The Medium Review
Not off on the right foot… yet
Developed by Bloober Team
Released on Xbox Series X, S & PC
Materials and Methods
Reviewed on the Xbox Series X
Introduction
The Xbox Series X and S. The new generation of consoles from the US company, Microsoft. Released in 2020 and touted to be the most powerful box and the cheapest modern box, respectively, on the market. But unlike their counterparts at Sony, there wasn’t really a new game released at launch that showed off just exactly what these powerhouses could actually do. This was just about the sentiment across the entire games industry. “Great! The new generation is here! But, what games are there that really justify the cost?” Xbox had Halo Infinite as the champion of their November 10th launch day. Until it wasn’t.
The Medium, developed by Poland’s Bloober Team, was immediately thrown to the forefront. Announced at the first Xbox 20/20 event back in May, the Medium was promised to be the first next-generation horror game that would fully utilize the new boxes' power. The theme of duality is the driving factor of the game, leading to its most important mechanic that was only possible on the newly released current-gen hardware. Two worlds rendered at the same time, with the ability to switch between them at will. One in reality and one in the realm of the dead. With this power, the player would solve puzzles and experience horror in an all-new way. Bloober Team, with their history of Horror, from Layers of Fear to the recently released Observer System Redux, were poised to show everyone just what they could do with Xbox’s backing and what the horror genre could look like when the only limitation is your imagination. Let’s delve into how well they did.
Results & Findings
Marianne, a girl who a Mortician adopted, is a medium. In this world, mediums are those who are born with a special gift. You may know them as people who can “talk” to the dead, but here, it goes one step further. Mediums have the power to form a spiritual persona of themselves in the realm of the dead. They can actively talk to and help spirits who are trapped in a purgatory realm and help them overcome any lingering doubts they may have, whereupon complete satisfaction can pass on to the other side peacefully. This amazing ability isn’t always in the medium’s control, however. When an overwhelming presence is around them, they may be split in two. One foot in the realm of the living, and the other wading through the realm of the dead.
Haunted by a little girl's nightmares by a like being hunted, Marianne is called to return home. Her foster father passed away, and she must return home to take care of certain affairs. After the funeral, she receives a mysterious call from somebody named Thomas, asking her to go to an abandoned hotel where she may learn the truth about her powers as well as the recurring nightmare she’s been experiencing.
It is a basic premise for a mysterious story that involves supernatural elements, but many things back it up. First and most importantly, the setting. From a Morgue to an abandoned hotel, the setting really feels like it’s picking up the slack. Until one particular moment of the game can only be described as “the wheelchair moment,” the story is really nothing to write home about. For about four hours, you find out the mystery of this mysterious hotel and why one day, every guest inside died in what can only be described as a massacre with no person caught as the twisted mastermind behind everything. This isn’t Marianne’s story as promised. This is the story of the hotel. There is one saving grace, though. The passive storytelling of the world is top-notch. If you play the game without doing any investigating, your experience will be minimal. It’s not until you read all the notes, listen to every echo, find just about every prompt in the world that this game really begins to shine.
Of course, that is a massive ask. That is a lot of extra time to devote, what with looking around every corning, in every nook and cranny to find the strongest aspect of this game. Bloober Team has a great knack for telling fascinating stories through hidden notes and secret-triggered prompts. I wish they carried this over to the main script. However, this isn’t the case for the second half of the game, which again is a big ask for a player who already has limited time. Without spoiling much, when the game gets into the weeds of who Marianne is and where she comes from, The Medium really shines. That is until the ending. The Bloober Team took a very odd opportunity to end the game on a cliffhanger. The story felt nearly complete up to this point. Then, it just leaves more questions that don’t feel satisfying to ask. The ending actually made me think less of the game overall because it just feels so unearned. While I look forward to the inevitable sequel, I wish they made this game feel like a complete experience, like they’ve done in the past with their previous games.
After you take control of Marianne, you’ll notice something extraordinary. This game uses tank controls to navigate. Thankfully, they do not feel nearly as clunky as you’d think. It’s a modern take on the idea that works in most areas but not throughout the game. Let’s chat about how this plays into the overall gameplay and how they all try to work together. The gameplay can be divided into three different portions: General exploration, investigations, and Monster Avoidance.
