After a few hours with Bloober Team's Silent Hill 2 remake, it became clear to me that the oft-derided developer had made something special, and the conversation about the studio was about to change. After a few hours with Bloober Team's next game, the sci-fi horror Cronos: The New Dawn, questions about the studio's capabilities are virtually an afterthought for me. I'm no longer wondering if the team can set and achieve lofty goals. Cronos has impressed in the two hours I've played it so far, and though I still have questions and will reserve my final judgment for the full game later this year, it's clear the team has found its secret weapon in how it has designed Cronos' combat gameplay.When I previously saw Cronos during a hands-off showing in June, I likened its "merge system" of combat encounters to Dead Space, only played almost in reverse. Rather than strategically "cut off their limbs," like the famous bloody wall scrawl once instructed Isaac Clarke to do, Cronos delivers its own desperate plea: "Don't let them merge!" Enemies can absorb their defeated comrades, creating towering monstrosities that may well combine multiple classes into something more threatening.For example, if one of the stalking husks of biomass that has blade-like appendages merges with one of the others that spews toxic bile at you, well, now you've got yourself a third, worse thing, offering the most horrific of both worlds. Sometimes the stakes are heightened from the get-go, with no shortage of motionless husks lying around any momentary battlefield you might find yourself in, and it may cross your mind to first burn away those buffs with a flamethrower--and maybe with a nearby fuel recharger, you can even accomplish this at times.Continue Reading at GameSpot