Survival-horror games live and die by the tightness of their balance. You can never have too many resources, too much ammo, or too many healing items. You need to be teetering on the edge of having nothing or having just barely enough to get through each area. Every encounter should have you tense, grappling with the stress of making every decision count for something, because a few wrong moves and it all comes crashing down around you.
So it is a genuine achievement that Cronos: The New Dawn absolutely nails this balance, giving me one of the most stressful survival-horror shooter experiences I’ve had since Resident Evil 2: Remake. The inventory size is just tight enough that you’re almost always making tough calls about what to bring with you when you leave the comfort of a safe zone. You always have either enough money to get those weapon upgrades you desperately need, or that ammo you might not be able to survive without. Even the times when you enter a combat encounter feeling well-stocked and ready to take on a legion of baddies, a few seconds in you’re left panicking. Every missed shot might as well have leapt out of the TV and hit you in the gut. The game simply works in the ways it gives you that sensation of always being on the knife’s edge, of never getting too comfortable. One of the most effective ways that Cronos makes you have to strategize is tied in to what some might call its primary “gimmick”.
To give some context, the hordes of monsters you’ll be killing in this game are Dead Space necromorph adjacent creatures that are part of a shared collective mind: a massive hive of living flesh and memory that mindlessly devours all life it encounters. When you manage to down one of these creatures, tentacles amass around the corpse and tie it down, an eerie and almost protective gesture. Now, you might want to remember where that corpse is. Because the remaining enemies know, and they want it, they need the flesh and muscle of the lifeless body to be reintegrated, reabsorbed. The creatures will seek out the corpses of their fallen and unless you can interrupt them or burn the bodies, monsters will merge the dead creature into their own bodies and become significantly more dangerous, sometimes even gaining new abilities like hardened chitinous plating or the capability to spit acid. Flamethrower fuel is another resource you’ll always be hurting for, so there is a constant question of “Should I torch these bodies in case new enemies show up? Or should I just try to efficiently dispose of new threats before they can merge?”
It’s a relentless threat, this ability of theirs. Monsters that do manage to merge can quickly overwhelm you if you’re not careful, their own resilience increasing in tandem with their ability to do harm. For what sounds like a simple trick, it’s remarkably effective in reinforcing the themes of the game’s narrative and the strategic aspects of the gameplay.
To top that off, the game oozes a dark sci-fi atmosphere evocative of games like Dead Space, Callisto Protocol, and (oddly) Destiny. Unsettling gurgling comes from the sludgy masses of merged flesh around every corner. Bodies of enemies lie lifeless in the halls… until they get up. A pretty stellar soundtrack of eerie synths and haunting choral music heightens the experience by a wide margin, and we have a new entry on the list of all time great save room themes.
Perhaps my favorite part of the game (and this will sound strange, I know) is the way that the protagonist moves. From the jump, you get the sense that this is a person whose sole motivation is the efficient and effective completion of their mission, so it is a great bit of characterization that they move stiffly, heavily, and when taking hits from big enemies the weight of their armored suit sends them stumbling awkwardly to the ground. The sound design emphasizes each gesture, each instance of your heavy boots hitting the concrete, the dirt, the muck. All of it sounds so weighty and full that you really get the feeling of being an armored soldier on the march through dangerous territory.
It’s clear from Bloober Team’s history that they are big fans of survival-horror, and when fans of a thing make their own version of it results tend to vary widely. Speaking from experience, there’s a pretty big gap between loving a thing and understanding why and how it works. What’s also clear is that Bloober does understand why these games work on a design level.
Perhaps the only real critiques I have are with the game’s story. While it starts out with a tantalizing air of mystery and terror, by the end I was starting to lose the plot a little. I stopped being able to follow what everyone was talking about, and a lot of the more intriguing aspects of the setting were sort of left behind, mostly ignored or backgrounded for the purpose of focusing on a tighter narrative about a few key characters. Unfortunately, I found the story to be oddly flat without these more interesting elements being in the forefront, and the ending to the game left me feeling a little disappointed, even though the final boss fight was very fun and flashy.
Cronos: The New Dawn doesn’t manage to leave as strong of a lasting impression as I would’ve hoped for, but it’s a truly thrilling game to play that looks, sounds, and feels exactly the way it ought to, and should a sequel arrive in the future I know I’ll be there to take another dive.
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