The Medium: Game Review – Does This Game Meet Expectations?

The Medium is an atmospheric horror adventure that allows you to use supernatural powers to see the other reality and uncover dark mysteries and deeply disturbing secrets!

Feel free to check the first hour of gameplay here:

Storyline

We play as the Medium who has the power to see the dark and sinister reflection of our world. There are spirits there. There are monsters there. It is not a safe place but we need to explore it to uncover the macabre secrets of the past, even if this means that we’ll have to encounter the Maw, a gloomy creature born from an unspeakable tragedy that for some reason always wants to “try the Medium on”. As in try on like some kind of outfit…

Gameplay

We have to walk around looking for secrets and objects as well as solve puzzles in two realities at the same time. The game introduces the mechanics of having out-of-body experiences as well as some chases and stealth gameplay. We have to be very thorough and use our abilities to make sure that we haven’t missed any clues along the way.

Pros

1. The story is amazing! It gets good feedback because it’s so interesting, mysterious, and keeps you craving to know more. You can either dive deep looking for all the hidden items and secret messages or go along with the main storyline and still be pretty satisfied with the plot. It’s good and it’s worth experiencing.

2. The voice acting is great! This game rarely leaves you alone. All the little things are voice acted, the items, the thoughts of the main character, the messages from the past. It’s good and it’s pleasant to listen to.

3. The music is very nice. It manages to create a mysterious and unsettling atmosphere, the kind of ambiance that always reminds you that you are playing a horror game even though nothing scary is happening on the screen.

4. The game is scary! This point is the most important one for a horror experience, I guess. To be honest, this is the first game where I got scared by a shoe. Yes, a shoe scared the bejeezus out of me and I’m not afraid to admit it! Don’t worry, you will not get attacked with cheap jumpscares. The game creates a very tense ambiance and knows when to hit you with some good scares.

Cons

1. The stealth is so bad! You have to press one button to go into “stealth mode” and then follow the enemies like they can’t turn around. That’s about it. It ruins the immersion and looks kind of silly. I believe that some QTEs would do a much better job at keeping the players on edge than this weird funky stealth.

2. The camera angles are so annoying. It’s a common problem with third-person games that the camera angles are so bad they bamboozle you now and then. The Medium is not an exception. Sometimes you’d get turned around, sometimes the character would suddenly start going in the opposite direction because the camera angle changed, sometimes you can’t see the exit because it’s weirdly positioned, so you’d start to question your sanity only to find out that it was there all along. This is not how a polished game should feel like.

3. The game needs to be optimized. It’s not horrible, but it will keep going at 30 FPS no matter what you do. So, if you really can’t live without them 60 FPS, well, maybe you should wait until the game gets patched up a bit. Also, sometimes during cutscenes, the frames would suddenly drop for no reason at all but that happens rarely.

4. The Medium is a rather short game. The developers promised around 8 hours of experience, but it’s not uncommon to finish the game in under 6 hours with almost all the achievements. Moreover, there’s no replayability to the game whatsoever as the only thing that keeps you going is the plot, and there’s no real reason to go back into the game after learning the story.

5. Bugs. Yes, you can get stuck in a wall which will make you load the last save that happened 10 mins ago and you’ll have to do everything all over again. Yay! It happened to me twice and it was so annoying.

Rating

It’s worth playing it…but I wouldn’t blame you if you wait until it gets patched up a bit more and when it’s on sale. I still recommend it because I’m honestly having a good time playing the game, but just look at the negatives and think twice. I rate it, at the moment, 6.8 moths/10.

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