Ahh, Polish horror games, not exactly pushing the envelope, but regarding the intense and thick atmosphere, pure survival horror design, and resource management, it really holds up. A lot of the other things, eh not so much. After Silent Hill 2, you can't simply fail.
To me, Cronos is one of those games I might fondly remember as time passes by. It borrows many of the established gameplay mechanics of early survival horrors like Resident Evil, Dead Space, and the later Amnesia titles. I really did have fun, it's a pretty well curated experience for a pretty semi-linear game, but not entirely perfect to escape some of its problems.
- Truth is horrifying at times
Somewhere in a post-apocalypse future of Poland, in a Twelve Monkey kind of situation, one of the travelers has to take rorschach test and answer particle questions leading to where the games take you later on. She now has to salvage parts from the others who are missing.
From here, it relies on this eerie silence, decrepit state of civilization, haunting rooms of people who had to isolate themselves from, then it gets more screwed up as it seems reality is at complete disarray as laws of physics no longer apply. Almost like the planet pretty much cracked in half, and then there's the eldritch abominations lurking about.
It's simple errands, as you have to look around places from apartment houses, stores, the streets, and claustrophobic breeding areas full of terrors. You are taken to interesting narrative points, seeing flashing vignettes of the story characters, the good visuals, amazing level design, and have to piece together so many things. Which involves seeing a lot of grueling things.
The game takes you to Poland because it takes place a few years before the USSR broke off. People were still struggling to be a socialist country for the collective Slavic cause, and now they're stuck being under quarantine while dealing with a deadly plague.
And you have to travel back and forth in time as well, collecting people's essence to merge with your collective of, ok this part is where it deviates from the familiar tropes I'm used to. It becomes a smorgasbord of ideas from various Sci-Fi with the themes revolving around the isolation and government control by a communist regime. Leaving you to figure the Sci-Fi part out, as it's too ambitious to sometimes land its foot and often times not enough to substantiate.
So I just focused on shooting the fleshy ex-human monsters, how was it? Terrifying, exhilarating, and kind of frustrating often. This game absolutely requires you to be frugal with your resources and smart about how to use them. Often times it'll give you clues, but other times you'll have to take chances with how things will turn out.
You can punch, stomp, and your basic pistol will fire rounds, holding them will make each shot powerful, but you have to steady your aim while these things move. Enemy design varies, and even if you kill them, they'll come back out, there's no way to completely destroy their bodies unless you have your ground torch, which is very limited to use and even craft.
- Navigating broken worlds
Cronos makes sure you have plenty to do to explore while messing around with the broken terrain by manipulating time warps. Sometimes can even be used at combat in case situations do escalate at times. Other times you'll be walking upside down on floors that float.
As you progress further in the game, you'll find cores that increase inventory spaces, suit armor, you'll have to spend energy to upgrade some of the weapons too. Including a shotgun that also charges up and is useful for shooting wider groups of infected. Plus, easier on the ammo as you'll need parts to craft a number of things to use them carefully.
The world immersion is done well too, audio logs and newspapers, diaries and such tell people's story around the grand conspiracies of the contamination. Sound design is absolutely stellar, I should know, I played Silent Hill 2 with my AKG K371.
Nothing needs to be said about the visuals, they did an amazing job of using UE5 to bring many catastrophic places to life. Unfortunately, it has all the same problems that their prior games did, too. Which is ironic, considering they've worked on Unreal for so many games.
I also have a couple of nitpicks with the gameplay, and that it is pretty derivative to Dead Space including the creature, their weak points, and environment design, there are still unique aspects that make it hold up including how they're designed.
Had to fight creepy crawlies surprise attacking me out of sandy ground while I scavenge for resources. Oh yeah, you get to pet cats too, at least some reprieve exists. Also, pretty aware that most people aren't into horror games, and probably will skip this, but I would ask if you could, indulge in it as we need more developers to be incentivized trying.
Above screenshots and GIFs are from personal recordings only
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