The Medium

The Medium never hits a flat note. I beat the game in two long sittings, and there was never a point during either that I felt like the game dragged, or could’ve used a little more polish, or left too many loose ends hanging. It’s a lean, compelling experience that says what it has to say, then leaves you to grapple with the specifics afterwards. There are images, lines, and ideas from The Medium that I’ll likely take to my grave thanks to this approach, as it puts the onus on the player to piece everything together. You have to wrap your brain around the spirit world’s twisted logic so much that it becomes a part of you, as you live through Marianne’s pain with her and help to navigate her trauma. Much like Marianne’s past, don’t expect The Medium to leave your head any time soon.

With The Medium, Bloober Team proves once again that their imagery for the conception of horror stories has no limits. The Polish studio enters into the new generation of consoles through the front door with a split-screen ghost story that fans of the genre will love. Its simple gameplay makes it accessible to everyone, and that makes the game even better.

Layers of Fear showed early promise, Blair Witch demonstrated that Bloober could resurrect a dormant movie license to great effect, and Observer saw the studio successfully turn its hand to cyberpunk horror. The Medium is a similarly excellent game, serving as further proof of the developer's horror expertise and its credentials as an exciting creative outfit.

Because of its macabre nature, The Medium won’t be for everyone — and certainly isn’t a killer Xbox app — but it’s definitely worth a try if you’re an Xbox Game Pass subscriber.

Ambitious, mesmerizing and scary, The Medium's parallel worlds provide a brilliant atmosphere without reaching the full potential of their promises. Its lack of gameplay is balanced by an impressive narration, nonetheless.

If you’re after action and full-on horror, The Medium will likely leave you wanting, and considerably so. This is more of a slow burn, the twisted plot unravelling over six to eight hours. I found the pacing to be ideal, with the game throwing just enough moments of high intensity into the mix to keep things interesting. There is a big bad of sorts, but don’t expect traditional boss fights, with encounters being designed to be intimidating and scary rather than difficult. Bloober clearly wanted everyone to be able to see this story through to its conclusion.

Buried underneath the messy narrative and the mundane gameplay, there's a good game in here, somewhere. But for the most part, The Medium is a game that I'm very happy to put behind me and never think about again. For any fans of horror, I would firmly recommend you give this game a miss.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

A pretty solid game with a cool idea. Well executed in most moments. I would love to see a sequel or another game use this type of mechanic further. The story is interesting. The setting is cool and character is good. Fun game to play.

it's like almost there

Quite disappointing, thought the idea of it was cool but was quite clunky at times and a few of the achievements felt buggy

Story wise was nothing new at all. Story we have repeatedly seen on other games and movies. Gameplay was awfull. Hectic character movement and controls. Good beggining, an 8 hours playthrough that managed to get boring near the end. The end part was just awful design wise. I couldn't even see where were the openings especialy on spirit realm. Awful. On the plus side was the retro silent hill vibes and sound/music.