The Medium
Developer/publisher Bloober Team Format Xbox Series (tested), PC Release Out now
Like many a horror game before it, The Medium is about escaping the gravity of the past. Set in 1999, it casts you as Marianne, an orphaned clairvoyant exploring a ruined 1960s resort near Krakow, where the spectre of Poland’s old totalitarian regime dances with the demons of a forgotten childhood. The game has plenty of baggage of its own. It harkens back to ‘golden age’ survival horror on PS1 with fixed perspectives, a persistent Mr X-style monster, and Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka supplying the eerier parts of its score. The element of homage is heartfelt, but limiting. There are grisly sights aplenty, but little of the ambition we saw in Layers Of Fear and Observer at their weirdest.
The real problem isn’t reverence for the classics, however, but Bloober’s refusal to let go of an idea of its own devising. Conceived in 2012 and reinvented as a new-gen showcase, two-world storytelling. While scouring the Niwa resort for the secrets of Marianne’s youth, you can switch between material and spirit versions of your environment, meddling with objects in one to solve puzzles in the other. Mirrors allow you to step fully into the other realm, but sometimes you explore both at once in splitscreen as alternate versions of the protagonist (guided with the same inputs). The challenge, then, is to make headway on both planes against different obstacles, occasionally using the paranormal equivalent of holding your breath to briefly detach Marianne’s spirit self from her physical body.
