Cronos: The New Dawn review: A timely new horror...

Bloober Team has gone back to original IP work with renewed vigor, and that vigor comes through in spades in Cronos: The New Dawn. This is a new sci-fi horror game set in an original universe, and it is an ambitious one. Bloober Team took what they learned from combat and survival design on Silent Hill 2, blended it with its expertise in environmental design, and told a story that sinks its hand-claws in and leaves you uncertain of your decisions at pivotal points. It’s not always ticking at a good pace, but Cronos is an intense time-hopping journey that adds frightful new flavor to the horror universe. Taking from the past to save the future Cronos: The New Dawn takes us to an alternate Poland where humanity is on the brink of oblivion. An outbreak that causes living things to degrade, mutate, and forcibly join with other creatures has ravaged the world, and time anomalies have opened across history, threatening the very fabric of reality. Left in a desperate position, a group known as The Collective aims to stop the world’s extinction, and it does that (somewhat questionably) by sending time travelers to the past and grabbing the ghosts, AKA Essences, of important people whose collective knowledge could help stop the disaster that awaits. Player take up the role of one of these enigmatic Travelers - Number 3,576. That number isn’t random. There can only be one Traveler active and traveling through time for Essence targets, so when one is disabled (killed, maimed, and/or otherwise unable to continue), The Collective pops another and sends them to pick up the trail. I enjoyed the narrative throughline. Not only do we get a lot of natural tutorializing through the writings and recordings of previous Travelers, but they weave together with the tapestry of the worlds you explore to tell a weighty story of failure, and perseverance at all costs in the face of countless setbacks. And then there’s the world happening parallel to the Travelers and Collective. Cronos takes players on a wild ride of investigations throughout the imaginative trappings of urban Krakow, Poland. If you saw my interview with Bloober Team, you’ll recall that the team told the story within the walls of real-world historical buildings like a decommissioned steelworks factory. The authenticity of the environment is deep, as are the heavy moods of the chaos, panic, and desperation seen in every corner of the game as you travel through history at different points of the outbreak, seeing the environmental consequences and reactions of the society depicted as they realized far too late that they were doomed in the main historical timeline. Creatures called Orphans are the main threats of the game. When the plague infects living hosts, they mutate into spindly armed monsters, and their only goal is to merge with other creatures to become more “whole”. There are a lot of wrinkles to the lore of the Orphans, but ultimately, they are an incredibly unsettling entity not unlike John Carpenter’s The Thing, and true to their merging nature, they come in all sorts of forms, some far more dangerous and uglier than others. The Orphans also manifest as scenery, affixing themselves in grotesque blobs to areas of the world and forming nests from which more Orphans may emerge. If you enter into an area with a bunch of human-shaped goop on the walls, you’re very likely in for a fight, and you won’t know where it comes from until it happens. That overhanging dread is a strong vibe that permeates every venture into the depths, and its aided by an amazing sound design. Bloober once again shows itself adept at letting the soundscape of the game create its terrifying moods, whether it's your own heavy footsteps making you anxious, or hitting you with little noises, or the growl of an unseen creature waiting to swing at you. Music only comes in rare moments of action or peace, and it’s all pretty well spun throughout the game. I’d like to say Cronos is a flawlessly performing jewel, but there are a few blemishes. The visuals sometimes glitch, with animations in cutscenes quirking as scenes shift. The voice work is also a mixed bag. I love the Travelers. Their deadpan delivery attempts to deny any sense of humanity, but sometimes they let emotions through and it makes for disturbing, pitiful, or even offhandedly funny moments. They are fallible, and yet trying to keep it together in a psychotic and cruel reality. The rest of the people are hit or miss. Sometimes they deliver and emote with everything you’d expect from a character, like a character you meet mid-transformation into an Orphan. Others, like a paranoid anarchist you come across, feel a little less “in the game” as far as their deliveries and can bring down the scenes they’re in. The Vocation continues… Gameplay-wise, it’s hard for me not to think of Dead Space when I think of how Cronos handles. You are a lumbering fellow