Cronos: The New Dawn Review. An Unsuccessful Attempt to Replicate the Success of Dead Space

After the notable success of the Silent Hill 2 remake, the team at Bloober Team understandably gained confidence and continued exploring the survival horror genre, abandoning their usual “walking simulators”. Their next project, Cronos: The New Dawn, looked in presentations like a true spiritual successor to the Dead Space series — a role that The Callisto Protocol (according to players) never managed to fulfill. However, after release, the game turned out to be quite different from what the developers had so vividly promised. This is far from Dead Space and certainly not on the level of Resident Evil, which, by the way, are the main pillars of the genre. So what is Cronos: The New Dawn really like? We’ll tell you in our detailed review.

After the release of The Medium in 2021, Bloober Team indirectly hinted that they had no intention of sticking to making “walking simulators” and would soon try their hand at the survival horror genre. This was actually the right direction for the studio, since with the excellent Observer they had already reached their peak in creating atmospheric psychological horrors. Some of the staff responsible for The Medium began developing Cronos: The New Dawn, while the rest of the team took on a much more important project for their reputation — the Silent Hill 2 remake.

Last year, the Silent Hill 2 remake hit the shelves and surprised not only new gamers but also loyal fans with its quality. Bloober Team managed to preserve the unique atmosphere of the original while thoroughly reworking the outdated game design. Yes, the action and some aspects weren’t perfect, but for a team that had spent years making “walking simulators”, it was an excellent result. The studio instantly gained huge trust and the opportunity to work on five games at once, including a remake of the first Silent Hill.

While most of the team celebrated their success and planned their next project, the rest of the developers were finishing Cronos: The New Dawn. I won’t hide it — we were looking forward to this game, at least because of its enticing setting and impressive gameplay inspired by the original Dead Space trilogy. Moreover, the developers themselves fueled interest with statements like: “We’ll have a story in the spirit of the Netflix series ‘Dark’ and the movie ‘12 Monkeys’”, “We’re creating a combat system with a Soulslike homage”, and “This will be a true survival, not a psychological horror with endless corridor walking”.

Cronos: The New Dawn could have become the studio’s calling card and a kind of foundation for all future projects, but in the end, it turned out to be what players feared most: a “walking simulator” with a nonsensical plot and monotonous combat. Of course, remaking a 2000's hit on Unreal Engine 5 and creating a game from scratch in a unique universe are completely different tasks in terms of complexity, and at the very least, Bloober Team shouldn’t have rushed the release — especially while presenting it as the spiritual successor to Dead Space.

In their previous projects, Bloober Team masterfully told stories, offering players unique universes and unexpected plot twists. I truly believed that Cronos: The New Dawn would have no issues with its script. And at first, the project was indeed surprising. Players, taking on the role of the Wanderer dressed in a rather unusual spacesuit, set off for the city of “New Dawn”, which has been struck by an unknown disease. Her goal: to find a time rift and travel to the past to extract an essence from certain individuals, thereby preventing the apocalypse that has already occurred.

The game’s premise offers little in the way of specifics. Who is our protagonist? What exactly happened in the city? Why are the streets filled with an unknown substance and the dead bodies of local residents? This ambiguity works well for the overall atmosphere and encourages thorough exploration of locations, reading notes, and delving into the lore. However, the initial excitement from the diegetic storytelling quickly dissipates once you realize that you’re doing exactly the same things as in Bloober Team’s earlier “walking simulators”.

All key plot events take place exclusively in cutscenes, while NPCs and important characters only appear in special locations. In all other cases, the protagonist interacts with locked doors, walls, and imaginary conversation partners, just like in Observer, Layers of Fear, and The Medium. The Wanderer herself is clearly modeled after Din Djarin from “The Mandalorian”: she is laconic, never removes her helmet, shows no emotion, and ends dialogues with the phrase “This is our mission” (a clear reference to “This is the way”). At the same time, the developers were truthful when they said the main story would be quite personal for the protagonist. Closer to the middle of the narrative, the focus abruptly shifts from collecting the souls of important characters to introspection and searching for answers about the protagonist’s origins, leaving far more interesting and important lore elements unexplored.

