Cronos: The New Dawn Review
Introduction:
Who doesn’t love a good underdog story? When we were introduced to Sandfall Interactive last year, they came off as the enthusiastic yet fledgling studio. The high quality of Expedition 33 felt like a victory not only for Sandfall, but for gamers. A smaller sized studio with a relatively small budget putting out such a high quality game? It was a time to smile and feel good about video games.
Bloober Team is the opposite side of the coin. Unlike Sandfall, we had seen what Bloober was capable of, and it wasn’t pretty. So when Konami entrusted Bloober with Silent Hill 2 Remake, many fans were left distraught. Silent Hill 2 is one of the most important video games ever crafted. So leaving it in the hands of a studio which regularly scored in the 60’s and below on review aggregate sites felt…sad.
But to everybody’s surprise, Silent Hill 2 Remake was utterly fantastic. Bloober Team did the impossible and arguably rivaled the original game in some ways. We were all left with two questions:
What’s next for Bloober Team?
Was Silent Hill 2 Remake lightning in a bottle?
Presentation:
When you first jump into the world of Cronos, there’s an almost airlessness to it. It feels suffocating and endlessly ominous. Everything is dilapidated and forgotten. Your protagonist, Traveler ND-3576 speaks in short sentences with a frigid robotic voice. The first hour of controlling the Traveler felt off-putting to me. Almost like I couldn’t trust the very character I was controlling.
There are plenty of moments with really beautiful colors in the sky. Bright oranges. Blood reds. A misty blueish gray. I love exploring living spaces long since abandoned, and this game offered that to me in spades. Whatever caused this apocalyptic event seems to have happened around the holiday season, because we end up seeing a lot of Christmas lights and trees around the various locations we explore. The voice acting is also solid and the overall graphical quality is strong.
The introduction of this game feels unwelcoming in all the best ways. I do think that whoever was in charge of the art direction here did a great job with what they had. Bloober Team has been pretty vocal with some behind the scenes information; even stating that the budget of this game was under $27 million (minuscule in the modern gaming industry). They certainly used the budget wisely, and I’m sure there’s reused or reworked assets from Silent Hill 2 Remake (no way it’s a coincidence that Cronos has a hospital level).
The only thing I didn’t care for from a presentational point of view was the UI. It felt a bit too basic for my tastes. You’ll often pick up notes with various bits of exposition, and instead of showing us a paper-like texture like in the recently released Silent Hill f, we just get a black box with cheap with text.
Gameplay:
In all the time I’ve been writing and making videos, I haven’t made enough of an effort to showcase my love of the Dead Space franchise. I’m a huge fan of the first two games, and Cronos clearly wore its inspiration on its sleeve. So let’s get those comparisons out of the way:
Yes, the enemies can sometimes give off Necromorph vibes.
Yes, shooting legs and arms can benefit you in a fight.
Yes, you can punch and stomp (although it’s fairly useless).
No, there’s no Stasis of Kinesis equivalents.
The Dead Space inspiration is more like a cloak draped over the true shape of this game. It reminds me more of the old-school survival horror games of the late 90’s. Ammo is very limited, each enemy can be extremely threatening if you’re unprepared, and safe rooms feel like the only slice of paradise you have in the game. The safe rooms feel very old-school with item boxes and incredibly chill music playing in the background. Item boxes are indicative of one main gameplay feature of Cronos and its old-school inspirations- inventory management.
Yes, one of the big talking points of this game is the inventory system. While I don’t mind a tight inventory, I always get annoyed at the arbitrary ways a game decides to pick and choose which items take up an inventory slot and which don’t. Sure, it makes sense that my gun and a stack of correlating ammo each take up an inventory slot. But why are the maximum size of ammo stacks so low? Why do door keys and the all-important bolt-cutters take up slots? Quite possibly the worst example of this is your torch ammo. You can stun enemies and make them weaker by lighting them on fire with your torch, but you’re only allowed to carry one piece of ammo for it at a time. You can also use the torch to burn corpses. This prevents living enemies from merging with these corpses for a huge buff (one of the biggest marketing features of the game). But what makes it even worse is that the torch is also sometimes used for burning environmental blockades. So if you used your singular torch ammo in a fight, you have to run around and grab another to destroy the blockade (unless you have the necessary crafting material). Sometimes you’ll see a gasoline container you can shoot for the same effect, but it’s not guaranteed to always be there.
While I’m complaining, let me just get the rest of my nitpicks out of the way, because most of my feelings on the game are quite positive. The enemies feel a bit too spongey at times, like they all take 2-3 shots more than they should. There’s no difficulty settings which is frustrating for people who come to horror games for the atmosphere and feelings rather than stressful fights. The upgrades you can unlock are gatekept for no reason. Do you want to upgrade your health to the maximum as early as possible? You can’t because the game won’t let you. I’m also not crazy about having to charge every single shot you take (holding right trigger instead of just pressing it). You can shoot an uncharged shot, but it’s not really worth it. And I can’t tell you how many times I tried shooting an empty gun because this is the first game I’ve played in a while where you character doesn’t automatically reload when their gun is empty.
While two paragraphs dedicated to my nitpicks and complaints might give the impression that I disliked this game, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I really enjoyed my time with Cronos: The New Dawn. If the inventory was a little less restricting and the charge shot feature wasn’t so mandatory, I’d have zero complaints with the game feel.
Story:
I don’t wan’t to get too into spoilers here because Cronos’ dons a very esoteric yet intriguing story. We are given some key pieces of information immediately. We take the role of “The Traveler” who is in service to “The Collective”. The current world is completely ravaged by something only known as “The Change”. The Travelers job is to save very specific humans from this event.
You meet a few key characters, but the only one I found particularly fun to watch was The Warden. I’m the type of person who usually cares more about good characters than a good story, but hell, I’m open to the reverse too (which Cronos offers).
Overall:
Cronos: The New Dawn is a good video game. In an era with unlimited entertainment options nonetheless just video games, I think it becomes increasingly easy to skip over “good” options for the “great” or “amazing” ones. But I do want to urge people that sometimes it’s very eye opening and refreshing to play something that isn’t soaking up Game of the Year nominations from every outlet and YouTuber. Who knows, you might just find a new personal favorite?
I actually wish more games would follow Bloober Teams example here. I want more 10-12 games that respect my time and don’t try too hard to impress me with massive scope or unnecessary graphical detail.
While I have my gripes with the gameplay at times, and I wish the game was scarier- I genuinely enjoyed my time playing and beating this game!
I loved Cronos: The New Dawn
(In an effort to move away from traditional numerical scores, I will use the following metric: Hated, Felt Neutral, Liked, Loved, Can’t Stop Thinking About)
