Following the release of several horror games to a reception ranging from positive to mildly negative, sometimes due to how particular sensitive themes were addressed, Polish developer Bloober Team has risen considerably in the estimation of survival horror fans for the excellent work the studio has done with the Silent Hill 2 remake, a faithful adaptation of the classic Konami game enhanced by some modern features that make it a joy to play. While the Polish studio is set to continue this fruitful collaboration with the development of the remake of the first entry in the series, Bloober Team is also expanding its own properties with new titles, the first of them being Cronos: The New Dawn. Right from the game's reveal, it was made clear how this game would be a threshold release for the studio, moving past the narrative-focused experiences such as the Layers of Fear series and The Medium to delve deeper into the survival horror genre. And while it is definitely a little flawed, there's no denying that Bloober Team created a solid game that becomes rather engaging once things really get going.
Cronos: The New Dawn is set in a twisted reimagining of Krakow's Nowa Huta district, one of the city's districts built as a utopian ideal city meant to mirror European capitals like London and Paris. Instead of exploring the grandeur of the most populous district in Krakow, players will get to explore a ruined version of the district, its population completely decimated by a terrible plague known only as The Change, which turns human beings into horrible, mutated monstrosities known as The Orphans. Despite the current situation, humanity doesn't seem to have been left to its doomed fate, as a mysterious organization known as The Collective is sending individuals wearing massive protective armor to investigate The Change and fight off any monsters on their path. After many of these individuals have died on the path to truth, it will be up to a new Traveler to retrace their steps and rescue certain individuals from the 1980s via time rift before they succumb to the Change. After meeting The Warden, another armored individual tasked with providing members of The Collective with the tools needed to survive New Dawn, however, it starts becoming clear how there's a lot more behind The Change, the recovery of individuals from the past, and the purpose of The Collective.
Cronos: The New Dawn's setting and story are undoubtedly some of the best features in the game. The Polish setting is rather unique for video games, and the game's time-travel gimmick allowed for the creation of dual worlds, which are incredibly interesting to explore, although the almost constant nighttime doesn't provide a lot of visual differences between the two. With environmental storytelling in the vein of the Souls series, and scattered documents in the vein of classic survival horror games, piecing together the story and the events that happened before and during the outbreak of The Change is also quite engaging, although the game does feature plenty of cutscenes that provide clarity on some of these events and make it easy to follow the plot at its base level. With some difficult choices to make at times as well, Cronos: The New Dawn does an excellent job immersing players into the role of The Traveler, making them hunger for the next big reveal.
Having a great story that's gripping right from the start is generally good for any game, but in the case of Cronos: The New Dawn, it's even better for a particular reason: the first few hours of the game do a terrible job introducing the experience, so much so that I expect some will drop the game entirely before things start getting good. This is caused mainly by what immediately feels like a by-the-books survival horror experience clearly inspired by the Dead Space series, only with a really unremarkable enemy design, both in terms of combat and visual design, and a considerably worse combat system with no dismemberment mechanics that requires some time and resource investment in weapon upgrades to become fun. Exploration and traversal fare a little better thanks to an intricate level design, and the lack of an in-game map, which enhances immersion considerably while forcing players to rely on the environment's visual elements to find their way (although there's an optional waymarker system that guides players to their next objective).
Though exploration and traversal improve fairly quickly with the introduction not only of optional locations filled with much-needed resources like Energy, materials to craft items, and spare ammo as well as documents and Travelogs that provide additional information on the setting and story, but also of the Anomaly mechanics, which can be used to alter the environment by manipulating time, representing a unique way to provide additional puzzles alongside those of the more traditional variety, like locked doors and passwords to find, combat does not.
With their hulking armor, The Traveler is really slow and has no real defensive option, not even the ability to turn 180 degrees when needed, so proper positioning and headshots with the handgun, whose shots can be charged for extra damage, are the only things that separate The Traveler from an early death at the start of the game. With enemies not reacting a lot to shots, combat feels unsatisfying in the first few hours, dragging the entire experience down. Even after introducing the Orphans' ability to consume their dead to power up, requiring The Traveler to burn their bodies using the Shell Suit's flamethrower, things don't improve. In its basic form, the handgun is a really weak weapon, and with ammo being so scarce, every combat encounter becomes a stressful exercise where luck seems to play a bigger role than skill. Ending up with no ammo in a forced combat encounter, with no weapon to rely on other than the weak melee attacks, including a stomp that looks more powerful than it actually is, is a frustrating experience that I expect will make a few players simply give up on the game.