The universe of Cronos: The New Dawn is perhaps its main strength — and its greatest disappointment at the same time. The developers managed to create a unique and atmospheric environment, where grim post-Soviet scenery is intricately intertwined with elements of biopunk, resulting in a truly interesting and original world. Unfortunately, the writers failed to properly reveal it in the main story. Instead of gradually immersing the player, the game has you wandering through intestine-like corridors, shooting hordes of monsters, and collecting notes. And it is in these notes — often only loosely connected to the plot — that most of the lore and the backstory of the epidemic is revealed in broad strokes. This approach quickly becomes tiresome, leaving the impression that the most interesting things were left “behind the scenes”.

What’s even more frustrating is that the developers introduce a host of exciting concepts, only to completely ignore them in favor of a second-rate time loop story. For example, at the beginning, we’re told about a mysterious “Collective” that controls humanity and sends “Wanderers” to seek out chosen ones capable of stopping the infection. But what is this organization? What is the world like beyond the depicted post-Soviet Poland? How are Wanderers selected? There are no answers. The developers literally hang dozens of “Chekhov’s guns” — intriguing ideas and interesting hooks—at the start of the narrative, and then simply remove them from the story.

At some point, wandering through abandoned houses, hospitals, and factories just becomes boring. The authors clearly cut corners on the implementation of story scripts and events, padding out the playtime with repetitive tasks like “find the key”, “turn on the generator”, or “read an important note”. For any Metroidvania, this approach might make sense, but Cronos: The New Dawn is not Metroid Prime — it’s first and foremost a survival horror, which means it should at least scare and create a creepy atmosphere. But it doesn’t do that, turning backtracking and similar tasks into a monotonous slog. Dead Space, which Bloober Team looked up to during development, did everything to keep the player engaged and constantly fearful of noises in dark corners, even at the end of the game. To achieve this, the developers at Visceral Games carefully constructed the narrative around the player and juggled objectives, thereby masking the shortcomings of backtracking and repetitive gameplay elements. But in Cronos: The New Dawn, the story exists separately from the gameplay, and all the missions boil down to almost identical objectives. Because of this, by the eighth hour, you’re simply exhausted from the endless wandering and repetitive gameplay. We’ll discuss the gameplay itself in detail in the next chapter.

Returning to the story, it’s worth mentioning the game’s ending, which completely squanders the potential of its well-thought-out universe. Yes, Cronos features several endings, but only one of them has any real weight and a positive outcome. However, to unlock it, you have to replay the game again on a higher difficulty. Meanwhile, the gameplay and main story elements remain unchanged. Thanks, Bloober Team, but I think I’ll pass on replaying a 14-hour project just for a five-minute cutscene.

Cronos: The New Dawn also faces serious issues on the gameplay front. What we have here is a standard third-person shooter with resource management, occasionally featuring primitive puzzles and secrets. The local monsters you’ll be shooting throughout the game aren’t particularly original or diverse. In the aforementioned Dead Space, the xenomorphs impressed with their design, and their attack patterns forced you to think and find unique ways to fight back. Much of that was thanks to the detailed dismemberment system, which allowed you to remove a monster’s dangerous limb and observe how it would behave in a different situation. In Cronos: The New Dawn, as you might have guessed, there’s no dismemberment, so nearly every “Orphan” dies from a couple of well-placed shots to the head. On top of that, aiming for headshots is much easier than in the Resident Evil remakes, which further reduces the variety of combat encounters to repetitive actions.

Occasionally, the developers throw in some interesting monsters that are fun to fight, but this only happens a couple of times throughout the whole game. For example, there are reskinned enemies from Silent Hill 2 that crawl on walls and get into positions that are disadvantageous for the player. There are also a couple of acid-spitting enemies and a few particularly tough ones that eat up most of your ammo.

Gunplay in Cronos: The New Dawn is implemented much better than in the Silent Hill 2 remake, but the number of weapons is kept to a bare minimum: a pistol, shotgun, carbine, grenade launcher, and a local BFG analog from Doom. As usual, ammo is handed out in limited quantities, but it’s usually enough to clear any arena. Each weapon has a charged shot system, which deals more damage and lets you save resources. The only downside is that you can’t just press the button and wait for the right moment to shoot — the charged shot is fired automatically once activated, so you’ll need to get used to this at first. Throughout my playthrough, I barely used regular shooting, preferring the more efficient method of taking down monsters.

