Cronos: The New Dawn Review

Fans of Dead Space might wonder why no other studios have successfully replicated it, after all this time. Wonder no more. Cronos: The New Dawn is the best Dead Space imitation yet and a genuine spiritual successor. It is almost as good as Isaac Clarke’s first encounter with necromorphs but not a mere copy. It blends many themes together, from sci-fi movies to Bloober’s own games, and crafts a unique atmosphere and story that make it easy to recommend.

The game begins with you undergoing questioning inside a pod, ala the baseline tests in Blade Runner. After this, you enter a post-apocalyptic ash-covered wasteland that looks like The Upside Down in Stranger Things; a virus decimated humanity long ago and your mission, as a Traveler, is to enter time rifts and extract the minds of key people from the past to change the future, which draws comparisons to 12 Monkeys. You upload these minds and chat to them to find your next target. Like in Bloober’s Observer, these mind dives are interesting but could have been more prominent in the back half. Standing in your way are Orphans: mutated humans that shamble and slash, and try their best to merge with fellow corpses to become even tougher foes.

It has many intriguing story elements. The time rifts allow you to revisit the outbreak’s beginning, and you cross paths with characters trying to survive. There is an opportunity to discover more about your role, as you will come across voice logs by fallen Travelers. Some of your predecessors left traces in the form of outposts where you can save, store items, and buy supplies. One blemish of the narrative is that it has a lot of bland flavor text, especially early, but this becomes more appealing as it goes.

Players explore four main areas, including an apartment block, steelworks, and a hospital. All are awesome, with nice detail and side areas to search. The best is probably the hospital, which also has an element of anticipation. While not a unique setting, it is nicely crafted, suitably dangerous, and the perfect size. Like other areas, it has a central outpost you can return to as desired to take a breather, re-equip, or store items. Not that the game needs the player to control the pace, as the encounters, scares, puzzles, and narrative pieces blend wonderfully.

The atmosphere is one of the best and most consistent features. The mood is sublime, whether you are roaming across the barren future landscape, looking up at buildings torn apart by time rifts, or diving into an underground metro covered with pulsing biomass. One particular foe hangs in this biomass and will pull you in, but slowing down to carefully listen gives you a tactical edge. With the HUD disappearing when out of combat, it is easy to appreciate the setting. There are scares now and then too, which are a strength of Bloober following their Layers of Fear franchise, and some are definitely effective. It is also great that the game runs smoothly at near max settings, albeit with high quality upscaling enabled.

There is nothing crazy about the action; it is a solid experience that emphasizes many elements of the genre, such as limited inventory space, scarce resources, positioning, accuracy, and preparation via crafting, upgrades, and exploration. The weapons are reliable but a little boring, with a pistol, shotgun, and multi-shot carbine doing most of the killing. Some survival-horror genre tropes remain annoying, like not being able to collect bullets for the near-empty weapon you’re holding when the inventory is full. But item and resource management was usually not an annoyance.

The action sets itself apart with minor but crucial tweaks. The Orphans ability to merge, with ‘Don’t let them merge’ packing almost as much punch as ‘Cut off their limbs,’ does change how to play. You mentally note corpses, and keep track during battle to prevent any from getting stronger. Another slight tweak is that many weapons have charged modes which increases damage but takes time. Finally, an area-of-effect torch attack will burn corpses and stun Orphans, giving time to reload or run. Put this all together and the combat remains entertaining over the respectable 14 hour story.

Even though the Dead Space franchise is on an indefinite hiatus, we are lucky that Bloober have cooked up something quite similar with their latest release. It is the best game from the studio and the most gamey of all of their titles. With an intriguing story, solid combat, amazing atmosphere, and great pacing, it offers plenty. Some might see Cronos: The New Dawn as a mere blend of things that came before, but ignore such a merger at your peril.

Performance: Good @ High Settings. Upscaling: XeSS High Quality @ 1440p

Test Machine: Ryzen 5 3600, ASUS 6700 XT, 16GB DDR4, Win 10 Pro