My frustration with the Cronos: The New Dawn's combat system reached its peak right before the game's first boss battle against a massive Orphan set in a small location with several rooms whose design provides the cover needed to shoot the canisters scattered around to stagger the enemy and reveal its weak points. It's during this battle, or rather after a few failed attempts, that I started appreciating what the game tries to do with its combat mechanics. Upgrading the handgun and the shotgun, deciding on the fly how to use the resources in my possesion to craft either ammo or healing items, which can be easily done without opening the menu by holding either the directional shortcut to which a weapon is assigned or the healing button, picking up some resources on the combat grounds to allow for emergency crafting, finally clicked together, completely changing my perspective on the game.
After obtaining the first Essence, the soul of one individual related to The Change outbreak, and enjoying a welcome passive bonus, and meeting The Warden, ammo started becoming available in bigger quantities, making it much easier to handle Orphans and manage resources, which continue to be scarce, but not as scarce as they are in the first couple of hours, although that wasn't the end of the frustration, as there still some forced enemy encounters on the way that were, sometimes, a little too challenging with the available resources.
As The Traveler's mission proceeds, more combat and exploration tools are unlocked, including small explosive bombs called Pyre and anti-gravitational boots that further enhance the experience a lot, so much so that I had a difficult time putting the game down. Granted, some flaws remain evident, such as the average enemy visual design, which makes it almost hard to tell one enemy type apart from another, and the generally predictable survival-horror experience, but how every gameplay element comes together in the end made it easy for me to look past most of these issues, ultimately making making me appreciate some of the game's unique quirks even more, including managing how to burn the bodies of dead Orphans to prevent a powerful enemy from becoming even more powerful, while making me forget the frustrating first couple of hours.
Enhancing the Cronos: The New Dawn experience are the game's visuals, powered by Unreal Engine 5. While the game eventually becomes a little predictable in terms of visual design, as already mentioned, it's difficult not to notice how the good usage of lighting and volumetrics enhances the entire experience, even without hardware ray tracing. The solid visual design of New Dawn, which gives it a distinct industrial vibe, is accompanied by great texture and character models work, except for the aforementioned enemy design, which looks rather generic, and some evident asset recycling from the Silent Hill 2 remake, as the hair of one character makes really evident.
Being powered by Unreal Engine 5, however, some stuttering issues were expected on PC, and they sadly are in. Though the game has a shader precompilation step, which reduces shader stuttering issues, the game clearly suffers from traversal stuttering issues that, while not frequent, are easily noticeable and immersion-breaking. Given the game's visuals which rely a lot on lighting, enabling hardware ray tracing hits performance considerably, as the game ran at an average of 55 FPS with NVIDIA DLSS in Balanced Mode without Frame Generation at the high Quality Preset at 4K resolution traveling around The Terminal, which serves as some sort of main hub, on my system (i7-13700F, RTX 4080, 32GB RAM). At the same settings, enabling Frame Generation (and even Multi Frame Generation for GeForce RTX 50 users) boosts performance in the same area at an average of around 80 FPS, so using frame gen tech will be the way to go for the vast majority of players who want to experience the game with ray tracing.
Disabling ray tracing greatly improves performance, as the game ran at close to the 100 FPS mark in the same scenario without it. Sadly, there aren't a lot of graphics settings to tweak outside of a comprehensive Quality Preset and a few others that have minimal impact on performance, like motion blur, so upscalers (TSR, DLSS, FSR 3.1, and XeSS) and frame generation are the only features that can help the user achieve the desired level of performance in the game. Though lacking in graphics options, Cronos: The New Dawn comes with others that should be the standard for PC games but often aren't, including rebindable controls, ultrawide resolution support, and a wealth of accessibility features such as multiple Color Blind modes, quick-time event settings, and more.
Although its first hours do a frankly bad job of getting players involved from a gameplay perspective, Cronos: The New Dawn is ultimately a very engaging game, and one of Bloober Team's best games alongside the Silent Hill 2 remake. While its flaws remain evident throughout the adventure, the game's unique setting, engaging mystery-filled story, and gameplay, which starts coming together after the very first boss battle a few hours in, make The Traveler's mission one worthy of embarking on for all survival horror fans, especially those who love the Dead Space series.
PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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