A
s a thoroughly middling horror game, The Medium
is at least aptly named. It’s a classically styled
horror adventure with an intriguing split-screen
gimmick that sees you exploring two worlds at once. Set in
Poland in 1999, players assume the role of Marianne. A
young woman gifted (or cursed as she would put it) with
psychic powers, Marianne commences the game preparing
for the funeral of her foster-father.
Yet the game dispenses with this setup almost
immediately after Marianne receives a call from a man
named Thomas, requesting her help at an abandoned Soviet
holiday resort called Nisa. Despite not knowing anything
about the man or the resort, she immediately abandons her
funereal preparations and drives deep into the Polish forest.
The Medium’s whole approach to storytelling is generally
messy. Its characters are inertly written and overacted, while
the tone veers from superficially maudlin to weirdly comical.
The game does look fantastic, however.
From the foreboding concrete bulk of the Nisa resort,
to the eerie, brownish architecture of the spirit realm,the environments are always intriguing to explore. The
Medium’s stylistic qualities are aided by two key features.
The first is its camera and control scheme, which hark back
to classic 1990s horror games such as Resident Evil and,
particularly, Silent Hill. The second is its unique split-screen
mechanic, where you control versions of Marianne both in
the material and spirit realms.
The setup works well when The Medium sticks to being a
spooky puzzler. Marianne’s spirit form can access areas that
her physical form cannot, and can perform certain actions,
such as rebooting electrical generators. These are used to
create some gently engaging navigational puzzles, which
blend well with the general atmosphere of tension.
Whenever The Medium steps away from puzzling,
though, it begins to struggle. In between the puzzles are
multiple stealth sections and chase sequences, neither of
which are fun to play with the antiquated control scheme.
The former are particularly underwhelming – the enemy AI
is so poor that you can stand right next to monsters without
them spotting you.
The Medium’s biggest problem is that it doesn’t know
what to do with its core mechanic. The split-screen concept
never evolves much beyond the abilities you’re given in the
game’s first third of the game. Moreover, it constantly strays
away from the split-screen concept. Large portions of the
game are played in single-screen form in one of the two
realms, at which point the façade crumbles away, leaving a
simplistic, rather tedious puzzle game and not much else.
If The Medium focused on its key idea and elaborated on it
properly, it could be a fantastic experience. Sadly, instead you
get a trite and ponderous horror game that occasionally toys
with innovation.
RICK LANE/VERDICT
You don’t need
to be psychic
to see that The
Medium is a
disappointment.
OVERALL SCORE
50 %%
THE MEDIUM / £41.99 inc VAT
DEVELOPER Bloober Team/ PUBLISHER Bloober Team
MEDIUM
+^ Looks great
+^ Split-screen
mechanic has
potential
MEDIOCRE
(^) - Dull story
-^ Awkward outside
of puzzling
-^ Doesn’t know
what to do with
its core idea
GAMES / REVIEWS