Polish studio Bloober team with each new project, he raises the bar for quality, competently taking into account his past mistakes and using good practices in an attempt to create the most interesting and diverse project as possible. The medium he came as close as possible to this goal, although it has a number of noticeable shortcomings.
In the center of the horror plot for Xbox Series X | S and PC – a girl named Marianna, who has amazing abilities since childhood. Having lost, as it seemed to her, her parents in a car accident, she learned to move between worlds, communicating with the spirits of the dead and seeing them off on their last journey. However, soon, instead of an orphanage, she finds a foster family, a loving guardian Jack and a purpose in life. Years pass, and one day on the day of her adoptive father’s death, Marianna receives a call from a stranger who promises to reveal the secret of her gift if she comes to the abandoned Niva boarding house. It is within the walls of the disintegrating sanatorium for Poland’s party elite that the protagonist’s past and ancient infernal evil are hidden.
Using an original story that suddenly weaves Polish flavor, Nazis, Holocaust, demons and ghosts into the plot, the authors mix several genres, constantly changing the presentation of the gameplay. At first, The Medium reminds Dreamfall – the heroine also walks through limited locations, collecting and using key items, which, fortunately, are highlighted here. And finally finding herself in a boarding house and finding a flashlight, Marianne turns into a heroine Silent Hill… An oppressive atmosphere and stealth sections are added to riddles and hidden objects, in several places of the game you have to run away from an immortal enemy or hide behind boxes. Towards the end, The Medium begins to sound like The Evil Within or even Control its architectural solutions and the general atmosphere of the story. At the same time, the authors use the girl’s ability to be present in two worlds at the same time exclusively by scripts, including a split mode or a complete move to another dimension.
Despite Marianne’s many abilities, such as the ability to briefly leave her body or the use of emotional sources to fuel energy and channel the received forces for attack and defense, The Medium is a completely simple game. All the keys are close by, and the puzzles are incredibly straightforward to solve. Clues and storytelling items are often located in the next room. As the plot progresses, the authors try to add new things to the game, such as a bolt cutter to cut chains and mirrors to move between worlds, or force the use of an energy shield against hordes of insects, but this does not give an additional challenge. Even the character change in the middle and at the end of the story with new mechanics looks simple and organic. On the other hand, I was not at all annoyed by the low level of difficulty, but rather, on the contrary, I was surprised at how logical and successfully all this was implemented in the game. The simplicity of The Medium allows you to slide through an interesting plot, like the pages of your favorite book.
Naturally, there were some drawbacks. Several playable sections, especially for the second character, were drawn out and boring. The animation of individual characters seems clumsy. Well, the sections with the escape from the unkillable monster, instead of entertainment, are annoying with the curvature of the controls and the primitive design of locations. Also, episodes with stealth and balancing on rails over an abyss seemed to me superfluous. They could not bring anything fresh or unusual to the gameplay.
