After Silent Hill 2, Cronos: The New Daybreak Would possibly Full Bloober Group’s Redemption Arc

When the Silent Hill 2 remake proved to be so good, some had been gradual to present Bloober Group a lot credit score, citing the way it had a robust blueprint to construct from. It is true that Konami’s landmark authentic is nearly as good a place to begin as any, and Bloober Group’s earlier works had been usually met with blended critiques at best–the group hasn’t shied away from its historical past. To me, it was nonetheless a tall activity to reside as much as a sport that so many maintain so pricey. However for those who depend your self amongst those that are ready to see if the Polish group can do it once more, and with one thing completely of its personal creation, Cronos: The New Daybreak is beginning to appear like that sport.

Again in October of final 12 months, Bloober Group instructed me that it is most likely at all times going to be a studio that makes horror video games, and at Summer season Sport Fest Play Days 2025, the group made it clear that it needed to seek out its personal gameplay hook with its subsequent undertaking. It checked out Lifeless House’s fight that drove gamers to chop off limbs and Alan Wake’s manner of stripping enemies of their “shields” utilizing gentle sources, and it knew it did not need its subsequent sport to be a easy point-and-shoot horror sport. From that steerage, the “merge system” was born.

As a result of the time-traveling horror story is about each earlier than and after an epidemic wipes out a lot of humanity, the locations you discover are sometimes residence to a large number of useless our bodies. Issues fell aside quick, and what’s left of individuals have usually been morphed into “orphans,” the sport’s identify for its enemy monsters. These grotesque brutes come in numerous sizes and shapes. Some are armored, others shoot acidic puke at you. Some fling slimy, crimson tentacles towards your face.

Any considered one of these could be formidable, however the sport’s merge system permits enemies to mix right into a single being, stack a number of skills without delay, and basically change into boss battles of the participant’s personal negligence. To do that, enemies will merely transfer towards a physique and soak up it, inheriting its skills. The sport’s tagline, “Do not allow them to merge,” says all of it. Wojciech Piejko, the sport’s co-director who led me on the hands-off demo, jokingly made an analogous level as he purposely allowed the monsters to develop for the sake of the demo. “This isn’t how you need to play this sport.”

Piejko instructed me that in testing the sport, the group initially did not put any restrictions on what number of occasions enemies may merge, giving start to towering monstrosities that grew to become too huge to slot in doorways at occasions. Now, the sport could have some restrictions on that system, like enemies that do not merge, and naturally, correct boss battles are sometimes siloed in a managed atmosphere. However the sport’s manner of permitting enemies to seep into each other and create super-enemies instantly felt just like the group had discovered the hook it was on the lookout for.

Gamers may stop these mergers from occurring by swiftly killing enemies, or much more proactively, by burning our bodies earlier than they reanimated, however your flamethrower, which you discharge like a round area-of-effect assault with a button press, requires gas, and it is a horror sport, so you possibly can guess that is a troublesome commodity to return by. From that, powerful moment-to-moment selections will likely be made: Do you utilize the flamethrower to preemptively dispatch the potential enemies earlier than they have been reborn, or do you save the flamethrower gas to present your self some respiration room in a combat in your life?

Past the merge system, I noticed a sport that was additional alongside in improvement than I might anticipated, provided that it was solely introduced lower than a 12 months in the past. The gunplay appeared tough in the best way it ought to, with headshots arduous to tug off on enemies–even when these enemies had a number of heads. The exploration was filled with basic survival-horror tropes that I admittedly have not grown sick of: locked gates needing boltcutters, environmental puzzles that pressure affordable definitions of lived-in areas, and even a protected room with its personal piece within the soundtrack. Notes and audio logs stuffed within the backstory to a purposely confounding story impressed by Netflix’s Darkish. The third-person survival-horror gameplay actually stands on the shoulders of video games and tales which have come earlier than it.

Though they had been developed in tandem for some time and by totally different groups inside the studio, it looks like the teachings Bloober Group discovered from Silent Hill 2 are on show. Its time-twisting story has me actually to see extra, and the combo of survival-horror fight and exploration, whereas acquainted, appears to be like actually good from this distance. I at all times err on the aspect of warning after I’ve seen solely a portion of a a lot bigger sport I am going to play in full later, however I additionally really feel compelled to state that Cronos: The New Daybreak may very properly cement a brand new, extra hopeful narrative round this studio.