Cronos: The New Dawn Reviews

Bloober Team is one of those studios that got off to an incredibly rough start. Their initial batch of titles, such as Layers of Fear, oozed pretentiousness whilst lacking in horror and payoff, and to be honest, I was hugely worried about the Silent Hill 2 Remake once Bloober Team was announced to be the ones working on it. However, it turned out to be one of my favourite games of the last year, a fantastic remake that not only lives up to the legacy of the original game but also improves on ...

Cronos: The New Dawn is easily Bloober Team’s best original work, delivering a challenging sci-fi survival horror experience with brutal combat in an immersive and tense setting. It’s just a shame that it doesn’t quite nail the resource management that would elevate it to greatness.

Although Cronos: The New Dawn doesn't quite reach the heights of Bloober Team's excellent Silent Hill 2 remake, it's nevertheless the result of a studio that has levelled up significantly from the days of Layers of Fear and Blair Witch. It's a celebration of survival horror, paying homage to all the genre greats effectively, although failing to do anything truly original. That said, the setting and story really help elevate the experience. This is a solid Switch 2 version (assuming a rather unpleasant bug gets fixed soon), and there's real potential here for Cronos to become a central pillar of the genre going forward, should Bloober choose to expand upon it in the future.

Bloober Team have been steadily sharpening their skills as horror developers over the last several years; some hits, some misses, and a lot of learning. They have dabbled in their own slow-burning original IP like Layers of Fear, tackling big supernatural brands like Blair Witch, and even last year, finding great success with the remake of Silent Hill 2, their main terrifying inspiration. Of course, that was building on the rock-solid, iconic foundations of the original. With Cronos: The New ...

There’s a reason Konami entrusted Polish developer Bloober Team to remaster Silent Hill 2. The group has without doubt earned its chops in the survival horror genre; Bloober’s latest original release, Cronos The New Dawn, is in many ways evidence of this fact.

When the survival horror comes after you.

Cronos: The New Dawn is Bloober Team's best original game yet. An immersive romp through a suffocating portrayal of 80s Poland, where your journey is far from what it first seems.

It's challenging, and it might take a little while for you to warm to its world and protagonist, but Cronos: The New Dawn is yet another brilliant survival horror game from Bloober Team. You'll be on the edge of your seat throughout this tense and atmospheric adventure, hopping between the past and the future while blasting enemies that grow more powerful if they manage to merge.

Cronos: The New Dawn is a confident, if somewhat slightly derivative effort which is the measure of a developer not looking to rest on its laurels or coast on recent successes. Kept in line by solid fundamentals and a story that hits the right notes, this is an easy recommendation for fans of similar games where the hospitality of the locals isn't as warm or as welcoming as you had once hoped.

Cronos: The New Dawn isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s a beautiful, brutal survival horror game that doesn’t always land narratively but really sticks to its guns and lands where it matters most. It’s bleak, it’s relentless, and it really sticks with you.

Cronos: The New Dawn does some great things, but going into it expecting the same level of polish and quality as the Silent Hill 2 remake is a mistake. Despite a rather unique story concept and a few clever ideas, Cronos: The New Dawn is a fairly run-of-the-mill survival-horror game with a few key flaws that hold it back from being as good as its inspirations or Bloober Team's own Silent Hill 2 remake.

Although Cronos: The New Dawn doesn't revolutionize the genre, fans of survival horror games set in unique settings will be satisfied. A dense atmosphere, a mysterious plot, and a solid dose of anxiety define this new game from Bloober Team.

Overall, none of this is inherently bad — per se — it’s just unremarkable. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the exploration. Cronos makes excellent use of the entirety of each level, making exploring worthwhile. Additionally, the Traveler can influence the environment in ways that allow you to repair structures and play with gravity. Despite being relatively simple mechanics to use, they were still a nice touch that gave an otherwise normal environment that sci-fi touch.

The scariest part of Cronos: The New Dawn is probably the frustrating combat, and while it boasts a selection of surprisingly cool puzzles, they're not enough to save the experience.

