I didn’t know what to expect from Cronos: The New Dawn when invited to a hands-on event by Bloober Team to try it out for the first time behind closed doors, but it became glaringly apparent as I sat down and played it for the first time that I was in for something special.
It’s a survival horror game, and from the two hours of gameplay I got to experience, it felt like Bloober at its best. Telling an interesting story with expressive visuals, while offering those moments of terror and helplessness that very few games can replicate.
Initially, when playing the game for the first time, I was instantly hit with Resident Evil 2 remake vibes. From the way that character moves and shoots the gun, to the safe rooms you can find, to how you upgrade weapons and items by scavenging for parts. It gave off vibes of Capcom’s remake outing, but it’s more than that.
The game’s biggest strengths lie in its environment, not only in its visual appearance, but also in how the game utilizes the environment to tell a story about what happened and craft puzzles for players to discover. You are rewarded with lore, items, and secrets by discovering every nook and cranny, and it’s not only key to discovering what went on in this world, but to surviving it, too.
Like classic horror games of old, Cronos cements itself as survival horror, as resources are limited and you’ll be finding yourself scouring every nook and cranny of the map in the hope of finding a single bullet that could be the difference between life and death. And while you can resort to melee attacks if you expand all your resources, it’s useless, as melee does nothing and makes you more vulnerable. If you run out of ammo, you are deep. Simple as.
This creates a fear of inventory management where every bullet you use counts, and everyone you waste is even more heartbreaking. Sometimes you need to ask yourself if using the bullet is worth it, if there are things like gas canisters hidden in the environment you can use instead. It forces you to prepare ahead of time and rewards the paranoid who may have found that extra item that the speedrunner might have missed out on.
Don’t get complacent either. At one point, I had around 30 pieces of ammo and plenty of health and was feeling great. That cockiness made me move through areas without checking everything, and I soon found myself scavenging for items after coming across an unexpected hoard.
What differentiates this game, though, from other games is two unique features—merging and adapting.
Enemies can merge with the bodies of their fallen comrades to gain new powers and become harder to kill. To counter this, you can burn the bodies of enemies or shoot them to stop them from merging before they become too painful to deal with, on top of your limited resources.
In one part of the game, we dropped into an area that was littered with dead bodies next to an exit. It was here that I understood the adapting part. Where a player might normally ruin to the exist, my instincts told me the moment i did that enemies were going to spawn behind me and merge with the bodies on the ground, so i painstankingly went through and burned every individual one and—loe and behond— when i did go to the door enemies did spawn, which made the painstaking work important to taking down easier to manage enemies then those that rush forward without thinking.
If I had any real critique of the game, it’s that I wanted to try out more. After overcoming the boss, there was a teaser of a mechanic involving time travel that was quickly cut off. It feels like there are a lot more secrets hiding beneath the surface, and I can’t wait to explore more when the game launches in Fall 2025.
Disclaimer: Travel to the event was provided by Bloober Team.
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