One of the questions I got a lot when I purchased a Series X was, what are you even excited for? After all, the Series X, while an impressive piece of hardware, did not launch with any big exclusives. A lot of this stems from the fact that Microsoft’s Xbox division has adopted a blended generation philosophy, similar to what you’d see in the mobile hardware space but it does leave a rather large hole to entice people to your new machine. That said, despite all this, my answer was The Medium because while not a big name game, it certainly falls in my genre wheelhouse.
The Medium is a psychological horror game and if you’ve seen the trailers for it, there is an old school style survival horror feel that it gives off. It’s actually not a survival horror game at all though, at least not in the traditional sense but rather a more classic adventure game. So if you are expecting something along the lines of Resident Evil or Silent Hill, it’s not that. It’s also not what I’d say is a next gen showcase game. Don’t get me wrong, The Medium looks fine but it is not a looker by any means.
And that’s going to be an ongoing issue with The Medium because it’s all just kind of… fine.
The game starts out with you taking control of Marianne, the main character. As the player, I was tasked with exploring a loved one’s apartment looking for some items needed for their funeral. And through exploration and interacting with different items learn that the loved one is her adoptive father. We’ll learn she has some basic sensory abilities that can help find hidden things and before the game really kicks off we’ll find out what Marianne really is.
Of course, she is The Medium, a person with the ability to exist or see into the spirit realm. Her real skill in the spirit realm is being able to help usher dead souls to their final resting place (wherever that may be). The opening areas of the game, which serve as a basic tutorial for controlling Marianne and laying the groundwork for what type of game this will be. And what type of game it is, is a very classic adventure game. Find items to unlock new paths, or find a bunch of items and combine them to again… unlock new paths. The Medium is a narrative heavy adventure game.
Classic adventure games live and die on two things, their characters and their story. Combining two nonsensical and unrelated items together isn’t good game design but getting the next bit of story keeps pushing its players on. Nothing in The Medium is quite that bad, in fact most of the puzzles I found to be pretty easy and logical. For instance at one point there was a vase (in the real world) and also what is called a spirit well (a location where Marianne can draw power into herself in the spirit world) but on the spirit side it was missing something to power it up. What goes in a vase? Flowers. And you’ll find one after exploring a bit more, once the flower is in the vase, the spirit well powers up and you can advance to the next area by using your power.
The dual reality is the big gameplay hook here. While we’ve seen games where you can bounce between dimensions, The Medium utilizes an interesting mechanic where you’ll control Marianne’s real world form and her spirit form at the same time. The screen splits in half (or you can focus on a certain realm to get more detail) and Marianne can interact with things in the real world and the spirit world next to each other. This allows for puzzles like the one mentioned above where you need to do things in the real world to advance in the spirit world. There are some weird hiccups narratively with this, for instance why are there these flesh doors blocking areas in the spirit world but nothing is appearing in front of Marianne in the real world. It doesn’t happen too often but I did find it a bit annoying when I’d stumble across them.
That’s a lot of words to basically say, the puzzles aren’t random and stupid.
But it’s true and quite fortunate for The Medium because if they had been classically terrible puzzles, I wouldn’t have finished the game. As I said classic adventure games live and die on two things, characters and story. Marianne and the mystery surrounding her trip to this weird haunted hotel in Poland are fine. She’s a fine character but because of the story the game is attempting to tell (and it’s deeply personal connection to Marianne) we aren’t given a whole lot up front to work with. It’s just an OK story. I don’t regret playing through the game but that’s mostly because the gameplay designs rarely got in my way and I was able to keep moving the story forward and that story was just interesting enough to get me to keep playing.
Look, The Medium isn’t going to be for everyone and it’s not the exclusive showpiece that the Series X could use to convince people to buy on to the system. It’s also very much not what some people were expecting. However, it’s a decent enough adventure game with a decent enough story that I played all the way through in about eight hours. And it’s included with Game Pass so if classic adventure games are one of your wheelhouses (like me) it’s kind of silly to pass on it. Who knows, maybe you’ll come out liking it more than I did.
3*
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