Cronos: The New Dawn

An ambitious yet flawed survival horror. Its great atmosphere and setting are marred by bugs, repetitive enviromnents, and more bugs. A shame.

While it's hard to ignore some of its flaws, Cronos: The New Dawn is a game that was made with love, and that love is contagious. The plot and time travel elements fit together coherently to offer us an enjoyable story and universe in a setting that is relatively atypical for Western Europeans like us. While the level design is a little too predictable to serve as a solid horror springboard, the same goes for the good idea of merging monsters, which remains too far in the background to be decisive. In reality, it is mainly the balancing act of resource management that will be the real source of anxiety and fear, where every missed shot can cost us dearly.

Cronos The New Dawn delivers gripping tension and atmosphere, but its slow pace and technical and narrative issues hinder immersion.

Cronos is a perfectly acceptable survival horror that looks astonishing at times and has an engaging plot (albeit a very confusing one) to ensure players reach the end. That said, there isn't a lot here that hasn't been seen in other survival games before it, and the combination of annoying enemy AI and no real difficulty settings mean some players will have a frustrating time of things.

The New Dawn is essentially a middling survival horror game that’s just barely salvaged by a disconcerting narrative. Ultimately, the horror that lingers most here is the sense that you can get your fix of gory, fleshy delights in a hundred places more effective than they’re presented here. Socialist ecclesiastical horror is a unique and valuable foundation for a game, and Bloober Team knows that, but as The New Dawn stands, its combat doesn’t prove the narrative’s worth.

Bloober Team focused primarily on combat, which, due to several frustrating design choices, is more irritating than satisfying. However, the game excels in terms of its world, music and atmosphere — these elements are sensational.