Cronos: The New Dawn reviewers say it's an 'atmospheric and uniquely introspective' survival horror outing—but it's held back by 'run-of-the-mill combat'

The last year's been a big one for Bloober Team: The Polish studio's releasing its second survival horror outing in less than 12 months. As a follow-up to the success of the Silent Hill 2 remake, Cronos: The New Dawn sees Bloober Team stretching its legs in a new setting featuring time travel, soul harvesting, and an exciting new noun for referring to zombies when just saying "zombies" feels a little passé.

With review embargoes lifting today, critics have been sharing their thoughts—and so far, our own Cronos review is among the more critical. While we eventually enjoyed the ideas explored in its time-twisting story, we found the amount of mandated zombie killing—sorry, "orphan" killing—slowed things to a slog.

Other takes, however, share a much rosier view of Nowa Huta and its post-apocalyptic charms. Here's what Cronos reviews are saying elsewhere.

"An atmospheric and uniquely introspective adventure for those who value a game's story as much as its action."

GamesRadar: 3.5 / 5

For Ashley Bardhan at GamesRadar, Cronos: The New Dawn's greatest success is its atmosphere. Despite the clear inspirations from genre landmarks like Dead Space, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill, Bardhan says the grotesque hellscape of Nowa Huta carves out its own character through scattered bits of thematic detritus like notes and environmental graffiti.

"I quickly become absorbed by this scrapbook of information—and all the meditations on the individual against the collective, personal duty against social responsibility, and whether or not these supposed opposites can coexist without the bigger fish cannibalizing the other."

As in our review, however, Bardhan says Cronos is a bit too miserly with its item and inventory slot economy for the amount of orphan slaying it expects from you: "I don't enjoy the inconvenience of The New Dawn's action as much as I appreciate the way I interpret it among the diary entries I find."

"Its run-of-the-mill combat system prevents it from stepping out of the shadows cast by survival-horror heavyweights."

IGN: 7 / 10

At IGN, reviewer Tristan Ogilvie says Cronos hews a bit too closely to the Dead Space model—even if you're trying to keep enemies from squelching together instead of hacking them apart. "Cronos still manages to deliver a solid slab of spooky mutant-slaying action," Ogilvie says, "but a new dawn for survival horror it most certainly is not."

Like Bardhan at GamesRadar, Ogilvie offers the most praise for The New Dawn's environments and storytelling, even if there's "a noticeable amount of padding" that overstays its welcome.

In what's starting to become a theme, he says Cronos stumbles most in its combat, which fails to find a way to make its mutant mulching a compelling pastime. Compared with the "wonderfully dynamic" combat in Dead Space, Ogilvie says "Cronos is disappointingly one-note."

Sounds a bit lower than a 7 to me, but numbers are a tricky thing.

"An excellent, thoughtful premise that feels dark and dangerous, but does a poor job of executing on its promising sci-fi ideas."

Game Informer: 7.75 / 10

Over at Game Informer, Kyle Hilliard describes Cronos like a respectable workhorse of survival horror. It's not showy. It's not flashy. But it does what you need.

"The gameplay is familiar without ever straying too far out of the bounds of the genre, and I appreciated it for that," Hilliard says. "I was rarely surprised by the task at hand, but as a fan of survival horror, I welcomed the reliable and generally well-balanced gameplay."

Hilliard lands more positively on Cronos combat, which he says "feels pretty good." Instead, his biggest complaint is its jumpscare stings, some of which apparently damage you enough to kill you if you're not topped up on health.

"These always frustrated me because many are unavoidable, and I would die, and then the horror would evaporate on the second attempt because I knew what to look for," Hilliard says. "I signed up for a horror game, and I don’t mind getting jump-scared, but it shouldn’t always kill or nearly kill me. At that point, it’s more frustrating than frightening."

The story, he says, didn't land. "I was left shrugging my shoulders by the end," he says.

"Well-orchestrated tension, alien imagery, and rock-solid survival horror loop mostly make up for its lackluster climax."

Endless Mode: 7.9 / 10

At Endless Mode, reviewer Elijah Gonzalez calls Cronos a capable following act from Bloober Team. Out of the reviews I've read, his descriptions of his weapon juggling strategy makes the most convincing pitch for The New Dawn's combat.

"Perhaps most interesting is how your limited ammo encourages innovation, setting up situations where you kite a group of Orphans until they’re clumped together, before turning on a dime towards to stun them all with flames before finishing them with a shotgun," Gonzalez writes.

However, while he celebrates Bloober Team's restraint in spacing out its orphan encounters with stretches of silent, surreal tension, Gonzalez says the Cronos story doesn't amount to much. "Despite posing some big questions, the story doesn’t have much to say in the face of the end, whether that’s the end of humanity, the end of the Soviet dream, or the end of a single life," he writes.