The Medium

My first impression of The Medium was that Bloober Team had finally stopped hedging and committed to a single, genuinely unusual idea: a fixed-camera psychological horror adventure where you exist in two realities at once. That Dual-Reality system, shelved for years because the concept was too demanding for older hardware, is the core of everything here. In split-screen segments, you control Marianne simultaneously in the physical world and a parallel spirit realm, and obstacles in one world regularly require action in the other to clear. A broken staircase stops you in the material plane, a swarm of moths blocks the spirit side, and you have to think across both. When you need more range, an out-of-body experience lets Marianne's spirit form walk free of her physical body entirely, though stray too far for too long and she loses her way. Add a spirit blast for breaking through obstructions, a force shield for pushing through hostile entities, and the ability to recharge electrical circuits in the spirit world to unlock paths in the real one, and the mechanic has genuine texture. The setting does most of the heavy lifting in terms of mood. The Niwa Resort, a crumbling monument to Soviet-era brutalism set in post-Communist Poland, 1999, is one of the more distinctive horror locations in recent memory. Its real-world deterioration and its spirit-world counterpart, all seeping walls, bone furniture, and flesh-like growths, work together in ways that feel purposeful rather than decorative. Ray-tracing on capable PC hardware amplifies all of this considerably. The soundtrack co-composed by Akira Yamaoka (the Silent Hill series) and Bloober's own Arkadiusz Reikowski adds a layer of unease that the gameplay alone does not always earn. Troy Baker voices The Maw, the predatory entity that stalks Marianne through the spirit world, and he is easily the standout of the cast. Here is where the honesty has to come in. The dual-reality mechanic is the best thing about The Medium and also the most underused. Puzzles built around it are interesting in concept but rarely push back in any meaningful way. The stealth sequences, where Marianne crouches, moves slowly, and holds her breath to hide from The Maw, are scripted and not remotely threatening. The Maw is built up as a horror centrepiece and then consistently deflated by encounters that resolve themselves if you stand still long enough. The story, which pieces together Marianne's troubled past through audio logs, environmental clues, and ghost interactions at the resort, starts slowly and has a habit of burying its genuinely strong emotional beats under a lot of narrative padding. Some players have noted that the subject matter, which touches on childhood trauma, abuse, and atrocity, is handled with less care than the themes demand. That is worth knowing before you go in. The runtime sits around eight to ten hours, and the split-screen segments, while technically impressive, only appear at specific points rather than throughout, which is actually the right call. Too much of it at once would be exhausting. The fixed camera angles recall classic survival horror, and for those who grew up with early Resident Evil or Silent Hill, that framing will feel familiar and probably comfortable. For players who want free camera control or any kind of combat system, the controls will feel restrictive from the first hour. The Medium is firmly a narrative adventure with horror dressing. It does not hide that, and if you go in expecting action or escalating scares, the disappointment will be on you. The case for playing it anyway: the environment design is exceptional, the central mechanic is genuinely original even if it is not fully exploited, and the atmosphere in the stronger stretches is the kind that sits with you after you close the game. At the right price, for the right player, there is something worth seeing here.

Alex · Scout Team

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