Cronos: The new preview of Dawn

When it was originally revealed that Bloober Team would make Silent Hill 2, one of the most beloved psychological horror games of all time, no one thought it would work. Bloober was familiar with horror, safe, but Silent Hill's subtle and scary brand of fear was far from what we had seen in medium and layers of fear.

Against the odds, Bloober managed to pull it off and hit Silent Hill 2 into modern times with a new recording, both of which were remarkably faithful to the original tone and brave with its refined mechanics. Even with that success, it was easy to believe that Silent Hill 2 worked so well because it had such a legendary frame to build up. The winning recipe was already there; Bloober only seasoned the ingredients.

If in any way you still have doubts about how far Bloober has come in the horror world, the latest original game, Cronos: The New Dawn, is here to crush them for good. I was not initially sold on Cronos when the game was first revealed, but after playing it for two hours and going away desperately after more, it is crystal clear that blooses are on its most confident and creative.

Such is our mission

As a lifelong fan of survival fear, I felt Cronos: the new dawn had potential, but I did not expect to be drawn into its world and characters so quickly. Cronos puts you in the shaking boots from the traveler, a member of a strange group called the collective, who tries to survive a nightmare full of squishy monsters called orphans. The traveler's mission is to find a way to travel back in time to the 1980s Poland and extract the souls in the key figures, bring them back to the future there (or when) they hopefully can start rebuilding the cracking world.

Given the traveler's painfully generic name and faceless design that made me assume that she was just an empty slate for the player, I was surprised at how interesting she becomes when the story finds her feet. Originally, she encountered almost like a robot, repeated data logs to herself and had no reaction to the twisted environments around them, but by the end of my preview she had developed into a person who is as terrified as the player.

It is not only the traveler who surprised me when it comes to Crono's world -building, since the alternative historical vision for Poland that Cronos calls home also stands out. What can only look like an average destroyed sci-fi world is actually shock-full of Polish history, while the alternative timeline is one that I am curious to see expanded as things develop.

“Whatever you do, don't let them merge”

Even when I was further submerged in Crono's world, the important advice from the Bloober team continued to loop in my head. In its core, the new dawn is a survival scare experience reminiscent of Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Dead Space; A suitable comparison given its focus on stressful resource management, temporary environmental bus and exploration, and even a real stamp that made me feel that I was back at Ishimura.

All of these survival horror clamps are here as you can expect, and they all work together in Tandem for a consistently tense experience that is familiar but still scary. Cronos is not quite as horror -focused as Silent Hill 2 and is more action -packed than most of its contemporaries, but there is still no shortage of unexpected horror and moments that got my hands sweating.

The new dawn does a good job of replicating what has worked for similar games in the genre, but there is also a surprising amount of new features that help it stand out. Parents are more powerful than they look and make combat meetings much more difficult than I expected (which is always good when it comes to survival fear), but it is effectively balanced by the traveler being able to charge every shot from his gun to make it even harder, at the cost of becoming vulnerable.

It may seem like a simple tweak, but charging images add another strategic layer to the already fast battle that I dug a lot when I had become accustomed to it. However, the largest and scariest unique mechanic in the group is the merger of enemies that I suggested earlier, which turns enemies from scary cannon feed into dangerous monsters that can murder you in seconds.

Seriously, do not let them blend together

Parents may seem like quite simplified threats to deal with at first, but when one of them is killed, they mainly turn into a resource for all remaining enemies to absorb and become more powerful. When the fleshy monsters regain their health and become stronger, sometimes even pick up the characteristics of special orphans, such as being able to spit acid.

In addition to being really disgusting thanks to all Sinewy Flesh and Squishy Noises, orphaned children were completely merged how Cronos plays. Since the only way merging can be stopped is with a Flametrower that is extremely limited in use, you can not just run around and shoot everything in sight until you eventually show up victorious.

You must carefully consider every orphan you kill, if you want to use your Flametrower to help take down an enemy or burn a body and prevent stronger enemies, and if you even have enough resources to handle everything that is chuckled on you without taking care of throwing hand.

If the merger sounds too scary to you, Cronos will lighten the mood with collectable cats that give you rewards. Here they hope they do not stop merging at any time too …

Just like how dead space (which is what I would say that Cronos feels closest) made its mark with canceling the limbs from its infected enemies, it feels merging as the ace up the new dawn. I am fascinated by seeing how long a new feature remains and if it will ever be too much when Orphan meetings are not so few and far in between.

As convincing as my time with Cronos was, the merger was not the only question mark I was left with, because two of its big functions are the ones I unfortunately did not see. My demo ended just as the traveler went back in time, which means I did not get to experience how accurate it plays out and how different the previous attitude is in terms of tone and mechanics. I also did not see what is undoubtedly its most interesting mechanics – the ability to extract souls, which is apparently a big part of the story.

Although I am still in the dark about Cronos: The New Dawn in some important areas, the two hours I spent with it were more than enough to secure both my confidence and excitement in Bloker's latest IP. Silent Hill 2 may have shown that Bloober may breathe new life in a classic, but Cronos looks like it will prove that it can make its own.