TESTED GAMEShe Medium is a horror title
with next-gen aspirations
that rely on a split-screen
dual-reality system and ray-tracing
rather than its style, which evokes
classic survival horror games.
The titular medium is Marianne,
a woman haunted by the dream
(or memory?) of a girl’s murder;
in this role you have the power to
communicate with spirits as well
as a sixth sense for hidden objects.
Things start off pretty sombre,
but pick up after a mysterious
phone call leads you to a nearby
abandoned hotel...
Fans of The Shining will know
hotels are never a good sign: what
was originally a holiday resort in
Communist-era Poland transpires
to be the site of a grisly massacre,
while its history goes further back
to the Nazi occupation. Here the
game touches on sensitive topics
like child abuse and the Holocaust,
though it’s careful not to fall into
crude exploitation.
Setting the story in the late
1990s feels like a deliberate nod
to survival horror games of that
period – right down to the fixedcamera perspective and the way
you traverse between the real
world and a more nightmarish
one, as in Silent Hill. What’s unique
about this game is that Marianne
is able to exist in both the physical
and spirit worlds at the same time,
presented in split-screen.
It’s an intriguing technique,
seemingly only possible with
super-fast SSDs; but as fine as
it looks, it can feel like a gimmick
since you’re usually only focusing
on one world. Sometimes the two
realities interlink – but it’s telling
that the best puzzles take place
when traversing between worlds
in more conventional ways.
Despite an undercurrent of
disturbing eeriness, the underlying
problem for The Medium is that
it just isn’t scary. There’s a decent
story to keep you involved, but if
it’s not sending chills down your
spine, does it matter? And while
it’s technically impressive, it rarely
makes the most of its presentation.
Anyone hoping for this game to
fill a Silent Hill hole should adjust
expectations accordingly.
Alan WenSTUFF SAYS A decent premise, but this is not very next-gen and not very scary +++,,
The Medium
Almost three months after launch, the Xbox Series X gets its first
next-gen console exclusive... but is it better than medium-quality?T
In this reality,
there’s some
sort of portal
from hell. Well,
it’ll probably be
cheaper to fix.In this reality,
the builders
made a right
mess of that
underpinning
job last year.XSX, XSS, PC / stuff.tv/Medium