Resource management and a limited inventory make the game challenging at first. Often, there are too many resources scattered around the locations, while our heroine’s pockets are much smaller than Chris Redfield’s in Resident Evil 1. This means you constantly have to run back to safe zones to drop off extra items or use up supplies in places where you could have saved them. At the same time, the in-game balance is set up so that you always have enough ammo and medkits for the next encounter. Additionally, crafting materials are scattered around the locations, allowing you to create supplies and useful items, which means you don’t have to obsess over saving every single thing in your inventory.

You won’t be able to carry all your weapons at once, since each one takes up precious inventory space. For a survival horror game, this is a fairly standard situation — except that, according to the lore of Cronos: The New Dawn, the heroine’s pistol is a transforming device that contains the entire arsenal within it. Like the revolver from Control. So it’s unclear what exactly the protagonist is storing in her inventory if she has a single universal weapon capable of changing form.

Cronos: The New Dawn also features a fairly extensive progression system, allowing you to upgrade both your character and your weapons. All upgrades are tied to collecting two key resources: energy elements and special cores. Once you’ve gathered enough, you can increase your inventory size, reinforce your protective suit, or, for example, boost your pistol’s power. Most of the important resources for character development are hidden in secret areas and secluded spots. Thorough exploration is rewarded with weapon modifications and alternative firearms. For instance, you can find a double-barreled shotgun, which is technically just the starting shotgun, but it allows you to fire two shots in quick succession.

Besides the progression system mentioned above, Cronos: The New Dawn also lets you absorb the essences of characters the heroine is searching for throughout the story. You can only carry three active essences at a time. However, if you want to try a different ability, you’ll have to give up one you’ve already activated — and, interestingly, it will self-destruct. So you need to choose your skills wisely. Of course, these upgrades don’t turn your character into a killing machine, but, for example, the ability to craft ammo with fewer resources was very helpful in certain situations. With proper implementation, this system could have become the foundation of the game’s replayability, encouraging players to go through the game again for the best ending. Unfortunately, in its current form, it doesn’t play a significant role in progression. Cronos: The New Dawn could have been a decent roguelike with horror elements, but instead, it’s just a shooting gallery with lots of walking through cramped spaces.

As mentioned earlier, Cronos: The New Dawn is more of a third-person shooter than a successor to Dead Space. Yes, the Wanderer can stomp on enemies and item crates like Clarke, drift in zero gravity, and slowly wander through confined spaces with her exosuit clanking, but that’s where the similarities end. Dead Space offered players a variety of interesting abilities and ways to fight xenomorphs, while in Cronos: The New Dawn, all you’ll be doing is shooting at enemies and the explosive barrels conveniently placed everywhere. There’s no telekinesis or stasis in the game, and all the time manipulation shown in the trailers is strictly scripted. For example, you’ll often come across spheres you need to shoot to rewind time and create paths for further progression. This kind of system is sorely missed in combat, because after hours of nonstop shooting, you genuinely get tired.

The only killer feature Bloober Team bet on is the mechanic where enemies absorb the powers of defeated foes. That is, every “Orphan” that spawns in a location immediately runs to the nearest corpse to “suck in” the biomass and transform into a more powerful monster with higher damage and more health. On paper, this mechanic sounds at least interesting, but in practice, it doesn’t add much. Yes, sometimes enemies do manage to reach a corpse and absorb it, but they don’t actually become more dangerous. Charged headshots prove that point. Moreover, the absorption process can be easily interrupted with a regular shot, after which the enemy simply switches to attack mode.

The original idea was for the player to use single-use flamethrower charges to burn the corpses they find along the way, reducing the risk of powerful mutants appearing. In reality, you’ll stop bothering with this as soon as you realize how much fuel you need to carry to burn everything in your path. In the first few hours, you’ll actually be running back and forth to refuel, trying to burn as many corpses as possible. When there’s no gas station nearby, you have only one charge, which can burn at most two bodies. This undermines the whole initial concept of paranoia and clearing locations of mutation hotspots. The Resident Evil 1 remake had a similar system, which worked fairly well thanks to the right number of enemies and supplies, as well as branching paths. You’d plan your route in advance and only burn the corpses that would get in the way of exploration. In Cronos: The New Dawn, there’s no real point in eliminating biomass, since even enhanced mutants die just as quickly as regular ones, and backtracking rarely triggers new waves of enemies.

