Cronos: The New Dawn feels like a combination of every other survival horror game I've played before it, which isn't always a good thing

In the crudest terms possible, Cronos: The New Dawn is a survival horror game about going back in time to steal things from the past. I say this because its developers, Bloober Team also seem to have gone back in time and stolen almost every aspect of Cronos’ gameplay from past survival horror titles and more.

Cronos: The New DawnDeveloper: Bloober TeamPublisher: Bloober TeamPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out TBC 2025 on PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X/S

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but, when there seems to be only one real glimmer of originality in here (and a great one at that), it does mean that I could never shake the ‘been there, don’t that’ feeling during a recent hands-on session with the first couple of hours of the game.

This over-familiarity isn’t always a negative though. Cronos is a dark, moody game with a deliciously creepy ambiance to it. This vibe is most comparable to that of Returnal and this is especially true for the player character, known as the Traveller, whose space suit-muffled voice sounds incredibly similar to Returnal’s Selene during the moments when they ponder out loud about their predicament.

The sound design is cracking too, with sci-fi bleeps, bloops and whirrs coming from otherworldly machinery, metallic creaks and crunches ringing out as you stomp through the world, monstrous squelches and screams erupting from the merging mutants, and all of this accompanied by an anxiety-inducing, heart beat-like pulse that plays out in the background.

This, combined with some beautifully haunting scenery that goes from dilapidated, crumbling apartment blocks and dusty shop interiors, frozen in time by an apocalypse, through to haunting caverns and canyons with walls made out of twisted mounds of human flesh and back again, gives the game a tone that’s almost as unique as the ever-so-slightly penis-y design of the Traveller’s helmet.