Cronos: The New Dawn - PS5 Review

Cronos: The New Dawn by developer and publisher Bloober Team—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

The Bloober Team has done it again. Cronos: The New Dawn is an atmospheric horror adventure that often had me questioning myself, why do I do this again? Oh right, because their work is just so damned good.

“In a grim world where Eastern European brutalism meets retro-futurist technology, you play as a Traveler tasked with scouring the wastelands of the future in search of time rifts to dive back in time to 1980s Poland.

Survive a brutal future, travel to the past to extract key people, and stop nightmarish creatures from merging into unstoppable abominations.”

Equipped with nothing more than a pistol to start off, you set out on your objective. Between you and said objective will be a variety of different obstacles requiring you to explore the various reaches of the areas that you find yourself in. Apartment buildings, underground shopping districts by tramlines, outside in the blowing sands, each is more perilous than the previous and you’d better be ready to react.

If the above wasn’t enough to frame my enthusiasm for the Bloober Team’s work, there are two main reasons that will always keep me coming back for more. Regardless of how many times I scream, jump and whine as to why the hell I’m doing this to myself. AGAIN.

The first reason is craftsmanship. Every area and item there-in is designed to be that way. Out in the open or hidden in plain sight, there’s a reason for it. Doors, papers, audiologs, or items, moving towards these keeps you on the edge of your seat just waiting to find out what happens once you’ve moved towards them.

It's within this craftsmanship that the story finds itself. We know what the Traveller knows. They’ve been woken up as the latest in the line of Travellers because the previous one failed in their mission, so it’s up to our Traveller to see it through. Outside of this, our Traveller, and by proxy us, will be finding out about the world, and what happened to its people only by exploring forwards. 

This, for me is the biggest draw, being dropped in a dystopian setting. I want to know what happened. How did it get here? This need to know is even more so when the world looks like it’s fallen apart and there’s a ton of organic… gross… super disgusting material all over the place. Basically what all the monsters are made of and you really don’t want them touching you.

That’s what your gun is for.

While exploring the reaches of the city, uncovering clues through papers and audiologs, you’ll often have to fight your way through. Limited resources will often have you questioning if you should even be fighting, but the in-game checkpoint system will tell you that there’s danger and it will not let you through until the danger has been taken care of.

Headshots like in most cases will be your best friend if you can land them, however, you’ll also have access to plenty of other useful tools to help you get the job done. Your default gun can charge to cause more damage, takes more time, but packs a hell of a punch. You’ll also be given a flamethrower that allows you to ignite everything around you as long as you have a cartridge for it. 

Add in other items like shotguns, a pistol variant, proximity flame mines and other things in the environment, the limited amount of resources works. If they don’t, and you die, well, you’ll have a better idea of what to do the next time around after loading the latest check point or save file. It’s not the easiest, but once you get into the groove, there are plenty of ways to get through the combat encounters.

To help with this is the upgrade system. Split into two types, you’ll need cores to upgrade your suit and weapons that need charges, like the flamethrower. These cores are very limited and you have to decide if you want more health, inventory space, or the ability to hold more crafting materials.

The second upgrade system is based on an energy currency. Energy can be picked up all over the place, but the real amounts are in items that you have to carry back to a supply point and sell. With inventory spaces being a premium commodity, you’ll have to make decisions. But once you’re holding onto all of that energy, all of your guns can have their damage, reload times, clip sizes, stability and charge time (if they have one) upgraded to help you in combat.

Where things didn’t work as much for me are in some of the forced encounters with many enemies and boss fights. Most of the time when many enemies will be coming at you there will be plenty of environmental help so that you don’t need to waste all of your ammo and suit patches (health). In a stroke of brilliance, our suit is also fireproof making flame barrels your best friend to either shoot from afar or punch up close. Does not apply to exploding canisters, take it from me, do, not, punch those. You are flameproof, not explosion proof. 

But there are also moments where you’re too far out from a supply point, nearly out of resources, and they keep on coming at you. You can 1-2 punch and stomp, but it will never be enough for some of these monsters charging at you. Which is where the bosses come in. They often feel rather unfair even with all the environmental help that you can get your hands on.

Bosses are big, bad, and soak up so much damage that surviving often feels like luck more than anything else. This is a survival horror, but when you’ve run around the entire boss area, unloaded everything you have, lit it on fire multiple times, exploded it multiple other times, and it’s still coming!? It’s no longer a skill or learning curve issue but that the bosses are just too spongy.

Because other than those, Cronos: The New Dawn is definitely on my list of candidates for a couple of categories in my entry to our Games of the Year. The atmosphere feels perfectly eerie and damn right creepy at times when there’s almost nothing but the sound of something organically squishy to break that silence. The enemy encounters, for the most part, work, and don’t feel forced other than in a few cases. Finally, the gameplay controls are solid, meaning anytime that I’ve missed my shot? It was because I missed my shot(sssssssssssss).

If you’re a fan of survival horror, atmospheric horror, or just love to be scared (within reason), the Bloober Team’s latest entry of Cronos: The New Dawn is worth checking out.

Score: 8 / 10