I don’t consider myself a huge horror game guy – but when I actually tally up some of the games I’ve loved in recent years, I guess that’s a bit unfair on myself. From Dead Space to Resident Evil Village, I love a good frightfest, all the more so if it has action blended in to keep things flying along.
So, I might have been doing a disservice to myself by assuming that Cronos: The New Dawn could be an odd fit with my tastes. This is a pure survival horror game from the lineage of some old greats, with limited ammunition, hard-hitting enemies, and a simmering sense of dread as you explore its murky world.
I’ve been playing it for the last week on my PS5 Pro, and I’ve honestly become a little hooked in a way that I really didn’t expect. The similarities with Dead Space have me remembering how much I adored that remake, and I’ve been impressed by the visuals of the world Bloober Team has built.
That same publisher-come-developer also recently had success with Silent Hill 2‘s remake, which I haven’t had a chance to play, and it looks like it’s developing a tidy reputation after some slightly more middling efforts in years gone by (like The Medium, for instance). While Cronos doesn’t break a huge amount of new ground, as far as I’ve played in half a dozen hours, it’s likely to land quite well, in my view.
The opening of the game sees you awaken as The Traveller, a heavy-footed explorer sent to the dismal remains of an eastern European city after a biohazardous extinction event for the locality. You have to piece your way through to a series of quasi-portals that send you hurtling back in time to dig information about the disaster out of those who knew about it at the time.
The story unfolds pretty slowly, and isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but it’s a decent foil for the traditional yet modernised action that makes up the bulk of the game. Throughout your exploration of both the present-day wasteland and the briefer windows of past times, you’ll have to exterminate large numbers of “Orphans”. These shambling zombie-like enemies are textbook horror stuff, all grafted limbs and nasty fleshy protuberances.
The key twist is that any time an enemy gets near the dead body of another one, whether it’s one you killed or simply one already lying there, it’ll try to absorb it. If it succeeds, it’ll basically level up into a substantially more powerful foe, which means you have to be on your toes to interrupt the process. You can also stop it by using very limited supplies of flamethrower fuel to burn up bodies around you.
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Credit to Bloober – this simple idea makes for a really interesting combat loop, where you’re not just thinking about conserving ammo and landing headshots. Rather, you have to play each combat arena carefully, leading enemies away from corpses you can’t dispose of, shooting explosive barrels to burn them up when you can, and minimising your enemies’ ability to level up.
This is added to by a charged shot mechanic for each weapon, which lets you take slower shots that do significantly more damage without expending additional ammo. It’s obvious that all shots should ideally be charged, but grabbing a safe window to do so is sometimes easier said than done. I’ve only got a handful of weapons to choose from, but they’re already fun to swap between, while carefully choosing my upgrades to maximise survivability is also enjoyable.
The game also looks and sounds really impressive, although I’m not exactly certain of the in-depth details of the PS5 Pro upgrade on offer. My expectation is that the bump in this case comes down to resolution and reliability, since the game still has 30fps quality or 60fps performance modes to choose between.
In the performance version, I’ve found the framerate largely stable and the resolution impressively sharp, although I don’t have a base PS5 to compare things to. Doubtless, the team at Digital Foundry will reveal all shortly.
The sound design is also excellent, especially on one of the best gaming headsets around. I can hear enemies crawling towards me around corners, but the game also carefully layers in red herring sounds to keep you on your toes at all times – almost a required tactic for these horror games.
So, if you’re a horror fan with a hankering for some more fear, this one could be for you; I’ve been having a great time with Cronos, and once my upcoming house move is done, I expect to dive back in.
