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The medium pc6/30/2023 It’s here that an Alan Wake-esque supernatural detective vibe begins to surface, complete with the game’s first consistent scare – it’s poorly written dialogue. Too often, these simultaneous split worlds are merely used as a repetitive puzzle device, having players harness grey-haired spirit realm Marianne in order to access areas that dark-haired human Marianne cannot.Īs you begin to get acquainted with this mysteriously abandoned holiday resort, Marianne finds herself quickly befriending the trapped spirits within. ![]() The problem is, for much of The Medium’s runtime, this clever mechanic goes to waste. It’s a cool idea, and one that undoubtedly suits the game’s slow, considered pace. Like playing the loneliest co-op game imaginable, this split-screen presentation shows protagonist Marianne’s actions mirrored in both astral planes whenever you flick the analogue stick. In a gaming first, Bloober team leverages the considerable power of Microsoft’s shiny new boxes to render two completely different worlds on screen simultaneously – the land of the living and the spirit realm. The Medium’s visual fidelity is a feat that becomes all the more impressive once you arrive at a long-abandoned holiday resort and experience the other reason for its current-gen exclusivity – the split world mechanic. It’s a setup that hints at what’s to come, as for most of its duration, The Medium sees players mulling over objects, solving puzzles and, of course, crossing over to the realm of the dead. Put in the shoes of orphan Marianne, a subdued prologue sees our protagonist roaming around her recently deceased foster father’s apartment, narrating the objects she finds around her. Instead, The Medium shuns over the shoulder shooting to channel the spirit of classic Lucasarts adventure games. Combine this retro perspective with an incredibly familiar-looking inventory screen, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in for an old-school survival horror. Abandoning the first-person perspective for the first time in its career, Bloober Team instead opts for cameras locked to the environments, giving The Medium an OG Resident Evil feel. Still, flattering camera angles definitely help its case. From the convincing glow of street lamps illuminating a cobbled path to the warm red hues of atmospheric lighting refracting across a living room wall, almost every locale is a feast for the eyes. When I wasn’t running for my life, I found myself stopping mid-objective to gawp at Bloober’s stunningly-rendered locales. It’s hard to overstate what a graphical showcase The Medium really is. Thanks to said uncanny lighting and some seriously impressive texture work, everything from the tiled bathroom walls to lush forests look photorealistic. This ghostly horror title features the best lighting I’ve ever seen in a video game. Within seconds of playing The Medium, however, those doubts fade away. Could this indie-made next-gen title really justify the Xbox One shun? Yet with The Medium skipping last generation Xbox consoles, I was initially sceptical. ![]() ![]() While Bloober hinted at its technical prowess with Blair Witch’s realistically rendered woodlands, for its Xbox Series exclusive, the studio has crafted its first large, intricately-detailed world. Let’s start with ‘for better’, because The Medium is absolutely stunning. ![]() Now with the Xbox Series X|S exclusive The Medium, the scrappy Polish studio has finally made a AAA horror game – and it’s everything you’d expect from Bloober Team, for better and for worse. While Layers Of Fear’s mansion horror and Observer’s apartment-block-set mystery impressed, 2018’s larger-scale Blair Witch elicited more shrugs than screams. From its Dorian Gray-inspired debut Layers Of Fear to 2017’s spooky sci-fi neo-noir Observer, this indie studio has quietly established itself as gaming’s very own B movie horror house. There’s always been an underdog charm to Bloober Team’s games.
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