There are very few things in gaming that feel truly seamless. Yanking my Nintendo Switch out of its dock to play Breath of the Wild for the first fourth dimension was the concluding time I was blown away by something that merely worked. Later months of Microsoft swearing upwardly and down that their SSD and Velocity architecture would deliver new, seamless experiences devoid of load times, information technology'southward a shame that The Medium didn't launch with the Xbox Series S|X. It'southward a flawless proof of concept that feels more like an interesting, drawn-out tech demo than anything else.
Switching between realities is blazing fast. Its environments are stunning and moody. Its lighting is incredible. The sound design is downright spine-tingling. I wish I could say anything equally positive about the gameplay or story.
Fix in Poland in 1999 in the wake of the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Polish Solidarity Movement, The Medium's narrative tends to seize with teeth off more than than it can chew equally it tries to weave a web of political intrigue into the supernatural plot. Without context for Polish politics and history, a lot of details might fly over players' heads unless they take the time to read every collectible letter and postcard scattered throughout the game world.
Even with that context, I oftentimes felt lost. That's non simply because of the complexity of late 20th Century Polish politics, either. The story has a simple enough setup: the protagonist, Marianne, has unique powers that allow her to cantankerous over to another plane of beingness. She uses these powers to assist stranded souls pass through to the afterlife.
Most immediately afterward this is established, The Medium dives correct into referencing and relying on Smoothen history in a sloppy and disruptive way. The writing in itself isn't necessarily every bit bumbling equally some of the plot points that it tries to plant, simply that's not to say information technology's good.
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Switching between realities is blazing fast.
Exterior of a few moments, the dialogue feels behind the times in a lot of ways. Information technology'southward easy to tell that even the voice actors didn't really know what to do with the scripts they were given.
Moments where Marianne talks to herself should serve as opportunities to pause the tension or give her more character. Instead, they almost always boil down to a variation of the aforementioned thing. It got one-time quickly.
Control'southward Jesse Faden immediately comes to mind as a dissimilarity. Her narration and interjections are always suggestive of a bizarre, only fully fleshed-out grapheme. Marianne is an attempt at the same type of protagonist; even so, she comes out written similar a Gears of State of war grapheme without the natural language-in-cheek nature of the Gears franchise. While side characters provide brief opportunities for Marianne to shine, they tend to be poorly-written and detract from Marianne's evolution with distractingly confusing writing.
That feeling of confusion carried over into the game's sloppy puzzle design. Every one time in a while, I establish a genuinely skilful puzzle. Unfortunately, ix times out of ten the puzzles were uncomplicated, infuriating, or both.
Ane of the game's central mechanics functions as a hint manner of sorts. You can concord down a button to reveal hidden objects, paths to follow, or other objects to interact with. In theory, this sounds like it makes sense every bit a mechanic. The trouble is that there are a lot of instances where you need to collaborate with things without using the ability beginning in order to progress. Thus, a lot of the game's 'puzzles' are only repetitive segments that devolved into looking in a drawer twice for a doll that I demand to put on a table in the side by side room. While these simpler puzzles certainly have a place, edifice an entire game off of them makes it a snoozefest.
That feeling of defoliation carried over into the game'southward sloppy puzzle design.
It doesn't help that moving effectually in the world of The Medium isn't enjoyable. It wears its Silent Hill inspiration on its sleeve with its locked photographic camera. The rigid, cinematic angles really let the game's environments shine. That said, it'south a detriment to the actual gameplay. I found myself getting stuck behind objects that I could inappreciably see and totally missing doors and items because the photographic camera obscured them.
Speaking of things I couldn't run across, there are multiple extended stealth sections against an enemy that was essentially invisible. Each department does a good task of giving you cover to hide behind. Nonetheless, more oft than not, I found myself being set back as much as five minutes because the invisible enemy I was hiding from got me.
Stealth sections are usually bookended past dynamic and kinetic chase sequences. While they're commonly just running in one direction and occasionally dodging any obstacles in the mode, they serve a greater purpose. Outside the occasional jump scare, they were what got my heart pumping the most. Information technology was the most game-similar and activeness-packed The Medium ever got.
Seeing a terrifying beast hot on my heels as I stumble through moody, lush forests and the atmospheric, dour spirit earth was a culmination of everything I'd hoped the game would be. Coming out of the chases reminded me of how disappointed I was in the rest of the game, no matter how impressive it looked.
You might notice that I haven't really talked near any of The Medium's horror elements. That's considering it'southward mostly not a successful have on the genre. At that place's admittedly some fantastic imagery that I could attribute to horror. However, annihilation else that tries to fit in that genre is few and far between. The game tries to build suspense, simply information technology rarely offers any payoff.
Were information technology a shorter, tighter feel that came in, showed off its impressive technical accomplishments, and got out, I'd exist much more impressed by everything The Medium has to offer. Instead, a drawn-out, confused narrative and largely boring gameplay left this game feeling like a slog. The disconnect betwixt its presentation and everything else is and then painfully stark that I can't help but be disappointed by the outset major Xbox exclusive of the yr.
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