Cronos: The New Dawn

Survival horror games have always been one of my favorite genres. When I heard the team behind the amazing Silent Hill 2 remake were making a postapocalyptic survival-horror game, I was totally on board. Looking at a preview, I instantly knew this was right up my alley. It looked like a combination of Silent Hill and Dead Space and I loved the premise well. After playing Cronos, I am very happy that I did. While it may be rough around the edges, this is absolutely a survival-horror game that I'm adding to my rotation to replay in the future. 

Cronos takes place in a future where all of humanity has been wiped out in an extinction-level event called "The Change." You play as The Traveler, a woman with a robotic monotone voice that looks like a deep-sea diver who has been awakened by an unknown organization to continue where her predecessors left off. Her mission is to find dive points—areas in the post-apocalyptic world allowing her to jump back in time to 1980s Poland right as the outbreak took place—and extract the digital souls of key people and bring them to the future to make them part of "The Collective" in the hopes that they can help restart humanity.

Right from that premise I was hooked. I really liked seeing the beautiful and haunting post-apocalyptic world they created, and then going back in time and seeing thing as they were right before The Change.

From the start this game wastes no time with the scares. The atmosphere is both beautiful, haunting, and disgusting all at the same time, and I say that in the best way possible. This is one of those games where I am slowly walking around every corner knowing something could pop out at any time. Playing with headphones makes it even more terrifying as you hear the moans and groans of God knows what in your travels, always keeping you on edge.

While you won't spend as much time there, I loved exploring 1980s Poland, which was, at the time in real life as well, under Soviet control. Cronos pulls no punches in this regard to various posters and letters you will find in the area of anti-"commie" sentiments along with pro-socialist messaging. One of which is a major plot point about an uprising that took place in a Steelworks factory that ended in bloodshed. 

You start off only with a pistol, but there are other guns you can find. Some of them are hidden and require you to do a bit of searching, including one gun that is like the BFG from Doom where ammo is extremely rare and has a long charge-up time. But when it fires it causes a gigantic black hole-like explosion that wipes out anything on the screen. You also get a shotgun and multiple SMG-type weapons. The cool thing about these weapons is they have both a normal fire mode and a charge attack. If you hold down the fire button the weapon will charge and fire a more powerful attack. These deal more damage but are risky, especially when surrounded by enemies because of how long they take to charge up the attack.

Speaking of the enemies, if you are a fan of body horror then this is the game for you. The main enemies are called Orphans and are grotesque piles of walking flesh. Some of them hit hard and some of them will attack from far away spitting acid at you. The smaller grunts can be taken out with only a few pistol shots but some of them can hit like a tank and will take a lot of shots to take down.

There are also enemies that are pretty terrifying, especially the ones that hang from walls and can grab you, sucking the life out of you. These especially had me on edge because you can typically hear them when walking into an area, but they can be hard to spot, especially when there is a wall of flesh with bodies sticking out of them. I would walk as slowly as possible to try and spot them—and I'd still get grabbed. 

One cool mechanic is that Orphans can merge with each other. If there are dead Orphans on the ground, one that is alive can start merging with it which will turn it into a more tanky and powerful version of an Orphan. You get a fuel canister which you can use to burn Orphans (much like burning zombies in the Resident Evil Remake) so they don't turn into crimson heads. You only get a single use of the fuel, so you need to be very careful that you don't waste it. This is easier said than done when you enter a room with dead Orphans scattered around and an army of Orphans coming your way. So now you have to dodge their attacks and chase after the ones that are starting to merge. This makes for some very intense fire fights. 

Like other survival-horror games, Cronos is broken up into different segments. For instance, there are a number of different central areas that you spend a lot of time in before moving onto the next area. The first major area to explore is an apartment complex, followed by the Steelworks factory. There is also a central hub in between missions which will slowly unlock new areas to travel.

You will find a number of safe rooms, complete with soothing music, an item box, save point, and the ability to upgrade weapons and gear. The currency is energy, which defeated enemies drop and are placed around areas you explore. You also find Cores. These upgrade your suit to resist more damage, along with increasing your inventory slots and the amount of materials you can carry.

The game is pretty linear as you go from place to place, but there is some exploration with a number of locked doors and secret areas which usually provide a wealth of resources, including energy, ammo, and cores. Here is a tip, keep the bolt cutters in your inventory at all times. It will save you a lot of time going back and forth between safe rooms. You can also find a number of cats that are hanging around areas, which you should seek out—because once you rescue them, they will usually drop rare items like cores or keys to open locked doors.

Resources are extremely scarce. You need to use everything wisely. Another thing that adds to difficulty is the limited inventory space at the beginning. Everything takes up inventory space: guns, ammo, keys, the bolt cutters, valuables, and more. Once you max out an ammo type it will take up another inventory slot. This also includes health packs, Pyres (bombs), and torch fuel. Running out of inventory space means you can't pick up items quickly, which further means you have to dump things in your inventory or make trips back to item boxes in safe rooms to drop stuff off.

This also applies to materials. Chemicals and metal scraps in each area are used to craft items. You can craft health packs, ammo, and torch fuel, but the cost of doing so is pretty high. You can only carry just so much. I recommend investing the cores that you find into both increasing your inventory space and the number of materials you can carry at once.

Cronos gets pretty challenging. I recommend saving often. There were times I had to go back to an earlier save and try to hoard as much ammo and resources as possible, knowing that a boss fight was coming up. There are also a lot of rooms where all the doors will lock until all enemies are killed. Those gave me some issues as well when I had low ammo.

That said these presented a fun challenge and gave me the most cathartic feeling ever after finally finishing those areas or beating a boss. One boss took me 10+ tries before finally beating it. Boy was it an amazing feeling when I finally did. 

On the technical side of things, the game ran pretty smoothly for the most part. But even in Performance Mode I did notice some slowdown in parts, and I did get glitched into a wall at one point where I was shooting at Orphans like crazy when they had me backed up into a wall.

I will also this game was a little longer than it needed to be. When I finished, it said I'd finished it in 14 hours. What's funny is that your character, the Traveler, also makes a joke about this late in the game where you get to a certain area by having to do something you did earlier in the game. They responded, "This is starting to feel...repetitive." And yeah, by that point it was.

The story and how it unfolds, however, made me want to keep going. By the end, when the twists start being revealed, the story went in a direction I wasn't expecting. 

Completing the game unlocks New Game+ which allows you to keep all your guns and gear and unlocks a hard mode. I'm not sure how many endings there are, though I know there are at least two. Without spoilers, I will say those two are pretty obvious how to get. But the ending results screen for me said I achieved ending "B" so I'm unsure just how many endings there are.

Given developer Bloober Team's history with the Silent Hill 2 remake, and the fact that there are dialogue choices in Cronos, I do wonder if there are more endings depending on how you play, how much damage you take, what dialogue options you choose, etc. But that's just speculation on my part. I will say, however, at least with the ending that I got, it did feel like this arc of The Traveler's story was complete. But the story and the word itself was left wide open to explore a possible sequel. 

All in all, Cronos: The New Dawn is a good third-person survival-horror experience. It was a little longer than needed to be, but it had a good story that kept me hooked, decent puzzles to solve, challenging bosses, and a fantastic atmosphere where I was terrified walking around every corner. These kinds of games, to me, have a ton of replay value because the gameplay loop is a lot of fun. Cronos is a game I can see myself playing many more times. Since you can keep all your stuff on a New Game+ run, it will be fun to play through again. This is absolutely a survival-horror game that I will return to in the future.