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Cronos: The New Dawn is one of the most refreshing survival horror experiences of recent memory, thanks to its emphasis on player choices and split-second decisions, which shine even further due to its harrowing setting and gripping narrative.

Bloober Team follows its Silent Hill 2 remake with an original horror story that is tense throughout, though sometimes too punishing.

Bloober Team has gone back to original IP work with renewed vigor, and that vigor comes through in spades in Cronos: The New Dawn. This is a new sci-fi horror game set in an original universe, and it is an ambitious one. Bloober Team took what they learned from combat and survival design on Silent Hill 2, blended it with its expertise in environmental design, and told a story that sinks its hand-claws in and leaves you uncertain of your decisions at pivotal points. It’s not always ticking at a good pace, but Cronos is an intense time-hopping journey that adds frightful new flavor to the horror universe.

Cronos: The New Dawn is a lot of fun as a survival horror. While not terrifying, it is still stressful and does something unique with the genre.

Cronos: The New Dawn presents an intriguing mystery to unravel and a creepy sci-fi hellscape to explore, but its run-of-the-mill combat system prevents it from stepping out of the shadows cast by survival-horror heavyweights like Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 that clearly inspired it.

Much like the game’s creatures that assemble from the bits and bobs of the deceased on their path, Cronos: The New Dawn also amalgamates the prime cuts of Resident Evil 4, Dead Space, The Last of Us, Alan Wake, and more survival horror classics. At least the result isn't a hulking monstrosity that I want to kill with fire. However, despite traces of genuinely inventive ideas, it's a flawed patchwork that just about gets away with competently imitating all of its absorbed parts.

Despite nearly sharing its name with a joyful Mario squid enemy, developer Bloober Team makes horror games almost exclusively, but its track record is spotty. Its last game, however, the 2024 remake of Silent Hill 2, was met with nearly universal acclaim. The positivity surrounding that game inspired confidence in Cronos: The New Dawn, and while there are some clear lessons the team has taken away from its time in foggy scary town, Bloober’s time-travel horror game is not without its pain p...

Cronos: The New Dawn is a fantastic new survival horror IP that brings its own spin. A story elevated by some fantastic environmental storytelling, impactful sound design, and challenging combat makes this a title hard to put down.

Cronos: The New Dawn is Bloober Team’s attempt to prove they're more than just remake specialists. Did they succeed? You betcha.

If Silent Hill 2 Remake and Dead Space had a baby it would be Chronos: The New Dawn and that is a good thing. A great survival horror experience with amazing atmosphere, challenging and tense gameplay, and a story that kept me hooked throughout.

Cronos: The New Dawn is a fantastic addition to the survival horror genre, dishing out both survival and horror in equal measures. It can be overwhelming at first, but your confidence improves as you progress thanks to how The Bloober Team has designed the world and its environments. It also piques your curiosity in subtle ways, making you scour the world for snippets of information. Poignant moments in its narrative, shared with the people you meet, make its story a very nuanced exploration of how human greed can have the most devastating consequences, as does the tendency to attempt covering up one's mistakes. This is a game that I would recommend to anybody looking for a meaty story, and a challenging gameplay loop.

Following the release of several horror games to a reception ranging from positive to mildly negative, sometimes due to how particular sensitive themes were addressed, Polish developer Bloober Team has risen considerably in the estimation of survival horror fans for the excellent work the studio has done with the Silent Hill 2 remake, a faithful adaptation of the classic Konami game enhanced by some modern features that make it a joy to play. While the Polish studio is set to continue this fruitful collaboration with the development of the remake of the first entry in the series, Bloober Team is also expanding its own properties with new titles, the first of them being Cronos: The New Dawn. Right from the game's reveal, it was made clear how this game would be a threshold release for the studio, moving past the narrative-focused experiences such as the Layers of Fear series and The Medium to delve deeper into the survival horror genre. And while it is definitely a little flawed, there's no denying that Bloober Team created a solid game that becomes rather engaging once things really get going.

