Game Review: The Medium

The Medium is a game I’ve heard plenty about prior to picking it up. The things I’ve heard range from good to bad on a lot of different levels, but I didn’t want to let any preconceptions weigh on my own experience of the game. With it finally coming to PlayStation Plus I figured it was a prime opportunity to play the title and determine which of the polarising opinions I fall more in line with. I feel on reflection I lean more on the negative side with this game as it struggles to deliver a compelling enough experience to be anything more than a disappointing footnote in the horror genre. 

Developed and published by Polish studio; Bloober Team; The Medium plays as a supernatural horror game in which its main selling point is you play a character split across two worlds. One world reflects our modern reality, while the other reflects a dark manifestation of emotional trauma.  The main format of this game is a narrative-lead exploration title in which you explore the two worlds in search of answers to a dark, clouded history of the main character. 

The narrative of The Medium follows a spirit medium called Marianne residing in Poland post-communism. After the death of her foster father, Marianne is given a mysterious call and asked to come to the abandoned Niwa Workers' Resort which was a holiday destination during Poland’s communist times.  It’s here where the majority of the game takes place, as Marianne treads across the mortal world and the spirit world as she seeks to understand the history behind the trauma that ties her to this location. As she explores further through the resort, she soon learns that manifestations from the spirit realm are leaking through into the real world and they are very eager to cut her investigation short before she can uncover the dark truth behind everything. It’s up to Marianne to overcome the ever-increasing dangers as she ventures further into her past in search of a truth she had all but forgotten.  

There’s a lot to unpack about this narrative and I can confidently tell you none of it is good. The story of The Medium had such a compelling set-up in its setting and characters but it fails to utilise them in any competent fashion. The mystery behind the resort and how it ties to Marianne’s childhood is so poorly implemented and paced that I felt little to no care when the true answers were revealed by its end. I don’t think this is The Medium’s worse sin when it comes to the narrative either. My usual readers will understand how much I care about mental health representation in all forms of media and I noticed quite quickly this game plays with these concepts in a really disrespectful way. It’s loaded story tackles concepts like mental and physical abuse, paedophilia, and rape and does it in a way that is clearly tone-blind. It feels like Bloober wanted to use these concepts to add weight to the narrative but didn’t bother to actually respect the seriousness of what these things can mean to players. In fact, they even go as far to try and explain and justify some of these horrific elements by using the ‘trauma begets trauma’ card. It’s a horrifically bad use of such real topics and the developers should be very ashamed for mismanaging them in such a way. I’m not against concepts like this being explored in video games, but the way The Medium tackles them is anything but respectful and it just left me really angry and annoyed.

It's not just the narrative where this game fails either. On a gameplay level this game struggles to be fun or engaging in all but a few moments. The concept of having to play a character split across two worlds, and having to influence the environment within each individual world was a solid gold premise, so it’s even more disappointing to see how much Bloober missed the mark on utilising it. This game plays so damn slow as well, I hated having to navigate and back track in these locations because the game felt so inclined to make the player character so janky and stiff to mauver. The puzzles sections lose their appeal all too easily as you progress through the games excruciatingly slow pace as well. There’s only a few segments in this game where I actually felt engaged in what the game was asking me to do, but they flared out so quickly that I feel little desire to hold them up and praise them. 

The only element of this game that feels in any way commendable is its visuals. The environments of this game are all beautifully rendered. The concept of the environments being differently reflected across the mortal and spirit worlds allows the designers to better visualise the concepts and stories littered behind them as well. It’s a style we’ve not seen in the horror genre for a long time since the likes of Silent Hill and I can’t argue against the fact Bloober are utilising the next-generation tech to give these environments their horrific beauty. 

Sadly, though the visual element of this game is about the only thing I can praise in this video game. The Medium on a whole is a severely disappointing title which does nothing much but waste your time. It’s bad enough that it takes a solid premise and botches it up majorly, but I think what’s worse is how oblivious it is to how problematic its core narrative ends up being. For all the time you invest into getting to the end point, there’s this sickening taste left in your mouth by the end of it. I understand Bloober team are working on the remake of Silent Hill 2 and while I believe they can nail the visual element; I have very little faith they won’t butcher the nuanced themes and tone of that game. If The Medium is anything to go by; we should all be very concerned in my opinion