Since 2016's Layers of Fear, Bloober Team has been trying to establish itself as a premiere horror game developer. The studio's output has been hit or miss, with most of Bloober Team's games earning mixed reviews until 2024's Silent Hill 2 remake. Horror game fans will undoubtedly be more excited about new Bloober Team projects like Cronos: The New Dawn than they were before in the wake of the Silent Hill 2 remake's success, but they will also have higher standards. Unfortunately, Cronos: The New Dawn does not live up to the ridiculously high bar set by the Silent Hill 2 remake, and it is overall more in line with the studio's earlier projects.
Cronos: The New Dawn is a sci-fi horror game where players take on the role of the armored, time-traveling "Traveler." In the alternate-history of Cronos: The New Dawn, humanity has been effectively wiped out by a bizarre plague that transforms them into twisted creatures known as Orphans. The Traveler, and others like her, are tasked with traveling back in time to "extract" the "essences" of important people before they're killed or become Orphans themselves. It's an utterly fascinating concept, though the execution does leave a lot to be desired. The premise of Cronos: The New Dawn has a lot of potential, but the actual narrative is not exciting or interesting, with bland, one-note characters and a lack of emotional weight to the cutscenes. Its allusions to the COVID-19 pandemic are also not subtle and can be distracting.
The time-traveling gimmick is also not used to its full potential, though when it does come into play, it's great. Think of the time-travel as bouncing between the "real" world and the Otherworld in Silent Hill 2. It lets players see certain areas from different perspectives - one version is utterly destroyed by the cataclysm that took over the world and the other is moments before disaster. This version of the world is more put-together, but there are still horrific and deadly threats lurking around every corner.
Don't Let Them Merge
Another interesting concept that is slightly undercooked in Cronos: The New Dawn is the "merging" system. The Orphans, which look like slimey humanoids with tentacles for the most part, can absorb corpses to evolve into more dangerous versions of themselves, complete with armor that makes them tougher to kill and more dangerous attacks that make them a far more legitimate threat.
An enemy successfully merging in Cronos: The New Dawn is seriously bad news for The Traveler, as it means using a lot more resources than would have otherwise been necessary to put them down. Unfortunately, the merging mechanic doesn't hit like it should because the game doesn't strike a good balance with it. Either players can easily run up and smack an enemy out of the merging animation, or they will be too overwhelmed with the sheer number of monsters in any given section, and so it becomes aggravating instead of tense and scary.
Anyone going into Cronos: The New Dawn expecting to be scared will likely be disappointed. The game attempts some jump scares, but there is nothing about it that's eerie or unnerving. That's partly because Cronos: The New Dawn is going for a more action-oriented approach than a classic survival-horror game.
Its main source of inspiration seems to be Dead Space, from The Traveler's bulky armor to how she aggressively stomps boxes for loot to even how the monsters look. But where Dead Space weaponry is brutal and effective, Cronos: The New Dawn's weapons lack punch, even when using charged shots. Enemies are bullet sponges, especially when they merge, and it all adds up to Cronos: The New Dawn combat feeling like a clunkier, worse version of Dead Space.
The most annoying enemy in Cronos: The New Dawn are these things that stick to walls and grab The Traveler with their tentacles. These enemies can not effectively be dodged and so must be dealt with, but there are certain sections of the game where the volume of them goes a little overboard and slows things down too much.
Cronos: The New Dawn combat is potentially the least interesting thing about the game, so it's a shame that it's such a frequent focus. Players are often funneled into rooms where it's impossible to get out without killing everything in sight, with some of these sections dragging on for too long. Boss fights are also longer than they need to be, and some of them repeat throughout the game, which makes it all a little too repetitive. There's nothing particularly offensive about Cronos: The New Dawn combat, but there's nothing particularly fun about it either.
Cronos Doesn't Stray Far from the Established Survival-Horror Formula
When players aren't busy dealing with Cronos: The New Dawn's serviceable but ultimately uninteresting combat, they will be spending their time exploring the environment, looting ammo, and finding key items. Cronos: The New Dawn sticks close to the established survival-horror framework, but in an especially linear way, so players never really get lost.