There are a few bosses in the game, and every fight follows the same scenario: you’re locked in a very tight corridor with a powerful enemy and forced to run frantically around the arena, aiming for weak spots. Despite the repetitiveness, these encounters are surprisingly dynamic and keep you tense until the very end. First, the Wanderer is very slow and vulnerable in direct confrontations. Second, you only have just enough ammo for the fight, so every missed shot triggers panic. Third, your health drains incredibly quickly, making you instantly regret standing your ground and firing at the boss until you run out of bullets. It’s in these boss battles that Cronos: The New Dawn truly shines as a proper survival horror, with panicked resource management and the search for safe escape routes. It’s a shame the whole game doesn’t follow these principles.

In conclusion, Cronos: The New Dawn could have been a very good game if Bloober Team hadn’t fixated on survival horror standards and skimped on crucial genre elements. In the first hours, the project really impresses with good art, solid exposition, and a measured pace, but later on, the mechanics don’t evolve, and the basic gameplay from the prologue persists right up to the finale. Because of this, the game may seem boring and repetitive. Again, if Cronos: The New Dawn had implemented roguelike elements, both its story and gameplay concepts could have been fully realized.

From a visual standpoint, there’s really nothing to criticize about Cronos: The New Dawn. Bloober Team knows how to work with art and design, so every location, decoration, and environmental element is mesmerizing in its detail and execution. Fog, lighting, and shading are top-notch. The atmosphere of abandoned post-Soviet Poland is conveyed perfectly. Wandering through overgrown courtyards and half-ruined apartments is a real pleasure. And when the heroine travels to the past, you can easily get a powerful hit of nostalgia from places that will feel very familiar to residents of Russia and the CIS.

Most locations are borrowed in one way or another from other horror games, but they still turn out spectacular and memorable. However, the monster design is rather dull, and the variety clearly falls short compared to other survival horror titles. Still, the enemies are modeled well overall, and their animations are clearly a step above what we saw in the Silent Hill 2 remake. On the other hand, there are too few cutscenes in the game to really evaluate the direction and staging. Throughout the playthrough, it’s obvious that resources were saved on story elements. It’s understandable why in Observer the protagonist interacts with peepholes rather than real people, but for Cronos: The New Dawn, this approach to storytelling is unforgivable.

The music is quite good. The composer literally mixed creepy ambient sounds and synthwave melodies into a cocktail, creating tracks reminiscent of the recent The Alters. Incidentally, that game was also developed by Poles. The voice acting is solid, but the protagonist’s voice is off-putting due to its timbre and lack of emotion. However, this isn’t the actress’s fault, as the voice and manner of speaking for the Wanderer were strictly dictated by the script.

Cronos: The New Dawn doesn’t have any major performance issues. For us, the game ran smoothly at high settings without any drops. There were no graphical artifacts, though we did encounter a couple of bugs during the entire playthrough. For example, once the main character got stuck in the environment and couldn’t get out on her own. Occasionally, some environmental objects didn’t react correctly to player actions: supply crates wouldn’t break, and explosive barrels wouldn’t detonate on the first hit. Overall, these are minor issues that don’t interfere with gameplay.

Cronos: The New Dawn could have been a model game if the developers hadn’t fixated on recycling tired mechanics from other survival horror titles. In the end, we just got a very dull project with repetitive gameplay, a verbose and uninspired story, and underdeveloped concepts. Yet, each aspect of Cronos: The New Dawn individually had clear potential that, with proper development, could easily have become a hallmark feature. The game has a fantastic lore and atmosphere, but the developers simply pushed them into the background for the sake of the protagonist’s personal story — which not only fails to engage, but actively repels with its lack of originality and a lackluster ending. The shooting and exploration are recreated just as well as in other games, but there are hardly any interesting situations. Only the boss battles turned out bright and memorable.

Cronos: The New Dawn once again proves that Bloober Team has unlimited potential in creating survival horror but lacks the skills to implement the crucial elements. We hope the studio’s management will allocate more resources to internal projects and encourage creative ideas from the staff, moving away from simply copying well-known brands. In any case, we’re confident the Silent Hill 2 remake will turn out great — since the studio does better with established projects, especially with Konami’s funding, than with its own franchises.