hour campaign, you’ll find yourself traversing various hellscapes like arid desert land, hospitals, and barren facilities in search of your targets; all the while gathering resources like energy to upgrade your weaponry, finding codes to unlock doors, and other such key items that make up the bulk of progression.The game is keen to streamline some of that process, namely in terms of the codes you find to unlock doors, as once you find one buried within a document it becomes shown on the screen when you go to key it in. It does feel a little beyond handholding and is an interesting juxtaposition when compared to the inventory management which will be touched upon later.
The game straddles other genre hallmarks in commendable fashion for the most part, particularly on the ammo conservation front, where you never feel fully confident of your stockpile at a given moment, and even if you do, the feeling is quick to dissipate. You can buy a limited amount of ammo at the upgrade stations but let’s be honest, nobody’s got time for that.
Enemy Designs Leave Something To Be Desired
What you’re actually shooting at is not exactly a home run, however. A combination of long-limbed humanoids, some with a penchant for spitting bile, and others who are more content to shamble on up and take a swipe at you, Cronos: The New Dawn’s collection of targets do feel somewhat well-worn, particularly when compared against the general art style and the atmosphere resulting from it.
The designs are solid, albeit relatively derivative, and do feel as if they’ve been plucked straight from the likes of Dead Space or The Callisto Protocol. You have the equivalent of the latter’s bloodworm, but this time fixed to walls and who grab and lock you into a quick-time event in order to break free. Their prominence only grows as you progress through the story.
On the boss front, it’s the sort of marauding enemies with glowing pustules that have made up the bulk of those types of encounters for what feels like an age at this point. For these types of encounters, you’ll enter a sprawling area that’s replete with barrels and know what’s to come. From there, it’s often a case of kiting the boss and wearing it down through incessant use of explosive barrels that you can re-generate after a time using a tool in your possession called an emitter.
It is perfectly accomplished – the same can be said for most of the encounters – but outside of some later fights in particular (the last of which acts as a fitting culmination from a systems point of view) the game rarely deviates from the script. Instead it opts again to take a page out of Callisto Protocol’s book – or even Dead Space before it – with the liberal use of area lockdown, whereby you enter a room and become trapped until you dispatch every enemy in the vicinity.
This New World Is Just As Unsettling As What Has Come Before
This is ostensibly an action game – albeit without any sort of dodge or strafe mechanic – and a confident one at that. Though the enemies may feel uninspired or one-dimensional, the general ambience and world-building is what stands out here. That sense of dread lifts somewhat with the random asides which have you pursuing cats dotted around the environment. Once you catch up with one you can interact with it and be given an item, such as a health kit or a core, which is used to permanently upgrade your suit functions.
Outside of combat, the Traveler is afforded two powers to use in their work for the Collective. The first of which allows you to manipulate ‘time oddities’ which are tears in the fabric of time. Aside from the aforementioned barrels, the other central uses for this kinetic power are to repair walkways and bridges, as well as later in the game, to reroute electricity. The second are the gravity boots which are used to go between dedicated plates highlighted in a blueish hue. Neither have much utility other than traversal, with the exception of the power rerouting to a degree, but they do nonetheless break up the time spent outside of combat.
Graphically there is a lot of good to speak of here, too, with the game’s moody red-hued lighting, shadow work, and abundance of gristle and sinew. Despite its subject matter, it’s all rendered with impressive detail. On performance, the game manages to maintain its target aside from some infrequent drops. Opting for said performance mode versus graphics mode is worth the resolution hit, particularly as it helps with aiming where there is an inherent sway and those added frames come in handy.
In terms of navigation, there is no map function within Cronos: The New Dawn despite the playbook it takes its inspiration from. This is instead replaced with a basic compass which serves to highlight your next direction with a tap of R3. In truth, navigation is relatively intuitive and its linear structure means you rarely have to rely on it. There are areas of interest marginally off the beaten path that require a slightly keen eye to spot – they may also require the use of an item you may have stowed away in the save room some time ago. Word to the wise, always carry the bolt cutter as too often will you drop it only for it to come into use an area or two later.
Cronos: The New Dawn Wears Its Inspirations On Its Sleeve
One of the ways in which it attempts to chart its own path is the fire mechanic, which encourages players to see off felled enemies by burning their bodies, otherwise you risk the chance of having a remaining enemy merge with the remains to create a more menacing version of said enemy. In practical terms, this added layer never feels too much of a consideration, nor do you feel compelled to do it save for some of the larger confrontations.
There could be merit to the approach but when you marry this with the sort of inventory space juggling you’ve seen in games of similar ilk, it feels little more than busywork, if not solely for the fact that torch fuel also takes up an inventory space. Another use for it comes by way of burning away biomass that often obstructs access to hidden areas with valuable items, though there can sometimes be gas canisters conveniently set up in the event you don’t have torch fuel to hand. Some games have sanded down the rough edges of this sort of crafting and inventory management combination by allowing for immediate crafting and use of health boosts irrespective of if the space allows for it, but for better or for worse Cronos: The New Dawn sticks rigidly to the formula.
Though there are upgrades to avail for inventory space as you progress and should you so choose, it never feels as if the right balance is struck, particularly as your arsenal expands late into the game. The subsequent detours to the inventory box don’t disrupt the pacing to any great degree as there are save rooms aplenty but it is nonetheless a distraction to what is quite a forward-thinking game from the perspective of pacing.
All told, Cronos: The New Dawn is a confident, if somewhat derivative effort which is the measure of a developer not looking to rest on its laurels or coast on recent successes. Kept in line by solid fundamentals and a story that hits the right notes, this is an easy recommendation for fans of similar games where the hospitality of the locals isn’t as warm or as welcoming as you had once hoped.
Cronos: The New Dawn releases on September 5 on PS5.
Review code kindly provided by publisher.