The Medium

The Medium Game: A New Generation Exclusive

The Medium game is a Microsoft exclusive game for new generation devices from Blooper Team, known for developing psychological horror, mystery and exploration games such as Layers of Fear and Observer. This new game from the team was inspired by classic horror games like Silent Hill and Alan Wake. The main idea of ​​the game is that the character is in two parallel worlds on the screen at the same time in a way that we have never seen before.

The story from the beginning of the game seems very mysterious. You will listen to the conversations of several people you don’t know. The events at the beginning will be simple and slow and perhaps they won’t particularly grab your attention, but as you progress further in the game you will discover interesting places and find messages and blogs from different people, each of them about his/her own experiences or tell the past. Later everything will make sense to you, since all this information is interconnected in a spiral full of mysteries and mysteries, and over time you will delve into the core of the story and its events will strongly attract you. This may be the story of a horror game that you have enjoyed the most to date.

The Unique Gameplay of The Medium

The gameplay system is the most outstanding element of this game and utilizes the idea of ​​dual reality, or what can be called double reality. The idea is that you, as the heroine, play in two different worlds at the same time, as the screen is divided into two parts and you can watch the heroine move in two different environments at the same time. The two worlds we are talking about are the real world of the living and another world, the world of spirits, where you see a character who is a copy of you and moves around in it. The main idea of ​​the game is to solve multiple puzzles using the idea of ​​existing in two worlds. For example, you can find a locked door in the real world, but if you open it in the spirit world, the path will also open for you in the real world and vice versa. The game is mainly based on puzzles and their solving, there are no fights or battles of any kind and it relies on classic horror elements to play with your emotions while wandering and searching. For example, one of the gameplay clips uses a similar idea to the game Death Stranding, where you mute yourself to try to get past a specific enemy without being detected. Some other clips involve escaping from a specific enemy, and in those clips the character may die and have to start over. In general, the puzzles are very varied and are not repeated in the game, but some paragraphs are sometimes annoyingly repetitive, such as some leather doors that you have to open with a scalpel and the process of opening them is slow and you are asked to repeat this several times.

Not only the atmosphere of this game is inspired by classic horror games, but also the camera style during the game. In this game the camera is fixed and you cannot move it, but it moves automatically as you play. The development team talked about trying to introduce a moving camera, but mentioned that players felt the rotation while experimenting with the idea, and we can actually imagine that. In general, the fixed camera in the game works great and it serves its purpose since it is a puzzle game and there is no combat at all.

The Beautiful Graphics and Technical Issues

The game’s graphics are very beautiful and highlight a lot of details, especially the facial expressions of the characters and also details of the environments in the game. But as usual these days, we encountered some technical graphical problems, such as the sudden appearance of inscriptions on the walls or the so-called texture popup. I also noticed that the arcs would sometimes appear on the screen in strange ways and disappear when I re-downloaded the save file. Generally, these bugs can be fixed with a future update, it depends on the developer. In general, we noticed that the game requires a lot of effort on the device, with two characters and two different worlds running on the screen at the same time. In truth, we didn’t find this annoying on the Xbox Series, especially since it’s not an action game and we’ll talk more about it later. For anyone who wants to know: During our quick test on the PC, we found that it runs at 60 frames.

The Immersive Sound and Music

One of the things that fans of classic horror games will like is that the music in the game was composed by the famous Akira Yamaoka, known for the composer of the famous Silent Hill series. Here Akira has once again given free rein to his creativity. The music in the game is charming and beautiful and gives you a feel for the atmosphere of the place you are in as the music style varies from place to place. The sound effects in the game are excellently implemented. For example, you can hear whispers when you approach a tool that has memories engraved on it, and sometimes you can hear the sound of footsteps around you. Sounds play an important role in the game, immersing you in the atmosphere and helping you explore the location and solve puzzles.