General Exploration is what I think is the funnest part of the game. When there is clear downtime, this is when I found I was doing the most exploration. As mentioned above, I truly enjoyed the natural world storytelling. This shows up the most when you are generally exploring the hotel and future areas. You will find many things from postcards to other things that really build out how tragic the areas you’re exploring became. What’s crazier is that certain items show how normal the hotel was too. Then the next item you find is a blood-curdling scream as the massacre began just to set up how out of nowhere, hundreds of people died from an unknown cause. As mentioned before, a lot of this storytelling is really just optional. But this is also where I found the most enjoyment from the game, thinking back on the overall experience. There was a lot of history here, and Bloober Team delves into it as much as possible while keeping it all relevant to the story.
The next piece is Investigations. Throughout the game, Marianne will be trapped and has to use her “Dead” form to find a way to affect the real world to progress. This is when the game really becomes a toss-up. While the puzzles are interesting, they try too hard to be like old Resident Evil games except without the complexity. Resident Evil puzzles are outlandish and crazy. In The Medium, they feel like normal puzzles with faux complex solutions. The only ones that really stood out involved the use of echoes or pieces of a person’s life stuck to an object around the time of their death. When picking up an object with an echo on it, you hear a quick voice line from that person, and they may give you a solution to a puzzle. The biggest ones involve you needing to find a dead person’s mask and their true name so they may be released and pass on. For example, there is a double door blocked by two souls who sadly forgot who they were. Their spiritual bodies intertwined and created a wall preventing Marianne from progressing forward. As Marianne, you need to find two masks and two names. The first one being a little girl who was gifted with the talent of Balet. Her posters are everywhere, and you have her mask early on, but you find out that she uses a fake name to have some semblance of privacy. You snoop through several hotel rooms to find out more about this girl’s unfortunate life. While popular, she was cursed to be sheltered and stalked by a person at the hotel. You find a phone book and cards with numbers on them that you need to dial to piece together not only her name but how she passed away tragically. Again, this touches on how well the world-building is, while the puzzles that rely on it are stellar. Others that don’t just feel very simplistic.
Finally, the Monster Avoidance sections. There is a terrifying monster in The Medium that makes occasional appearances. It’s not the same level as Mr. X in Resident Evil 2, but you will know when this monster is near you. It’s a clear divide from the rest of the game that takes away from the suspense factor for most of the game as you learn when to expect when the monster will appear. These sections are quite possibly the weakest portions of the game. I had the opportunity to review Bloober Team’s Observer System Redux last year and noted that the big monster, when present, felt like it wasn’t even a threat. They acted like they didn’t know what was two feet in front of them, especially when you crouch down. This same issue carries to The Medium. Beyond one point where you need to think quickly to get around the monster (no spoilers), every other instance is just [cut to black]...not threatening. You just need to move more slowly where you are not to get caught. I even walked directly behind the monster several times and didn’t get noticed, which feels completely outlandish. I hope that the next iteration of The Medium or whatever Bloober Team makes next, they add extra time to that game’s monster’s coding to make them a threat. Because without a good monster or threat in general, there is little to no suspense in a game like this.
With some parting words, I want to touch on the specific controls and advertised mechanics. The Medium allowed the player to switch between either world at will and render both throughout the game. This only occurs for about 30% of the complete playtime. There are many segments where you’re either “Medium” Marianne or Human Marianne. While they interact with each other and you switch between them quickly by touching a mirror, this isn’t what was initially advertised to us. When both Marianne’s are on screen, it does WORK, but I noticed more frame tearing and dropped frames. It was almost a “give-and-take” to make this one feature that required the Series X and S power to work. In addition to that, you CAN switch between the two at will WHEN they’re both on screen. This choice did make puzzle-solving fun… to an extent. These puzzles were very simplistic and repetitive. Whenever this happened, you normally had to power up something using “Medium” Marianne’s powers. To do this, you had to find something with a lingering essence in the ghost world, or you had to give something life again. While there was a lot of world storytelling involved in these parts, the MacGuffin didn’t feel rewarding. That last statement honestly serves as my whole message for this game… it wasn’t that rewarding.
Discussion
Due to unfortunate circumstances, The Medium became the first big exclusive for the Series X & S. With the promise of two rendered worlds at once; The Medium was to show off not only the power of Xbox’s next-generation hardware but what could be accomplished for the horror genre. Sadly, expectations on both fronts were not met. The main feature of the game wasn’t as prevalent as expected. Two worlds rendered at once did happen but only for 25-30% of the game. Everything else just showed that load screens could no longer be needed. Texture pop-in was still very much prevalent, as well as noticeable dropped frames. As for the main portion of the game, the story, while promising 99% of the way through, fell very flat as it crossed the finish line, and the main baddie was nothing more than an adult acting like they were playing hide and seek with a young, naive child. That’s not to say this game isn’t enjoyable. It just depends on how deep you want to dig and how much you want to put up with until you find the fun.
