The Polish Games Studio Bloober Team specializes in the creation of psychological horror thrillers. Their game stable includes Layers of Fear, observe and Blair Witch, to name a few. Some of these games are also released on PSVR, including Layers of Fear and Blair Witch. Their last game is The Medium. Given its nature, this game is not likely to see a PSVR output.
Released last January on Xbox and PC, the medium finally arrives on PS5. When the initial output, the PS5 version did not include throwing rays, but fortunately, it was quickly corrected. The game is played in 4k and only 30 fps. A little pity that an option 60 fps is not available. While the game uses a unique shared screen mode, the current console generation is powerful enough to support 60 fps.
As Bloober Team is a Polish developer, they decided to adopt their culture and history for this game. The medium takes place in the Poland of the 1990s in an isolated and abandoned hotel, the Niwa - which means cornfield in Polish (Another cry of Stephen King maybe?) - is in the middle of Kiwa s fictitious forest. The game is full of tributes to older horror works, be it cinema, literature or video games. A possessed hotel is a direct wink at the Stanley Hotel Stephen King de The Shining. The butterfly head of death of the silence of lambs also appears. On the video games side, The Medium uses the locked camera framing of the first installments of the Resident Evil and Silent Hill games.
The goal of the game is Marianne, you guessed it, a medium. It is brought to discover how it has its spiritual powers, a mystery related to the abandoned carcass of the Niwa Hotel. This discovery trip guides the game. Marianne can cross two worlds, one that we know as real and the other is the spirit. Both sides influence each other. The actions undertaken in a world often affect the other, directly or indirectly. It s this interaction that Bloober Team uses for the most unique gameplay aspects. Often, an action on one side is used to overcome a barrier or puzzle in its mirror counterpart.
In the real world, Marianne adopts a Chuck Norris style, Good Guys Wear Black. She is all black from head to feet: black hair, leather jacket, jeans and boots. In the world of spirits, it adopts an ethereal presence with white hair and a greyish outfit. The actor Kelly Burke expresses the character and does a yeoman job here, given the somewhat confused presentation of Marianne. Sometimes the character is all austere and self-reluctant, while other times she is full of enthusiasm. I must assume that it was the result of trying to portray the character through the lentils of two different worlds. The end result is a rather schizophrenic personality.
Marianne has a sequence of powers that work in both worlds. It can feel psychic traces of people on objects. Thanks to these traces, it can either hear conversations or reconstruct ghostly scenes that can lead to indices or help solve puzzles. It also has a psychic shield, which is used in the mirror world to repel malignant forces or overcome some barriers. Marianne can only store a certain amount of energy, which is visually represented in the mirror world as a series of fungal growth on an arm. The more energy she has, the more rings there are.
Another useful tool is that of the astral projection with which Marianne can browse the mirror world. This talent is limited in time and if it stays too long out of his body, she will die. You use this projection capability to solve puzzles that exist only in the alternative world. Sometimes these puzzles include looking for an object such as the right-based bone razor. Mirrors also allow Marianne to enter the other world and return to unique screen mode.
Sometimes the game goes into shared screen mode where you control Marianne in both worlds. You can switch between the worlds by pressing a button. This mechanics is not controllable. You enter shared screen mode when puzzles require handling in both worlds. Thus, a multi-step puzzle will give you tilting between the worlds to solve them. This is the closest implementation of one player in Coop mode that you will never find.
Even though the mirror world look is based on the paintings of the Polish artist Zidizslaw Beksinski, they seem very gigious. The same goes for the right razor look. Organic growth infest the mirror world and often resemble tumor skin coupled with strange spider web support structures. Naturally, the color palette of the world of mirrors is very dull. Unfortunately, it also applies to the real world. This would have been more striking if the color contrast between the two worlds had been more different.
In addition to Marianne, there are only a few other characters. It is good that two of them stand out. One of them, called sadness, meets you early at the hotel. Sadness exists only in the world of mirrors and is a man penguin with a wooden mask for the face and skin does not entirely cover all its joints. His gaze evokes empathy and pity, which are still reinforced by the Expert vocal work of Mary Elizabeth McGlynn.
The other character is the antagonist just known as The Maw. Troy Baker ensures vocal work and is very effective. In the version of this Mr X game of Resident Evil Two, is The Maw. The MAW pursues you tirelessly. Since there is no fight in the game, you play the cat and mouse with him, first in the world of spirits, then later in the real world. This character adds a dose of action and tension that is necessary to what is essentially a quest game.
The medium uses fixed views of several cameras from the first resident games Evil and Silent Hill to create a tension and a claustrophobic atmosphere. The disadvantage of this approach is a constant feeling of disorientation when you leave a view and go to the next one. You will surprise yourself to correct the course often. The game uses the Dualsense comments. It s amazing to see how much a small controller return dose can make the game much more immersive. It s not better to play in VR! The best uses come when you use your psychic capabilities.
The music is sparse and uses a low throbbing presence to make you feel isolated and overwhelmed with a heavy load. The sound and environmental signals are excellent and also highlight the atmosphere with moaning disembodied voices or a lugubrous winding carillon.
With each game they come out, Bloober Team continues to make progress, and The Medium is another of these steps. It has an intriguing story with intriguing characters. The game also offers a clever mix of old and new gameplay items.
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