that starts out with a pistol, but eventually expands your arsenal with a host of new weapons, tools, and upgrades found through careful exploration of everywhere you go. It’s a third-person shooter, and as usual, placing your shots carefully is a must, but Cronos also features a wide collection of interesting mechanics. Those mechanics are heavily spurred by the Orphans and their design. At any encounter with Orphans, if they see a dead body in the room, they might try to consume it. If they succeed, they’ll become harder to kill from a health perspective, but if their prey had any abilities, like acid-spitting or armor, they’ll get that, too. The only way to get rid of that possibility is to use fire to burn away corpses, either from a very limited-use Traveler weapon or from explosive gas cans in the area. Fire is almost always one of your most limited options, so it’s a tough choice to decide what encounter is worth using your precious torching ability. Most weapons also have a charged shot, but it takes precious seconds to prepare. It uses the same ammo, too. So, will you risk charging a shot and taking damage if you don’t time it right or will you squeeze off a few precious bullets to make room? The choice of safety versus conservation in Cronos is constant and, when you choose right, riveting. Cronos isn’t insanely punishing, but it’s definitely one of the more tense games I’ve played from a resource standpoint. I lost count of how many times I finished out a situation with no ammo, no health supplies, damaged, and desperate, only for the game to give me just a crumb or two I needed to keep going. I found myself counting my shells and looking around the map anxiously for advantages when I entered an Orphan area and the threat of an attack loomed. You can craft ammo and supplies, but that, too, is an extremely limited option. Cronos balances out its scarcity by filling every nook and cranny with optional areas to explore. You can find precious ammo and resources hiding around every corner, and being diligent means getting your hands on one or two bullets that just might be your saving grace. It especially matters for upgrades, the resources which come few and far between. Every time you get the means to an upgrade, be it increasing your inventory slots, strengthening your weapons, or hardening your suit, it feels like you’re getting your head above water for just a bit before you face the next crashing wave. And the final and perhaps most compelling part of the puzzle are the Essences – your targets. Once you reach a target’s place in time, you jump through time to the place where they would have died and rip them out. Considering you are a metal Frankenstein monster of a being, they are generally not thrilled about it, and that leads to some tense choice-driven moments. What you decide will change the course of the game. I faced a legitimately a tough choice between two possible extraction targets that changed substantial parts of the experience based on the option selected. I still don't know if I made the right call, and I'm looking forward to playing another run to find out. Essences aren’t just story beats in Cronos. Once the Traveler has them, that Essence lives in the suit like a ghost. Each Essence features a unique gameplay bonus, such as one making you do more damage against enemies on fire or another strengthening the shotgun when hitting multiple enemies at once. However, at certain parts of the story, the Essences you have also respond to the world around the Traveler, sharing visions or whispers from the past like a ghost. It can change a part where nothing would otherwise happen happen into a jarring series of hallucinations. Finally, it adds replayabillity. You simply cannot save everyone you encounter, and deciding who gets left behind is a permanent choice on a single playthrough. They are a central part of the whole thing, and in narrative and gameplay, they are used excellently. Such is our calling Cronos: The New Dawn starts off a bit slow, but when it lays its cards on the table, it slaps it down like a set of aces, with a 7 kicker. It’s a compelling time travel story that tells a ghastly end-of-world tale and a simultaneous narrative of the mysterious people trying to fix it. Its music and environment deliver Bloober’s caliber of excellence, and the Essences add uniquely to the story, replayabillity, and gameplay. The visuals and voice acting are sometimes a bit spotty, but everything else hits like a charged shotgun blast, scaring outright or building dread for things to come. Cronos: The New Dawn isn’t my favorite horror title I’ve played, but as far as original ideas go, it’s up there as one that will stay with me for how well its gameplay and narrative work off of each other. This review is based on a digital PS5 copy provided by the publisher. Cronos: The New Dawn comes to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on September 5, 2025.