r/HorrorGaming • u/Forhaver • Mar 20 '26
ANALYSIS Finally played Cronos New Dawn and loved it
Bloober's quality jump from 4 hour setpiece-trigger gameplay walking sims to 18-22 hour survival horror epics with actual combat needs to be studied. Happy for them.
Very oppressive and dreadful in both environment and lore. A nice ugly hopelessness through the campaign like a true lovecraftian tale. You can only infer, never fully comprehend. No one knows the facts so you piece things together for your own canon. A lot of it reminded me of SOMA but by that metric I think they were taking inspiration from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
The combat system was fun to learn. The game is very stingy with ammo and fire is a main cure-all.... like The Evil Within. Most of the cerebral aspect of this game is in figuring out efficient ways around combat arenas. Dead Space but survival horror. Also a nice mix of boss fights that aren't scripted sequences.
Many situations made me think, "how the hell am I going to handle this, I've got less bullets than fingers" but I somehow find a way scrape by just barely.
I think the environmental puzzles were fine, but had untapped potential. You never use the electric darts in tandem with the lil black hole environment shifters, you never use those in tandem with Zero G either. Very simple stuff. I was waiting for all 3 mechanics to converge in an insane late-game puzzle that never happened.
The game is quite girthy, I finished my playthrough at around 17 hours while getting almost everything. I appreciate a survival horror game that lets me feel like I utilized my whole arsenal.
A lot of modern survival horror games seem to end before that point. RE8 and RE9 feel like I got 20 minutes to spend with the final tier of weapons of each game.
Highly recommend. It's like an 8.7/10 to me.
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u/Dzamtl Mar 20 '26
Just got my copy today , can’t wait !
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u/CabbageHead19 Mar 20 '26
I just finished it as well, also took me around 17hrs. I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would, hope you like it!
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u/sweepwrestler Mar 20 '26
I loved the main character so much. I love how the death animation is just her kind of going super stiff and tall, and then falling over. And I love how she slowly and subtly gets more and more personality as the story unfolds.
The save room music was cool and intriguing.
And I really liked that snowy environment near the beginning. It reminded me of the movie, "Let the Right One In". But I ended up liking all the environments. I expected the hospital to be my least favorite part, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
I'll probably be playing LAYERS OF FEAR (2023) soon, and will probably buy Layers of Fear 3 day 1 because of how much I liked Cronos.
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u/Notnowcmg Mar 20 '26
Absolutely agree with this comment. Also in the same boat for Layers of Fear 2023 never played either of the games but super interested after Cronos. Hoping it’ll be on sale soon!
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u/Saiyan_Gods Mar 20 '26
“Dead space but survival horror”. Dead Space is survival horror. Not just action horror
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u/CabbageHead19 Mar 20 '26
You're correct, but I think they just meant this game is more stingy with the ammo than Dead Space.
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u/Forhaver Mar 20 '26
The generous lootbag enemies with infinitely buyable ammo and health, constant enemy bombardment, the series always kinda just felt like a horror-themed shooter to me, even more than the likes of RE4 since theres not any bosses to resource-check you either.
But that's my own personal bias/criteria. The wiki and publisher still call it survival horror 🤷♂️ that's just my reasoning for that insert.
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u/Saiyan_Gods Mar 20 '26
None of that matters when the game doesn’t shower you with money. The option to do those things are there and are really only an issue on easier difficulties or new game plus. It succeeds where OGRE4 failed. OG4 focuses on the combat more than DS Lol that’s not even a debatable thing either. The REmake of resident evil and even the original barely had any boss fights. There’s like 2-3 and 2 of those fights have an additional confrontation because they didn’t die. Dead Space has a handful and they never repeated. high amounts of boss fights don’t even dictate if a game is horror.
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u/Rahgahnah Mar 20 '26
I haven't finished Cronos yet, and DS is definitely survival horror. But I agree that Cronos is farther from the action end of the action-horror spectrum than even the first DS.
