I am such a hopeless survival horror fanboy and I will happily admit it before I even start talking about Cronos: The New Dawn. This is exactly the sort of game that gets my attention straight away, a strange mix of bleak sci fi, 1980s Poland, time rifts and brutalist misery and I could not wait to get stuck in. The best part is that once I started playing I knew I was in for something that was rough around the edges, sometimes clunky as hell, but also absolutely dripping in atmosphere, which is exactly what I want from this genre.
The world of Cronos is split between a ruined future wasteland and the crumbling concrete blocks of the 1980s, which is already a mood I can get behind. I have said before in my review of the Silent Hill 2 Remake that horror hits hardest when the environment is a character in itself. Cronos understands that. Walking through abandoned stairwells or crossing a dead square while the wind howls genuinely creeped me out more than any monster design ever could. It is bleak, it is oppressiveand it feels like it has weight.
That is not to say the monsters do not do their job. They are bloody horrible. Misshapen things that lunge at you with no grace at all, which might sound sloppy but actually adds to the fear. The combat with them is awkward and clunky and normally I would call that a flaw, but this is survival horror so I just end up shrugging and grinning like an idiot. It is the same reason I forgave the messiness in Atomfall. Sometimes jank gives the game character. If the fights in Cronos felt silky smooth then it would be a completely different vibe and I honestly think the scrappy awkwardness makes it scarier. You are not supposed to feel like a hero, you are supposed to feel like you are one mistake away from being ripped apart and Cronos gets that.
The big mechanic everyone has been talking about is the burning of bodies. Kill an enemy and if you just leave it lying there then there is a good chance it will merge with others into some absolute nightmare of an abomination. The only way to stop it is to burn the corpse. On paper it sounds simple, in practice it is tense and fiddly and sometimes completely fucking terrifying. I cannot tell you how many times I thought an enemy was finished, wandered off and then heard the awful sound of something merging behind me. I would swear under my breath, spin around too late and suddenly I am facing a monster twice the size with half the ammo I need. It is frustrating, yes, but it is the right kind of frustrating. Survival horror is supposed to get under your skin like that.
Ammo itself is scarce. Health even more so. This is where a lot of people will throw their controllers and complain, but I love it. There is nothing better than creeping through a hallway with one bullet left, genuinely debating whether to save it or use it on the shadow up ahead. Cronos constantly puts you in those situations. It feels cruel at times, but that cruelty is the whole point. Without that desperation, there is no tension and without tension there is no horror.
It does have problems that are harder to forgive. The pacing in the middle can drag, with long stretches of wandering and backtracking that feel like padding. I had a few crashes, which are never fun and some animation bugs that broke the immersion for a moment. If I was being completely cold and objective I would say this is a seven out of ten game, solid and moody but definitely flawed. The thing is, I am not objective. I never am when it comes to survival horror.
Its the same shit I said in my review of the System Shock Remake. That game had plenty of rough edges but it still left me sitting in the dark with the hairs on my arms standing up and I knew then that atmosphere matters more than polish. Cronos gives me that same buzz. Even when the combat is a mess or the story beats wobble, I am still fully invested because the mood is right. The sound design, the bleak environments, the sheer nerve shredding dread of being low on ammo while an abomination shuffles somewhere in the distance. That is the stuff I play for.
So yes, if you look at Cronos purely as a piece of software it is flawed. The combat could be smoother, the bugs need patching, the pacing could be tighter. But when you look at it as an entry into the grand old tradition of survival horror, it makes perfect sense. This is a genre where Resident Evil tank controls became beloved, where Silent Hill’s stilted voice acting turned into cult charm, where janky animations are part of the fun. Cronos has plenty of those rough edges and I cannot help but forgive them all.
I laughed, I swore, I died repeatedly and I came back for more every time. That to me is a sign of a good horror game. It does not matter if it is perfect, it matters if it gets inside your head and makes you feel vulnerable. Cronos does that and for all its faults I will be recommending it to every other survival horror sicko like me.
Score: 7 out of 10. That is the sensible number, the one that acknowledges the problems….
But because I am a shameless fanboy and because survival horror always gets me by the throat no matter what, my real score is a 9 out of 10.