Cronos: The New Dawn is filled to the brim with potential, which ultimately falls short in how it executes all of its concepts. While there is a great story foundation and some interesting mechanics, the lackluster conclusion to the narrative, combined with irritating combat, frequent glitches, poor pacing of traversal, and repetitive gameplay scenarios, makes for a product that fails to capture the quality of other entries in the genre.

Bloober Team has always been synonymous with horror, from their earliest days with Layers of Fear through to the high profile Silent Hill 2 remake. It has, however, been nearly 5 years since their last original title, the somewhat divisive The Medium, so the pressure on Cronos: The New Dawn to deliver is heightened. Can the Polish developers follow up on the success of their work on Konami’s legendary series in a story of their own devising? To do so, Cronos takes clear influences from the usual survival horror mainstays of Silent Hill and Resident Evil but there is also a large slice of Dead Space, from character design to gameplay mechanics.

Cronos: The New Dawn has great horror elements. It has a strong story about the dangers of a pandemic. The world is visually gorgeous and interesting to explore. The problem with the game is its gameplay often gets in the way of its horror. The player aims, shoots, slowly lumbers around, searches for keys, and reads notes. It’s survival horror 101. Very basic gameplay. Cronos: The New Dawn works great as a visual horror feast. It plays mechanically solid, but can get also get so frustrating that it breaks its horror experience. All in all, Cronos: The New Dawn’s strengths, but it above the average survival horror game. Any fans of the genre looking for more should definitely give it a try. The game matches the quality of Bloober Team’s pre-Silent Hill 2 efforts, but, unfortunately, they’re still going to be looking to create a masterpiece amongst their original IPs.

Fantastic art direction can’t save Cronos: The New Dawn from its boring gameplay, and awkward story.

After the success of Silent Hill 2, Bloober Team returns with its most ambitious original property yet.

Cronos: The New Dawn is a culmination of over a decade of experience from Bloober Team. Through the years, the studio has risen to the challenge, and this trend continues with its newest franchise, which is a mix of some of the biggest survival horror games to exist. The campaign is brutal and challenges you to survive in a bleak, failed world where a virus has wreaked havoc in Eastern Europe, and the sci-fi elements present a fun twist on the formula.

"Cronos: The New Dawn is the best new horror IP I have played in over a decade. This game not only provides a gripping narrative in an unapologetically Polish setting, but it also offers top-tier survival horror that keeps the player feeling vulnerable throughout. Combat is cumbersome in the best way, the game is visually impressive with sublime sound design, and it's a rare example of a game that gets better with each passing moment. A lack of a dedicated difficulty mode will ruffle a few feathers, the game isn't without its cheap moments, and I'll admit that I wish it were scarier across the board. But, in a genre where established games rule the roost, Bloober Team has just muscled into the conversation, as Cronos is good enough to rub shoulders with the horror greats."

Cronos: The New Dawn is proof Bloober Team can make exceptional horror games, with terrifying monsters and some great ideas.

Cronos: The New Dawn is an excellent survival horror game, offering legitimately tough battles, scary monsters, and some intense resource management. Its retro futuristic 1980s Poland setting creates a combination of brutalist architecture and function over fashion tech that creates a unique setting. The narrative mystery delivers on exciting twists and revelations, although the questions I wanted answered by the end were not the questions Cronos: The New Dawn wanted to answer.

Cronos: The New Dawn is a remnant of the legacy of survival horror. It takes whispers from two titans of the genre and blends them with its own ideas. It would have benefited hugely from ruthless editing in areas, but remains a masterclass in world building and a perfect balance of tension and release.

Bloober Team is on a roll. After last year’s smash hit Silent Hill 2 Remake, they have Cronos: The New Dawn, and it’s even better. I’ve spent roughly 15 hours or so total with the game, beating it once and starting up a new game +. This trippy, surreal survival-horror title is one of the best I’ve played in the genre.