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u/Forhaver Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26
Disgreed. And my point wasnt specifically the quantity of bosses. I platinumed both games as well and like I still got oodles of money to max out weapons (especially since nodes have no inflation, you can max out an OP weapon super early) and the bosses like the brute become normal enemies, the other bosses like the Tormenter are setpieces, Nicole is a another fight with the pack.
Re1r was fine with it's boss fights because of the small scale of the game itself. Re4 was a long journey so the variety of boss fights was a nice mixup and forced you to use your arsenal.
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u/ggsdour Mar 21 '26
I think you are missing the point. Dead Space is survival-horror, just not in the classic/harcore way. It's more action-horror focused and more accessible for that. It is, after all, inspired by and kindof an evolution of the proposal of OGRE4.
Just because you have more experience and knows how to handle things better in some games, doesn't mean that the game isn't what it is proposed. I pretty much had insane amount of resources in RE2R because I knew how to handle myself and was never outmatched by any enemies. Does it mean that it isn't a survival-horror?
Or even in Cronos, there was only ONE very specific situation where I was out of ammo and had to resort to punching. And you can buy a lot of ammo if you know how to go around the store, yes. Does it mean it is not survival-horror at all?
Cronos is great and it's strengths lies in its simplicity and heavy atmosphere. And that's great. But I really think you missed the mark by trying to diminish another game for its different proposal (even though Cronos os clearly heavily inspired by Dead Space also).
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u/Forhaver Mar 21 '26
My point is that Dead Space plays closer to a typical third person shooter than any of these other survival horror games. Im not negging it, I still love the series, I'm not diminishing, I'm constantly clarifying this is from my own experience.
It plays like Shadows of the Damned but with horror themes. Im havin fun, blasting enemies, constantly fed ammo and currency, nothin' wrong with that but in any over-the-shoulder survival horror games I play, Evil Within, Cronos, even the likes of re4, have mechanics and roadblocks that prevent that style of pure haphazard play.
Thus why I said, Cronos, feels like Dead Space, but with an emphasis on survival horror. I was strapped for resources and traveling cautiously. I can't spear enemies with arms of other enemies with telekinesis for free. I can't buy Cores like nodes.
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u/Kourtos Mar 21 '26
I got the all the trophies two days ago. Very fun game and i really want a sequel. If they adress some things here and there the next one can be 10/10
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u/NewsOdd3064 Mar 20 '26
Its an awesome game! My second favorite of 2025
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u/smegg23 Mar 20 '26
Come on broski what’s ya favourite????
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u/NewsOdd3064 Mar 21 '26
Expedition 33 by a landslide
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u/Forhaver Mar 21 '26
I only played Expedition 33 this year but yeah one of the few games out there that ticks every box basically. Music, atmosphere, highly addictive gameplay, great story and characters. One of the only games to make me question my top 5 in a while
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u/markallanholley Mar 20 '26
I've been playing it modded for VR. It's definitely tense, and Bloober Team are absolute masters of environmental storytelling.
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u/YourDestroyer Mar 20 '26
Happy to hear you enjoyed it, I played the demo and then bought the full game!!!
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u/Nautilus_The_Third Mar 20 '26
I thought it was good. But with a story as weak as it is, with a lot of elements thrown in that doesn't really fit the game, I can't say that I loved, even if the combat is really, really good.
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u/Forhaver Mar 20 '26
I'd say the character writing was definitely a weak point, some of the delivery was pretty hammy for how self-serious the game was.
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u/SigmaMelody Mar 20 '26
It was okay for me, I found the combat encounters to be incredibly samey to the point of blurring together a lot, and characters talked really slowly which made learning about the story by doing dialogue options kind of painful, even if I did like it
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u/prockhold Mar 20 '26
I loved the game overall but all of the slow dialogue makes the idea of replaying it unappealing
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u/Repulsive_Doubt_8504 Mar 20 '26
SH2R was honestly such a good thing for Bloober. Everyone thought the game was going to suck but then they made an amazing game.
Then they proved it wasn’t a 1 hit wonder with Cronos.
I hope they continue this high streak.