A new dawn for survival horror or has the sunset early on Cronos: The New Dawn?
Cronos: The New Dawn is a Sci-Fi Survival Horror game from the folks at Blooper Team, the same folks that brought us “The Medium” my review of which can be found here. When Cronos: The New Dawn was announced I was excited for the Survival Horror genre go get a new IP. It’s no secret that the 90’s and early 2000s were the genres heyday and since then the biggest noise has been about remakes and remasters (Blooper Team were responsible for the well received Silent Hill 2 remake). I don’t have much against remasters and remakes but what I really want is a nice shiny new narrative and hoped Cronos: The New Dawn would be just that.
Now, lets get this out of the way immediately, Survival Horror as a genre doesn’t have the widest range of gameplay mechanics and since Resident Evil 4 rescued the genre many moons ago, the core gameplay of the genre hasn’t changed much at all. Does Cronos: The New Dawn ‘play’ similar to other titans of the genre, yes, and thats not a bad thing, but it’s the differences that are really exciting.
As previously mentioned, a huge part of my excitement for Cronos: The New Dawn was the fact it’s and new IP which meant a new universe, new characters and a new story to enjoy. The story of Cronos: The New Dawn is initially enigmatic and builds curiosity perfectly. Set in an alternate history of 1980s Poland during a viral cataclysm of truly epic body horror proportions, you, known as “A Traveler”, specifically ND-3576 are tasked with extracting the psyche of key personal, and uploading them to “The Collective” in an attempt to save mankind from it’s grizzly merged fate.
As always my review will be spoiler free but I will say that Cronos: The New Dawn features multiple endings and will also rank your efforts at the end. I achieved a C rank for my efforts, but I shall be improving upon this when I play New Game+ on hard. Cronos: The New Dawn is perfectly paced and introduces new types of foe at ideal intervals meaning than no sooner have you begun to feel comfortable in this ruined 1980s Poland you’re once again unnerved by something else attempting to keep you from your calling.
This is far from my first third person survival horror game, so my many years of experience have taught me one thing, “Don’t fight if you don’t have to”. So, upon encountering the first enemy in the game…I ran for it, this is a perfectly valid tactic, until that is your trapped in an area and have no choice to stand and fight. You’ll quickly discover that ND-3576 isn’t the first Traveller to be dropped into this nightmare, your forebears have set up small safe havens in which you can save your game, restock fuel and upgrade your abilities. Not all the actions of those that have come before are as helpful, some areas are segregated by retractable walls, when their light Is green, your presence will cause them to retract and through you pass, but if foe is present, that green light is now red, you can’t leave and it will remain that way until you’ve dealt with the threat.
Enemies know as “The Orphans” that sulk around the dank, bleak locations in Cronos: The New Dawn, ranging from subway stations, abandoned hospitals and gothic cathedrals are frankly disgusting. You can clearly tell that each foe used to be human, or more accurately, several humans. They are haunting and you’ll be keen on putting them out of their misery and burning their corpses as soon as you can. Those corpses should be burned, every single one, because this is where a unique mechanic comes into play. Foes in Cronos: The New Dawn may not appear all that varied initially but each has several forms, they attain these new forms my devouring and merging with the bodies of their fallen kin. It might not sound like it adds to the horror but believe me, when facing a horde of weaker foes, only to see one straggler at the back, tentacles waving devouring it’s kin will certainly get your in a panic. When these walking abominations merge, they become stronger, faster, develop new attacks and even become tougher to kill. Many at time in a panic did I blast away, only to hit the newly formed armoured growths of an enemy and do zero damage.
The tools you’ll be dealing out this damage with, like all of Cronos: The New Dawn are wonderfully designed, the strange mechanical future tech of the traveler perfectly set off against the brutalist architecture. The design of weapons and ND-3576 suit are reminiscent of 1970s sci-fi cinema and the work of Giger and Cobb. Weapons fall into a few categories, Handgun, Shotgun, Carbine and Launcher, there a two versions of most and each can be utilised in different ways, more often than not, a normal and a charged shot. Weapons and your armour, called a Temporal Suit can be upgraded, either using the games currency of Energy or Cores you find around the environments.
The environments are home to more than a time traveller and Orphans though, cats (yes, you can pet them) are roaming around, these helpful little felines will lead you to hidden areas and often posses rewards for indulging your curiosity and following them, most often these rewards are the aforementioned cores but sometimes they’ll be keys to access otherwise inaccessible parts of the level.
Ask any horror buff and they’ll tell you that when it comes to the scare factor, what you hear is just as important as what you see, the music in Cronos: The New Dawn is very synth heavy and eerie, but it’s the environmental sounds that will have your skin crawling. At times you’ll have to navigate what I resorted to calling flesh corridors and the wet, biological sicken sounds will leave you on edge, almost as much as running around an abandoned and desolate bunker while a haunting feminine voice hums “holy night” this was deeply unsettling and hand my finger poised on the trigger, all the way through to the games satisfying yet twisted end.
A review code was provided for this review.
