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A number of hours into Cronos: The New Daybreak, I noticed it. A corpse slumped in opposition to the wall, a message scrawled in blood above him: “Don’t allow them to merge”. If it wasn’t already clear that the newest survival horror game from Bloober Staff was drawing from among the style’s greats, that warning, a nod to “minimize off their limbs” seen in equally foreboding traces of jagged crimson in Dead Space, hammered the purpose dwelling as subtly as a boot stomp to the cranium.
Evaluation data
Platform reviewed: PS5
Accessible on: PS5, Xbox Collection X, Xbox Collection S, PC, Nintendo Swap 2, Mac
Launch date: September 5, 2025
A sense of déjà vu was a operating theme in my time enjoying by Cronos. Right here’s the primary character, gun hoisted excessive in Leon S. Kennedy’s iconic pose from Resident Evil 4. Listed below are my restricted crafting assets straight out of The Last of Us, ones I have to select to make both ammo or well being objects. Listed below are my gravity boots, pinched from Isaac Clarke’s locker on the USG Ishimura.
It’s perfectly fine to be influenced by other works, especially when they are as iconic and genre-defining as the ones I’ve listed above. But when it just feels like you’re retreading the same path with less confidence and not bringing enough new ideas, what’s really the point of it all?
Now, that opening may read like I came away massively disappointed by Cronos: The New Dawn. In some aspects, I certainly did. It is painfully derivative in many areas, to the point where it made me question if anything has changed in sci-fi survival horror games in the last 20 years.
But, unsurprisingly, given its influences, it’s also a game that plays well. Combat is tense, shooting is solid, resource management is challenging, exploration is unsettling, and the environments drip with atmosphere. And there are kernels of ideas that, if only they were more fully realised or executed better, could have elevated the game beyond a decent – if standard – survival horror.
Let’s start with the premise: you play as the Traveler, an undefined being encased in a cross between a spacesuit and a diving suit. The game starts as you’re activated by a mysterious organisation known as The Collective and told to travel through time to extract important survivors after an apocalyptic infection dubbed the ‘Change’ turns most people on Earth into grotesque and amalgamated monstrosities.
The nexus point of the disaster is Poland in the 1980s, which at least makes for a unique setting that’s far from the spaceships and abandoned mining planets we usually find ourselves stomping around. There’s an inventiveness to the world design, too, which not only sees the infestation overrun dilapidated buildings, roads, and subways with a gloopy and pulsating biomass, but also fractures entire structures to create floating, twisted, and mind-bending new forms.
Add to that violent sandstorms and heavy snowfall, and safe to say, it’s not a pleasant stroll. I had to seriously pluck up some courage to carefully inch forward in many locations, especially towards the latter half of the game, when everything is so consumed by the effects of the infection and dotted with poisonous pustules that you feel suffocated by it – even if this trap is overplayed a dozen too many times.
Skin-crawling
Visually, it is disgusting (in all the right ways), but huge credit has to go to the audio. It masterfully ramps up that oppressive and stomach-churning atmosphere with all sorts of sloshing and wheezing and bubbling that gives a terrifying sense of life to the coagulated mass that surrounds you. One of the best gaming headsets is really helpful.
If Cronos was all simply trudging by fleshy corridors, then Bloober Staff would have smashed it. Sadly, different elements of the sport don’t excel in the identical manner and are merely positive or disappointing as compared.
Fight is one. The gimmick right here is that lifeless enemies stay on the bottom and could be assimilated by different creatures to develop into bigger and stronger foes – therefore the bloody message of “don’t allow them to merge”. Thankfully, you come geared up with a torch. Nope, it’s not a vivid gentle, however a burst of flames that may incinerate corpses and cease this merging from happening.
Greatest bit
Cronos: The New Daybreak finds its identification extra as the sport progresses and the part within the Unity Hospital is when the sport hits its stride. It’s one of many scariest and creepiest locations to discover, as you descend additional into the bowels of the constructing, the place the an infection has taken even higher maintain and also you uncover some horrifying secrets and techniques concerning the affect of the Change.
