What We’ve Played at Gamescom, Day Three: Cronos: The New Dawn, LEGO Batman, and More

By Elijah Gonzalez | August 22, 2025 | 4:57pm

Video Games Features Gamescom

Gamescom marches on, and on Day 3, we got to look at even more video games. Who knew there were so many!

Cronos: The New Dawn

After Bloober Team got back in many people’s good graces with Silent Hill 2, there’s quite a bit of speculation about their next game, Cronos: The New Dawn, and if it will continue this goodwill or return to the more controversial aspects of their previous games. My brief time with their latest didn’t remotely answer these questions, as it mostly consisted of blasting various hell monsters. Thankfully, this hell monster-blasting was quite well tuned, featuring a few cool concepts that at least slightly differentiate it from its clearest point of inspiration, Dead Space. Here, the writhing meat creatures that you fight have a quirk: they can merge with their killed allies to become more powerful. You can stop this by hitting a weak spot or using fire, but that’s often more easily said than done as you’re getting chased by screeching abominations. The main source of torching foes is through your fire burst ability, which can blast back enemies and shut down merges. Essentially it’s a get out of jail free card, making it a valuable resource. Other nuances include the fact that you can charge your weapons for better effects, basically encouraging you to stare down these encroaching horrors for as long as you can stomach before letting loose. Tying it all together is uncomfortable sound design that made it feel like I was being encircled from all sides, ensuring that these scuffles were as tense as you’d want them to be. While we’ll have to wait and see if its storytelling matches its survival horror loop, at least its shootouts are appropriately tense.

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

So it turns out that the upcoming LEGO Batman game plays sort of like a spiritual successor to the Batman Arkham series. That’s pretty neat. Here you play as the Dark Knight, fighting crime in an open world Gotham where you can smoothly transition between using your grappling hook, gliding, and driving the Batmobile through this dumpster fire of a city. And while that’s similar to what came before, the combat is even more directly evocative of the Arkham games. Just like in those, you flow between punching, countering, and jumping over shielded enemies in slightly simplified but still largely satisfying battles. That said, there are plenty of differentiating factors, too. For instance, the game supports co-op, and in the demo I played, you could switch between Bats and Jim Gordon, each with their own abilities. And being a LEGO game, there was obviously much more of a focus on humor than what’s found in most mainstream Batman stories these days.

As for some downsides, I didn’t love how there are heavily telegraphed button prompts that appear when enemies attack you, letting you know what to press to avoid their strikes. These UI signifiers exacerbated the previous Batman games’ problem of battles feeling too guided and telegraphed. Thankfully, the game includes three difficulty settings for the sickos who want to give the Caped Crusader a challenge, and it’s easy to imagine that the hardest mode might turn off these prompts—honestly, it might have been in the menus already, and I just couldn’t find it. Regardless, it seems like Legacy of the Dark Knight could build on what came before by adding in some of its own LEGO-themed ideas.

Fractured Blooms

Combining psychological horror with the grounded tasks of a cozy game, Fractured Bloom is a gripping narrative-focused experience about repeating the same day and same chores over and over. You play as a teenage girl who has to farm, cook, and clean, presumably for her perpetually out-of-view parents. Her narration guides the player through an introduction that is vaguely eerie but not outright frightening. However, as this one day begins to loop, details start to change as the world becomes darker and more delirious. The initial concerns of inexplicable footsteps and doors opening and closing on their own eventually become positively mundane compared to the glitches in reality and crimson vines that begin to entangle this house. Most impressively, it manages to imbue low-key chores with an intense sense of anxiety, as you attempt to complete these tasks before something gets you. If that wasn’t bad enough, if you take to long to finish your duties, this will eat at your sleep and thus your stamina for the next day, affecting how many actions you can do. It all comes together in an uncomfortable portrait of mental health issues and implicit familial abuse that does a good job putting you in the headspace of someone who feels the walls of their life closing in on them. The small chunk I saw of Fractured Blooms makes it seem like it learned good lessons from classics like P.T. and Silent Hill.

I Hate This Place

Mixing gore-slicked corridors and Ben-Day dots, I Hate This Place is a survival horror adaptation of a graphic novel that places an emphasis on sound. Here, footsteps are visualized in comic-style onomatopoeia, with bigger, bolder letters meaning you’re being noisy, something that will attract unwanted attention in the form of creepy flesh monsters that range from a little crawling guy with shades of The Thing to a hulking headless creature that wants to put you in a devastating bear hug. Because of the emphasis on stealth, I found myself crouch walking through environments before accidentally stepping on a piece of cracked glass in that way that every character in a horror movie has done at one point or another—I get it now, it’s very easy to make that mistake! On top of having all the other survival horror accoutrements, like resource management, this game’s acoustic twist adds a promising new flavor to a tried-and-true formula.

There Are No Ghosts At The Grand

There Are No Ghosts At The Grand’s demo understands that video game tutorials are usually quite boring, and it interrupts its own with a much more interesting digression that demonstrated what this narrative-focused renovation game has to offer. After Chris David inherits the Grand Hotel, a historically significant building that means a lot to its community, he decides to renovate it to the chagrin of many of its locals. From here, he investigates a supernatural mystery that has him fixing this place up during the day and dealing with ghosts at night. The renovation mechanics offer enough to make it engaging to switch between your various power tools, and the dialogue was quite witty in a way that kept my attention. Also, it’s a musical! You love to see it.

Prison of Husks

If you thought Bloodborne PSX was neat, Prison of Husks is the game for you. It’s a low-poly soulslike that, from what little I saw, nails everything about this setup. You play as a sentient doll looking for her girlfriend, who unfortunately seems to be on the other side of sword-wielding ghosts and a labyrinthine castle. As for the specifics, it borrows elements from Bloodborne, with a high-speed dash step, and Sekiro, with an emphasis on landing parries in quick succession to power yourself up. Despite its throwback graphics, it was every bit as smooth as you’d want from a modern title, nailing the feel of dodging and deflecting strikes before going for a weighty sword slash. Another unique mechanic is that you start with an armor coating that absorbs three instances of incoming damage, which can be re-upped at save points or by performing parries. Through its enigmatic world and tight gameplay, Prison of Husks emulates old-school aesthetics while retaining a contemporary feel.

Adventure of Samsara

While it’s a crowded release schedule for Metroid-style games, Adventure of Samsara seems to have its own identity; specifically, it’s defined by distinctive pixel art and gameplay that channels old-school platformers like Prince of Persia. Tasked with exploring a world that mixes sci-fi and fantasy, you guide the Solar Champion through this mysterious space with ties to the seminal Atari release Adventure. While many games that mimic retro titles stop at the visuals, this one stands apart by replicating the more deliberate movement speed that many of those older titles have. This isn’t to imply it plays exactly like Prince of Persia; here, you slash, dash, and parry against various alien critters, like giant spiders and skeleton men. But what it does channel is the weighty momentum and commitment to actions that those games had. When combined with a visual style that feels reminiscent of Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, with a dash of Another World, you have a work that draws inspiration from some very interesting places. While it’s deeply unfortunate that it’s coming out the same exact day as Hollow Knight: Silksong, hopefully, it will still find an audience.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.