Like classic survival-horror games, Cronos: The New Dawn players have limited inventory slots to work with. New slots can be unlocked by upgrading the suit using special cores that are hidden throughout the game, but those also take up a slot. Key items, ammo, fuel canisters that players can use to burn enemies, healing items, and basically everything takes up a slot in Cronos: The New Dawn. This can be annoying, especially in the game's early stages, but it does force players to think critically about what they take with them. Bringing the bolt-cutters could potentially help players get into a room full of goodies, but it may mean leaving a healing item behind, and who knows what monsters might be encountered on the way?
Release the Bloober Cut
The majority of my time playing Cronos: The New Dawn was actually with an earlier build of the game vastly different from the one that launches on September 5. It was buggy and suffered from a severe lack of polish when compared to the updated version that I was eventually able to play, with disappearing doors, enemies getting stuck on objects, breakable boxes not registering, my gun disappearing, and an especially aggravating issue where it would not let me purchase something I wanted from the shop despite having the inventory space and resources to do so. I made it all the way to the final boss, but it was impossible for me to win and see the ending because the boss would disappear at random, leaving me with no other recourse but to reload an old save and try again.
This unreleased version of Cronos: The New Dawn was rough around the edges, to say the least, but it was also fascinating, in a way. The balance was way out of whack and the game couldn't decide if it wanted to be a classic-style survival-horror where resources are limited but enemies can be avoided, or an action-focused one where the idea is that players kill basically everything they come across. There wasn't enough ammo in the world to make it through, forcing me to waste precious currency on buying supplies from the shop instead of getting upgrades. I hit multiple brick walls that forced me to cheese my way through the encounters by hoping enemies would get stuck and stomping them to death for lack of resources.
Don't get me wrong. This version of Cronos: The New Dawn was not good and was, in fact, significantly worse than the final product. It felt like a miracle that I got to the end, but it would be interesting to see this absurdly difficult version of the game restored in some way, minus the aggravating bugs, of course.
Exploration and puzzle-solving get an interesting twist in Cronos: The New Dawn, with The Traveler able to manipulate objects by reversing time, like repairing a bridge, for example. For the most part, these puzzles amount to following a red line and figuring out the angle that The Traveler needs to be in order to see the orb that triggers the rewind. These puzzles could have stood to be a bit more challenging, but it's still interesting to see how each one plays it.
Once players conquer its puzzles and get to the end of the game, they can replay Cronos: The New Dawn in New Game+, which is a much-appreciated option and goes a long way in giving the game extra replay value. There's also a harder difficulty option, though survival-horror newcomers should note that there is no easy mode. The initial playthrough is the default difficulty, and while Cronos: The New Dawn isn't an impossibly difficult game, it is more challenging than most in its genre. Players who aren't careful with their ammo and do their best to kill the Orphans they come across as efficiently as possible will be in for a rough time.
Cronos Borrows Heavily from Dead Space and Other Survival-Horror Games
Cronos: The New Dawn gameplay is generic survival-horror. Players explore well-trodden environments like a spooky hospital, a spooky apartment building, and a spooky factory in a third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective while killing gimmicky monsters. This has all been done before and better, but that doesn't mean there isn't value to the experience. There are survival-horror fans hungry for a new Dead Space-style game, and the way the game features classic survival-horror tropes that have largely been abandoned by modern games may make it especially appealing to old-school genre fans.
Beating Cronos: The New Dawn takes roughly 15 hours if you take your time, but you can shave off quite a bit if you rush or are particularly good at the combat.
But one area where Cronos: The New Dawn excels is its sound design, with shrieking monsters that make fittingly disgusting noises when their sickly flesh is shot. The game gets a lot of mileage out of the PS5 DualSense controller with its sound effects as well, and there is a very interesting audio phenomenon that happens once players have collected some essences and go idle.
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.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 78 /100 Critics Rec: 77%
- Released
- September 5, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Strong Language
- Developer(s)
- Bloober Team
- Publisher(s)
- Bloober Team
WHERE TO PLAY
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror, Science Fiction, Action
- Fantastic audio design
- New Game+ and Hard Mode add replay value
- Nails the classic survival-horror feel
- Fascinating story set-up let down by a lackluster narrative
- Combat is clunky and unengaging
- Old-school tropes like a super-limited inventory and a lack of easier difficulty options limit its appeal
- Merging idea is interesting in theory but doesn't add much in practice
Cronos: The New Dawn launches September 5 for PC, PS5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series X. The Best War Games was provided with a PS5 code for this review.