The Medium Review

ReviewsXboxPCFebruary 2021First

Feb 5

Marianne in spirit form looking at her hand

(Image credit: Bloober Team)

A Beautiful Game from the Past

I was worried about The Medium after reading a GameIndustry.biz interview with Piotr Babieno, the founder of Bloober Team who produced and developed the game. When he ended the interview with: “I'm not sure that it will be the best, but I think it's good to be first." I thought, did the title get rushed in any way, and leave off some important parts to be first? The enticing visual and audio elements mask serious underlying issues that make The Medium resemble an interactive narrative over a full video game. It is a 90’s style psychological horror experience that will leave the player wanting more in many ways. Bloober Team does an excellent job with the environmental graphics, but the story pacing and game mechanics leave much to be desired. The Load Screen reviews this title that is surprisingly stiff for being the first “true” next-gen game.

After burying her father figure, the protagonist Marianne hunts for the truth behind her clouded past. She receives a mysterious phone call that promises her answers if she travels to the long deserted NIWA resort. The tragedy of the getaway and her past will unfold at an uneven pace, with most of the severe drama being told to the player, and not experienced by them. Plus, some of the underlying issues delt with in this game are extremely triggering for those who are victims of violence. This all makes the story less immersive, especially when some of the action is told across split screens.

Marianne investigating a wheelchair in two realities on separate views split horizontally across the screen

(Image credit: Bloober Team)

Some may wonder what split screens are doing in a single player game, but Bloober Team has patented Dual Reality Gameplay for this system taxing feature. At times, the player views two versions of the main character, one in the real world and the other in the spirit, with interactions that are only available in a specific realm. The problem was that I usually watched one screen more and missed the cues in the other entirely. At other times, the split makes a third of the screen virtually black as Marianne separates her spirit from her body. Also, every time the Dual Reality Gameplay is running it takes up double the video resources, just as split screen co-op does.

The basic gameplay had issues starting with the limited movement of the player within the environment. The Medium is a third person adventure game with a fixed camera position that rarely moves in a scene, which gives it that throwback 90s feeling. The locked camera and limited movement often teamed up to leave me stuck on an unseen edge. Having to restart because of getting Marianne trapped between invisible boundaries was a headache as well. The pain derives from the save file mechanics: no manual saves allowed and the autosaves are not frequent enough.

Item use and pacing were also problematic. It was cool the first time I used the bolt cutters multiple times on a single lock, but doing this every time? At least she is never in a rush to cut through. The pacing of overall gameplay was a serious issue since most times Marianne could go at a slow pace, while for brief moments the action got intense. The hiding and attack mechanics were rarely used and lacked complexity adding to the rigid feeling of this title. Even the puzzles were equally shallow, with the player often searching the same room for the needed items.

Dual Reality gameplay of The Medium with Xbox PC stats overlay showing maxed out GPU

(Image credit: Bloober Team)

At least puzzle objects and the bolt cutters look beautiful, especially after having them visible but just out of reach for a portion of the game. The impressive graphics and audio of The Medium are its only saving features. As the screenshot shows those effects maxed out my RTX 3080 PC, especially in Dual Reality Gameplay. If the camera turned in a scene there was a significant drop in framerate, but that movement happened rarely. However, The Medium’s most vivid moments were when the game delved into the spirit world and allowed the twisted beauty to dominate the player’s view keeping my framerate well below 60.

Marianne will have to run from demented spirits occasionally and that is the extent of the survival horror aspect of the game. The spirit realm’s distorted landscape gives off strong Silent Hill vibes but lacks character vulnerability that drives games of this genre. The underlying stories for Marianne and the NIWA resort are upsetting and controversial, they are mainly told to the player and not shown to the player thankfully. The true horror aspects of this game come through in the scenery and the music. Troy Baker lends his familiar voice to a prominent character The Maw. While the haunting soundtrack was produced by Arkadiusz Reikowski and Akira Yamaoka, who composed many of the Silent Hill tracks throughout the franchise and movies.

The traumatic nature of the story is presented in such a dry way with an erratic pace that it loses much of the potential impact. The simple gameplay, overly taxing graphics, and unusual use of split screen further make this game avoidable, unless you have The Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and the bandwidth. Maybe Bloober Team’s desire to have the first next-gen game was at the cost of additional features that could have helped The Medium’s replayability.