That results in the primary circulation of fight. Take down targets along with your weapons, then stop any survivors from merging by setting the our bodies ablaze. It’s a setup that may create some tense encounters – ones the place you’re busy coping with one goal, solely to listen to the terrible sounds of two our bodies smushing collectively within the distance (shoutout to the audio design once more), and understanding there’ll be an excellent higher menace in case you don’t introduce them to the cleaning flames instantly.
The issue is that I might depend on one hand the variety of occasions I felt severely threatened by the chance of enemies merging. Too many encounters had too few enemies, have been in too small areas, or have been suffering from too many (respawning) explosive barrels, that I might comfortably deal with the scenario. It was solely in direction of the tip of the sport after I felt overwhelmed in some encounters, needing to extra strategically decide my targets, hurriedly craft ammo on the fly, and repeatedly reposition to burn lifeless enemies in order that they couldn’t merge.
Burn, baby, burn
It isn’t a disaster, just a shame that Cronos doesn’t really make the most of its main idea. Instead, the overwhelming feeling I had was that I was just playing Dead Space again, swapping between the limited ammo in my pistol, shotgun, and rifle to blast away everything. Outside of rare encounters, the mechanics of merging and burning feel like massively underused and unimpactful parts of the game.
It’s a common feeling. Take your main objective of ‘rescuing’ the specific survivors. I use quotation marks there because the actual process of saving them is kept ominously vague, and is instead best described as extracting and absorbing their soul to gain the knowledge needed to save humanity.
It’s here when I thought Cronos might step up from its clear inspirations with some fresh ideas. Not only is there a morbid mirroring at play (wait, are we the baddies?), but those other lives bouncing around inside your head lead to all sorts of different visions and hallucinations, depending on the characters you choose to save.
In its cleverest moments, who’s knocking about in your noggin can influence the environment or completely change how you perceive things in the world to create some genuinely spooky moments. Once again, though, outside of less than a handful of instances, this idea isn’t explored any further when it’s rife for some really interesting, exciting, and unique possibilities.
It frustrates and disappoints me more than anything. I really want to be clear that Cronos: The New Dawn isn’t a bad game: it plays fine, looks good enough, and runs well. Although I’d stick to performance mode on consoles if you can to get a smooth 60fps, as the quality mode feels far too jittery.
I just can’t help but feel that with the way it relies so heavily on what worked in classic survival horror games from yesteryear, I may have travelled back two decades myself to play it.
Should I play Cronos: The New Dawn?
Play it if…
Don’t play it if…
Accessibility
Cronos offers a range of standard accessibility options, including three color blind modes for green, red, and blue color blindness, as well as the option to add clear interaction indicators and subtitles in multiple languages that can be fully customised in terms of size and color.
The game has one Normal difficulty setting, with a Hard mode unlocked after you finish the game once. To customise the difficulty, though, you can adjust settings to get a more generous aim assist and alter whether you hold or tap for quick time events.
A center dot can be added to help alleviate motion sickness, while the game also provides options to reduce or turn off camera shake and sway.
How I reviewed Cronos: The New Dawn
I played Cronos: The New Dawn for around 16 hours on a PlayStation 5 Pro on a Samsung S90C OLED TV utilizing a DualSense Wireless Controller. I primarily performed in Efficiency mode, however I additionally tried High quality mode for a short time and located the graphical enhancements minimal in comparison with the advantages of a smoother body charge.
I swapped between enjoying audio by a Samsung HW-Q930C soundbar and a SteelSeries Arctic Nova 7, and I undoubtedly counsel headphones for one of the best expertise.
I accomplished the primary sport and spent a whole lot of time exploring the surroundings to uncover as a lot of the story and as many hidden extras as I might discover.