The average review

Bloober Team has developed a reputation in recent years for creating psychological horror games. Most of these have a walking simulator feel, but with The Medium the studio has dropped that model.

Unlike Layers of Fear and Observer, this Xbox console exclusive is a third-person title, reminiscent of iconic Japanese horror games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil.

With inspiration of such a high caliber, The Medium certainly has a lot to live up to. For the most part, it falls short of the best examples of the genre currently available. But that’s not to say it doesn’t have some redeeming characteristics.

History

While it doesn’t start at the Niwa Workers’ Resort, most of the action in The Medium takes place there. Once a holiday park during the Communist occupation of Poland, it was the scene of a terrible massacre years before the events of the game.

The protagonist, Marianne, leaves for Niwa after receiving a mysterious call from a man. She promises to reveal the true nature of her powers as a medium and to explain a recurring dream. From there, the narrative branches out into discovering why this man wants Marianne in Niwa and what really happened there.

The medium also addresses some very sensitive topics. While there are good reasons for doing this in some cases, the game does it with little nuance or care. It seems that things like torture, terrible science experiments, and child abuse are included simply to be shocking.

There are also some twists that are hard to see on the way, but don’t impact the narrative much. This could be the result of the developer’s attempt to cram so many different controversial themes into one relatively short campaign. In about a dozen hours, there is little time to adequately explore these concepts and their lasting effects.

The end result is a narrative that seems compelling from the start but soon loses its focus. Simply keeping track of everything that is happening can be difficult. For many, the results of the effort to unravel the whole story will not be worth it. Especially when The Medium has a habit of introducing interesting characters and then discarding them almost immediately.