Again, I get to play a freshly-released game (for a current-gen console, no less) for basically free thanks to Game Pass. Neat! BACKGROUND:
I didn't know this game existed at all until I saw it was coming to Game Pass a couple of weeks back. Out of curiosity, I watched some promotional material and was intrigued enough to try it. PLOT: The Medium is set in Poland in the year 1999, just after the country's transition from communism. It focuses on a woman named Marianne, who is the titular medium. After a personal tragedy, she is contacted by a mysterious man named Thomas, who somehow knows her name and her powers. Thomas instructs Marianne to find him in Niwa Resort, a vacation spot from the communist era that's been abandoned due to a massacre that took place in the area. Once there, Marianne explores the place, and with the help of her powers, she discovers exactly what happened at Niwa, and how this ties in with her own history. Marianne's abilities are interesting, to say the least. As a medium, you expect the usual things, like conversing with spirits of the dead, seeing all sorts of visions, and being able to parse through someone's thoughts and emotions. She does all that, but she's also able to straight up see and traverse the spirit realm. Now, the spirit realm isn't exactly the afterlife, and feels more like the boundary between it and the physical world. In here, Marianne can interact with certain objects and spirits, and that can alter reality in the real world. The reverse can also occur; interacting with specific objects in the material realm can alter the spirit realm. Through Marianne's ability to see fragments of the past and interact with spirits, you learn about the people who were at Niwa during the massacre, and eventually, you'll also uncover the truth behind all those murders. As you may expect, there is a supernatural element involved, but a lot of what transpired was spurred on by people being horrible. You get an up close and personal look of how people felt as the nightmare unfolded thanks to how Marianne's powers work, and it really helped me get invested in the story and the characters. Real-life events that transpired during Poland (like the German invasion at the start of WWII) are referenced to flesh out certain characters and provide context to their histories. One particularly impactful example is the reveal that one of the characters suffered a tragic loss because one of the people they cared about was Jewish. In terms of characters, you'll be spending your time with Marianne the most. She's an interesting character who's been through a lot, and despite the scary nature of her powers, she's unfazed when shit happens. She also shows compassion for many of the spirits she interacts with, helping them move on to the afterlife most of the time, and she's got a little bit of a sense of humor to her too. I like her a lot, but if you don't like constant narration, you might feel differently. As for the other characters, you don't spend as much time with them, as you mostly learn about them through Marianne's perspective (as opposed to directly interacting with them). Despite this, the game does a decent job giving you enough pieces to get a sense of who they are and what they experienced during the Niwa Massacre. Many of these pieces are unfortunately optional content that you have to go out of your way for, but if you're interested at all in figuring out what happened, they are worth collecting. Overall, I enjoyed the story. I liked the spin on Marianne's psychic abilities, I thought their take on the spirit realm was interesting, learning about Niwa was more than worthwhile, and most of the story threads were wrapped up pretty neatly. There are probably aspects that could have used some improvement, but I came out of it liking the plot. Although this is marketed as a horror game, I don't really think it's particularly scary. There are a few moments that will make you jump, and the overall vibe of the derelict Niwa Resort is quite eerie, but it's nothing on the level of more well-known horror titles like Resident Evil where there's danger at every corner, or Five Nights at Freddy's (which is itching to jump scare you). It's more unsettling than it is actively trying to scare you. That said, the game deals with some particularly sensitive and disturbing subject matters, ones that are tied to severe emotional trauma. To expound would be to give away too much of the story, but it's imperative to put a trigger warning out there in case the one the game has at the beginning isn't enough. PRESENTATION: The Medium is another in a long line of games that boast AAA-level graphics. I wouldn't call it the most realistic-looking game out there, but it's pretty close in terms of its visual fidelity. It looks pretty great for the most part, and the visuals shine when you're in the spirit realm. The spirit realm and its inhabitants have a rather run-down, almost grotesque style to its appearance, and it makes for quite the contrast against the physical realm. Of course, the graphics come at a great cost, and you'll definitely need a Series X or a more powerful PC to run it in its best state. Because of a particular aspect of its gameplay (that I'll get into later), this game will give any standard GPU a workout, and it's intense to the point that even the game's performance drops in quality no matter what you do. I'm normally not a stickler for this, but it doesn't seem like this game is particularly well optimized (at least not on PC). It could just be a consequence of my machine not having the best components, but it seems that no matter what I change in terms of settings, I can't really get it to run at a consistent quality (even low settings still have frame rate issues, for instance). There are also weird hiccups like texture flickering (which was annoyingly rampant) that lends credence to the notion that the game isn't optimized as well as it could be. As I may have already established, I'm not at all fastidious about graphics and performance, but the issues of this game were evident enough for me to take notice. If you are particular about those aspects of a game, I would be quite wary about purchasing this game at its current state, or buying it knowing you don't have a powerful processor or GPU. Outside of that, the haunting soundtrack is solid, there's some decent sound design in terms of effects (a must in any atmospheric horror-style game), and good voice acting. GAMEPLAY: The best way I can describe The Medium's gameplay is that it's Resident Evil but minus the action. You move around in third person, the camera angles are fixed (like classic RE), and you solve a ton of puzzles in order to progress. Depending on how much you enjoy action-style horror games, you may find this game