Cronos: The New Dawn (Soviet Christmas Post-Apocalyptic Monster Shooter)

 

I was excited when the details of this game were dropped by Polish dev masters Bloober Team, especially since the setting was Poland in the 1980s during the Soviet period, incorporating cultural scars into the landscape of a post-apocalyptic world where time travel is real, future humans are fucked up nonentities that probably don’t have physical forms anymore (won’t spoil that one for you), and your adaptive weapons are ready to blow away mutant freaks transformed through a viral infection. Also, Communism and Socialism both suck. Sound familiar? Superficially, yes, but when you get into the real details and play of Cronos: The New Dawn, you start to see the vision, eventually realizing this is something else entirely.

   

I’ve seen some commenting that this looks like Dead Space and similar games, and this reaffirms what I said about superficial earlier. Though Cronos: The New Dawn appears like something you recognize, if you go into the play thinking that, you’re in for a wake-up call in about 10 minutes, if you’re lucky. The basic plot places you in control of a mysterious future human called the “Traveler,” who is tasked with extracting essences (basically turning humans into digital copies in your suit) of human beings from 1980s Poland when a virus caused a cataclysm that wiped out most of the human race. Still sound like something you’ve heard before? You’re not in it deep enough yet. With its introspective, philosophical ideas, Cronos: The New Dawn weaves a story of cultural trauma symbolized as disease, and its the disease angle that confronts the player’s conception of humanity (ending was a great, unexpected twist), and the supreme challenge (even on the current, easiest setting), will leave seasoned gamers in tears (though a new easy mode has been recently introduced). And did I mention this is technically a Christmas game? Yeah. I knew the impact of Soviet life was deep in the scar tissue of Polish identity, but I didn’t realize how much it hurt until I played this. Prepare thy Ivy-league mentality for a reckoning that no post-Modernist journo article can save you from.

 

Cronos: The New Dawn Official Steam

Written by Stanley, Devourer of Souls

Cronos: The New Dawn
Bloober Team (developer and publisher)
4.7 / 5