THE MEDIUM REVIEW

Let me start by confessing. The wallpaper art for The Medium was my first impression. I thought it was going be a CGI anime game featuring a silver-haired protagonist.

The game is not anime-style, and the main character isn't a brooding, emo man. Sometimes, she does have white hair. My initial impressions were right about 5%.

Bloober Team's latest venture, The Medium, is the latest. Previous outings include Layers of Fear and Blair Witch, as well as Observer. I can recall being curious about a few of these at release. I enjoy psychological horrors and have not played many of them since I was disappointed by their quality. They are mostly average and have a tendency not to become much more than spoopy walking simulators (the Amnesia, A Machine for Pigs problem).

The Medium doesn't seem like a significant departure from Bloober Team, as it fits both descriptors. In The Medium you play as Marianne, a young woman in post-Communism, turn-of-the-Millennium Poland. She is called to Niwa, an abandoned resort hotel in Japan to find out the truth about her past and investigate the death of her adoptive father. Marianne was born with the supernatural ability to travel between hell/limbo/the other side. She uses it to help troubled souls go on, but she has very limited control over the time she transfers between reality and... Let's just call it "limbo".

Marianne is a character that you play around with, exploring the Soviet-era architecture and looking for clues to the massacre. You also have to deal the remnants of those who were involved. Marianne can switch to limbo and exist in both reality AND limbo simultaneously. Limbo is a kind of twisted mirror of real life. You can see Marianne in split screen, looking at both sides simultaneously.

This is a really interesting concept and it has some great moments. It's quite unique to exist in both worlds simultaneously. It's also very cool to solve puzzles using objects from one side that change the other. This is especially true in the cut-scenes in which Marianne interacts with ghosts. You are shown Marianne in real life just standing there, talking to nothing or looking at an empty chair. These two scenes are very well synchronized and give the viewer a feeling of eerieness that drives home her otherworldly powers.

The game also uses a 3rd-person fixed-camera perspective, which is super bloody effective. You get the feeling that Marianne is being watched by a third party. They are watching her steps and waiting for her to strike. This is a resemblance to the Silent Hill games, which I have not played unfortunately.

It is also quite cool. Although spooky forests may seem a bit out of date, the Soviet architecture is actually quite creepy. (All that Communism gives you the heebies-jeebies), so Marianne works well in this setting. It gives off the feeling of oppression and Chenobyl. Limbo, on the other hand, is more of the traditional corrupted grim hellscape with fleshy floors and the twisted agonised souls the damned embedded into the fabric. The usual, you know?

This last part is actually a problem for the game's purpose. Smarter men than I have pointed out that horror relies on mystery to function properly. Because Marianne spends so much time switching between reality and limbo, the hellscape loses its senses of mystery and any fear. It becomes an aspect of reality that Marianne must deal with, not a terrifying barrier.

In reality, I might as well let you know that The Medium, for all it does, is not frightening. Although there were a few moments that made my heart rate rise, some of the monsters could be quite frightening. However, other than a single jump-scare during the first portion, I don't remember being properly scared.

It also has a lot to do with its main monster early on. Unable to stop it, it displays the baddie in all his glory and then it forgets that it is actually that dangerous. It only caught you in very rare instances.

Marianne is the main contributor to Marianne's lack of fear. Marianne is clearly bothered and distressed from the beginning by her medium powers. However, this stems more from her inability to control when she can use them than any problems with actually traversing into limbo. Marianne seems to be at ease, and even in command, while exploring what is clearly supposed as a frightening other world. This allows the player to experience exactly the same emotions. Marianne's confidence in her abilities and ability to deal with departed spirits eliminates fear.

In fact, when she actually sends souls on their journey, she is sympathetic, empathetic, and somewhat melancholy. The spirits are seen as something to be pity and not afraid of by her, which makes it difficult to be afraid of them. Marianne seems to have a very simple way of dealing with them. In a sense, she even forces them to move on. There are moments where terrifying and large-sized spirits build up over several long sequences and become truly monstrous. Marianne then exorcises them in a cutscene. This again makes it clear that Marianne has complete control and limbo is nothing to be afraid of.

The Medium fails to achieve one of its most important and central goals. It is, however, a very atmospheric and engaging game that was able to immerse me in the story and plot. It fails to make the transition from "eerie" into "scary".

The game had potential, I think. Although it failed to be scary, I liked the idea of a medium traveling through old ruins and hearing stories about long-dead monsters and villains, before allowing their victims and the medium to find peace. This is a very interesting concept that made for an engaging story. Marianne's sympathy for the dead made her a fascinating character. She was someone who had to live with the normalities of daily life, but was able give peace to the deceased. It's something I wish they had more of, and something I hoped they would have leant more heavily on.

The book does touch on some very serious topics, including murder, but also child-abuse. It does so in a respectful manner, rather than being graphically and horribly graphic. Marianne also examines the motives of those who committed these crimes. While she is critical of them, she seems to still consider the monsters to be something to be somewhat admired. This was another interesting perspective.

The game is void of any real mechanics, except for a few sequences that are triggered by monsters. You can find an obstacle and walk around to find an item. Then you can use the item to get past it. Sometimes you may need to jump in and outside of limbo to find new routes or traverse obstacles.

You can also find "echoes", which are audio recordings that pass through this site: echoes from long-forgotten conversations. Marianne can use memories and echoes to gain a better understanding of the past and reconstruct the events at Niwa.

Sometimes I thought it might allow me to focus more on "puzzles", such as where you need to find the names of spirits and use old clues that are lying around. One instance was when I managed to find the name of one spirit and solved it myself. Although it wasn't difficult, I was able to solve the problem on my own. The game wouldn't allow me to continue until I returned to the clues that I had just seen and clicked through them in a particular order (since the previous order was obvious).Wrong. Marianne was able to say, "Jeez, I know this guy's names" and lost all sense of discovery.

It's a missed opportunity in my opinion. This game could have gone in a different direction than "spooky horror hotel", and instead take a paranormal investigator-type approach. It would have been great if one had used puzzle elements from Return to the Obra Dinn.

Another element was overlooked, but it seemed that the work had been left unfinished. Marianne can use her spectral power to recharge electrical supplies in the real-world, even though she is in limbo. She can also use this power to send a blast that damages monsters and creates a shield around herself. Although it has the appearance of being basic combat, it is not used in any way. The whole idea of her using spectral power to charge herself up is not used throughout the game and only in certain situations. It was almost as if the original intention was to do more with it, maybe more ghost-busting themes, but that never happened.

While I enjoyed the story and was very interested in Marianne's investigations, the final section of the game left me disappointed. I will try to avoid spoilers. The final twist and revelation of the game, which I believe anyone could have predicted, presents the solution to Niwa's haunting. Marianne will reject it. Marianne's alternative felt bizarre and absurd. It was presented as an extremely emotional moment, but it relied on relationships we hadn't been exposed to throughout the game. Worse, instead of showing the outcome or letting the player decide, the game ends with a huge cliffhanger that is clearly baiting for a sequel. It's just so disappointing.

While The Medium is still a great choice for its rock-solid atmosphere, intriguing story elements, and excellent atmosphere, I wish the developers had attempted to move in a different direction for their actual goals. This could have raised the game's quality, as it failed at almost all of its goals.