boring or find it significantly less stressful. I can see the fixed camera being a big sticking point for most people. If you've never played something like the old RE games before, you will likely find the inability to move the camera around incredibly annoying. Since I have experience with 3D games with fixed camera angles, I didn't mind it as much, but there were definitely instances where the camera changes between areas weren't smooth, or times when the angle they went for in certain areas doesn't help you at all get a sense of the place. Most of the game is walking around, listening to Marianne's narration, and exploring areas to find items that are either important for solving puzzles or help piece together the story. People like to throw the term "walking simulator" around for games like this, and while I think that label is mean-spirited in general, it's not entirely inaccurate. If you want something a little more engaging, I'm not sure this game will be for you. Puzzles are aplenty in the game, and next to exploring, you'll be doing this the most. Most boil down to "look around to find the right item to place into this other item," so it's nothing that will hurt your brain. There are a few that involve a bit more thinking (like moving water around with pumps to unlock flooded areas), but I didn't find those to be difficult, either. What makes the puzzles interesting in my view is how they make full use of Marianne's ability to interact with the two worlds. As I mentioned, interacting with things in the spirit world can affect the physical world (and vice versa), and majority of the puzzles take advantage of that. For instance, charging up an electrical outlet in the spirit world activates the real-world device. For the reverse, interacting with something like a clock can cause secret passages to appear in the spirit world. If you know me, I'm pretty big on games with the two dimensions concept (see: A Link to the Past, Guacamelee, Metroid Prime 2, and various other examples I can't think of right now), and The Medium executes it quite well. The way you traverse between worlds varies, from scripted sequences that lock you into one world for a little bit, or through interactable mirrors that let you cross over at will. However, the main way the game has you interact with both worlds is through a split-screen that sees Marianne explore the real world and the spirit realm at the exact same time. I thought that this was an awesome way to present the game; you get to immediately see how your actions in one world affects the other, and the game constantly has you shift your focus to solve puzzles. Even if the puzzles themselves aren't the most complex, the split-screen perspective helps set up some cool scenarios. The cutscenes even take advantage of this, showing you different angles of the same scene, but with obvious differences (e.g. the spirit Marianne is talking to will only be visible in the spirit world side, naturally). The split-screen comes with a big drawback: since the game is essentially fully rendering two instances of the game at the same time, the performance will suffer for it. This is what I meant in the previous section; it seemed that regardless of what I do to improve performance, the game's frame rate still suffers and the resolution still dips. I can see why this game had to be on an advanced machine like the Series X. Apart from the two worlds stuff, you have access to a few other abilities. You have both a Spirit Blast and a Spirit Shield, and despite what the names imply, they're not so much combat abilities as they are glorified keys in order to progress. These abilities are limited in use as well, as you need to charge up at a Spirit Well to use them, and unlocking Spirit Wells tend to be a puzzle in themselves. I think they could have made an action-oriented game with these mechanics, but in this case, it's mostly just for puzzle solving. I'm cool with that, but again, if you're looking to fight a bitch in this game, you'll probably end up disappointed. You also have something called an Out of Body Experience, which allows you to move around in the spirit world freely while your physical body stays in place. This ability unfortunately has a time limit, but it's an otherwise cool ability that makes the split-screen experience more interesting since you can move around in the spirit world without the barriers of the physical realm impeding you. On top of that, you have a sprint, sneak, and the ability to hold your breath. I know I said this game isn't particularly scary, but that doesn't mean there isn't any danger in it. In a few sections, you'll have to haul ass to avoid a supernatural ass-whooping, and in others, you'll have to use stealth instead. You'll encounter a bunch of collectibles, all of which add a new piece to the puzzle that is the game's story. You can definitely miss a few of them, but given how the areas aren't that massive, it won't be too much trouble looking around to collect them all. Some of them are your typical written documents, but others involve using Marianne's powers in order to uncover strong emotions and memories from items that radiate a powerful aura (something I thought was really cool). There's also no manual save, which means I had to get far enough to where the autosave icon would pop up so I can stop playing and go to bed. Kinda wish there were a manual save, but the autosave seemed pretty generous based on my experience. Not a big deal since this is a short game (that you can probably beat in one weekend), but I think it's worth pointing out since the game doesn't indicate that you can't save manually (it only tells you that there's an autosave). VERDICT: The Medium is a particularly ambitious game with an intriguing (and disturbing) story, a somewhat fresh take on classic supernatural elements, and decent puzzle gameplay that makes great use of the two worlds concept. Although it's not quite the horror game I thought it would be, and several aspects (like improving performance) could have really used some time in the oven, I still liked the game enough to see it through to the end. If you're looking for an experience that's somewhat similar to classics like RE or Silent Hill, but with less of the panic-inducing action or out-of-nowhere scare, and a lot more puzzles, you might like this game. But as I have stated numerous times, the graphics optimization may not be to your liking, and if you're more an action-oriented player, this is unfortunately more on the slower-paced, story-driven side. Keep all those in mind before considering a purchase. You can get the Steam version of The Medium here: The Medium on Steam (steampowered.com) - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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