Cronos: The New Dawn Spiel
I started playing Cronos: The New Dawn well aware of the fact that it was from Bloober Team and that it is sitting between AAA and AA, due to its budgets and pricing. What I didn’t learn, and the writers of those reviews and articles have rightfully reserved those details, were the nature of the game itself. It’s a Dead Space like game, but with neither the horror nor unique game mechanic the classic had; frankly, it’s more Resident Evil in 1980s Poland with the whiff of Twilight Zone.
The world of Cronos is set in two different times, 1980s Poland and the distant future where they are sending out scout-like characters called the Traveler, including the protagonist, back into the past. The technology of the Traveler’s, or rather the Collective’s, the organization the protagonist seems to be part of, is enabling many things — notably time travel. 1980s communist Poland, be that as it may, is already facing an apocalypse from possible outbreak that turns people into monsters, or “Orphans”.
Calling them monsters is a euphemism, because it turns them into a flesh blob that is indistinguishable. The unknown apocalypse event that covers the floors, the walls, and ceiling all-alike into flesh. And it needs a splash of color like the predecessors had done in Dead Space or Resident Evil, like giant eye weakness, or else it chews away players’ sanity like Scorn. There are only handful types of enemies, and among them many would either hide or be embedded in the environment that triggers a QTE event. While the guns do have a good enough kick, its unique charging system means you do have to time it to maximize the ammunition output in the survival horror. The tiresome experience quickly adds up.
As a survival horror, either by a glitch or a design, Cronos often spawns empty crates and enemies with no rewards. Having no reward after killing an enemy is somewhat expected; that’s why many players would want to focus on the efficiency of the shots against the ammunition spent. I highly suspect the game keeps the total ammunitions in check, and spawns no ammo in the crate should the players have plenty. But the dynamic spawning is simply counter-intuitive for a survival horror. It limits the play style a player can choose from. Part of the fun of a survival horror is definitely from resource management. To be stricken away from making choices and be railroaded into a certain style works against the formula of the survival horror.
The world itself is not well explored or developed past the minor arcs with characters the protagonist encounters. Cronos attempts to build a central plot by returning to the future whenever an arc is finished. However, as the protagonist herself puts it, “[it] gets repetitive”. Again, the game doesn’t hide it: the story of undead disease, government failing to contain it, different personas’ reaction to the same disease. The problem lies not in the fact that they are old fashioned, but rather in the fact that they don’t make a convincing argument why the people of the 1980s reacted the way they did in the face of the disaster. If anything, we don’t get a convincing argument even in the future. The central plot, with the limited screen time it has, is yet another repetitive rehashed story, that ultimately doesn’t develop past being a minor arc.
Lastly, the game has been out for about 3 weeks, but there are glitches that can only be remedied from reloading an earliest save. In my playthrough, one of the most glaring and repeating issue was the audio on loop. Cronos has very audio heavy cue for combats. But many of the combat encounters either didn’t start or end the audio proper, to the point where I ended up missing out on one of the most important in-game cinematic dialogues.
Conclusions: Tried and Tested Formula
Cronos: The New Dawn doesn’t promise to sell the most innovative idea. I believe most survival horror players would immediately notice the influence from Dead Space or Resident Evil franchises. And the game is faithful to the recipe. However, it begs the question whether Cronos has gripping gameplay, story, or the world in which the player is now traveling in. It needs something enticing to bring them all together. Though I enjoyed the newcomer in the survival horror block, the game needs its own signature dish before it can hit the ‘make it or break it’ moment.