Cronos: The New Dawn Review – Brutal Survival Horror Where Every Bullet Counts
I played Bloober Team’s time‑twisting survival shooter and came away haunted: gorgeous, oppressive atmosphere, smart ideas (merge mechanic, essences), but fiddly inventory and some tech hiccups hold it back. Great for Dead Space/RE fans—ideally on sale.
Cronos: The New Dawn mixes Eastern European brutalism, time rifts and body horror into a third‑person survival shooter that’s equal parts methodical and gruesome. If you like Dead Space or modern Resident Evil, this scratches that itch—while adding a few oddball Bloober quirks.
You play as a Traveler scavenging future wastelands and stepping through rifts into 1980s Poland. Core gameplay is methodical third‑person shooting: charged shots, scarce ammo, crafting and weapon upgrades. Enemies can absorb corpses and ‘merge’ into more dangerous variants — a tense priority system that forces you to burn bodies fast with torches or pyres. The Harvester lets you extract Essences from the past, giving passive buffs while slowly warping your vision and sanity (fun roleplay, annoying screen flakes). There’s light puzzle work with gravity/temporal anomalies and a few open side‑paths that reward exploration, but the general level flow is fairly linear. Inventory space is stingy by design, which heightens the survival feel but also leads to backtracking and choking annoyance mid‑run. Audio, lighting and visuals are top tier for the genre and sell the dread better than most. Expect a steady difficulty curve, a solid NG+ with carryover upgrades, and a game that rewards careful planning more than run‑and‑gun bravado.
Cronos: The New Dawn is a tense, well‑crafted survival horror with brilliant mood and a few smart mechanical twists — just be prepared for inventory headaches and some technical roughness. Buy on sale if you’re picky, but don’t skip it if you love methodical horror.
Pros
- Superb atmosphere and sound design — the game makes you feel its world.
- Smart combat hooks: corpse Merging forces target‑priority and burning bodies adds tension.
- Meaningful progression and NG+ replay value via essences, suit and weapon upgrades.
Cons
- Stingy inventory and occasional backtracking can feel punitive rather than clever.
- Technical issues: stutters/optimisation and some crashes reported on varied systems.
Player Opinion
Players praise the game’s atmosphere, audio and the tense resource‑management that evokes Dead Space or Resident Evil. The merging mechanic and essences are often singled out as cool additions. Criticisms focus on inventory limits, some repetitive areas/enemies and technical hiccups (framerate drops, occasional crashes). If you enjoy methodical, survival‑heavy horror and don’t mind a few rough edges, Cronos will likely click for you.