The Medium

[Nag]

So, played this for around two and a half hours tonight... so far I'm really enjoying it. I'm not going to pretend that it has triple A production values going on but I've been pleasantly surprised by how good it looks all in all... a photo mode would've been nice.

 

 

The character animation is probably one of the least appealing things in the game Marianne runs a little like Claire from Code Veronica.?

 

 

I've just made my way to the spooky Hotel and the game has let me use my abilities, it's actually pretty cool to solve puzzles this way... I thought the lack of combat might hurt things for me but so far the story is carrying things along nicely.

 

 

I'm looking forward to playing more of this, it was always going to be up my street so to speak.

 

Spoiler

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I've not got a strong opinion one way or the other on it yet. It is sort of a walking simulator which plays with some Silent Hill styles. Which isn't a criticism, but I think so far it's undercutting some of the stuff it's going for with its constant narration by the main character.

 

I've not played games by this dev before but it does have a feeling of cut corners, all the ghosts wear masks and when you look at the protagonist you can kind of tell why. Weirdly the game reminds me of Control with how they approach the character and story setup. Anyway I'm interested in it but I hope the split reality stuff gets used to greater effect and isn't just a framerate crushing gimmick. At the very least this is a very cool screenshot and I guess a reason why they wanted to go for fixed camera angles. First hour of the game

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On PC, I am keeping it to 1440 but locked to 30fps because when it does the split reality thing it can get really janky quite suddenly. Consistent 60 doesn't seem like a possibility unless you want to babysit settings or wait for a digital foundry video, which I'm not interested in doing (the 30fps feels fine, probably cause of the fixed camera as well). This is on DX12 tho which apparently has some issues compared to 11, also ray tracing (which I can't tell a difference with in this game, doesn't seem to do much other than occasional reflections)

 

I'll always give weird divisive games a shot cause I'm always trying to see if I can find another Death Stranding or Pathologic. But from what I see unless it becomes something else entirely it's mostly looking like a lightweight narrative based game

 

 

edit one other thing, I wish this had a Polish VA option. The american accents weird me out lol

[Nag]

Oddly enough Control kept going through my mind while playing... that and Until Dawn.

 

Forgot to mention, while it does a decent job with atmosphere it certainly isn't scary so far... although it did make me jump with a really good jump scare.

[one-armed dwarf]

Well Aoife has played the whole thing in two sittings over at Eurogamer, seems like this is really short then just looking at the run time of her videos

 

Spoiler

7 hours

 

[mfnick]

Made a start on this last night. After the initial slow and clunky start I got utterly engrossed and couldn’t put it down. About 4 hours in, just couldn’t wait to find out what happened to Richard and Thomas. 
 

I absolutely loved exploring Niwa, thought that was such a great setting. The gimmick was nicely done here too. 

 

The initial comparisons to Resi and Silent Hill are a bit off. It’s not so much exploring in those ways, it’s more linear. As has been mentioned by Dwarf it’s almost like a walking sim. But got just a bit more to it than they usually have. This totally suits what the game is going for though and works in its favour. 
 

It’s not exactly scary but it’s creepy atmosphere is really thick and expertly done. It has been really quite tense through a couple of sections too - surround sound helps.

I echo wishing it had a polish voice track as well. The voice acting is just a bit off. I’d also like the option of tank controls. I know to most people it’s a dirty word but for games like this I think they’re perfect. Amount of times I’ve started running in the wrong direction after a camera change has been a little irritating. 

 

Graphics wise it’s a bit of a mixed bag, sometimes stunning, sometimes bad (character animation in particular), but mostly it just looks good. Most importantly the environments have been really nice and I’ve always looked forward to seeing the next areas. 
 

Very happy with it. 
 

[Nag]

Finished this earlier, not a hundred percent sure how long it took but between 7 and 9 hours sounds about right.

 

I not gonna say it's the greatest game ever but after how quickly I bounced off the only other Bloober game I've played (Blair Witch) I enjoyed this a fair bit. It's just a decent story driven game, something that came at just the right time for me with what I'd been playing.

 

It's a shame about the games performance issues but other than that I'm happy I gave it the time.

[one-armed dwarf]

DF did a thing, Alex says reconstruction, ray tracing, reflections and resolution a lot.

 

 

 

FWIW I played what I played at 30fps and I feel like that's fine with a slow paced game. DF are nice sometimes but it's funny to me if there are people agonising over 60fps with a game like this. It's not Sekiro lol. But the rundown on how and why it's taxing can be interesting if you're into that boring nerd shit (which I am).

 

But I've not returned to this and not likely to now. My problem is that as a horror game it wasn't interesting to me as it wasn't scary and didn't have interesting exploration/puzzles. Exploration was linear and the solution to a puzzle would generally not be far.

 

On the flipside it wasn't interesting as a walking sim to me cause those games usually have extremely interactive environments with lots of missable story telling, which this didn't seem to offer much of either. It mostly told its story in the same style as a Silent Hill game but those games have a lot more going on outside their story telling.

 

I think Bloober have to step their game up in either of these two areas. If they want to make horror walking sims then look at stuff like Edith Finch and Ethan Carter and try and get something like that with horror. I would be interested in that. I didn't complete it tho so maybe it improves a lot but having paid full price I feel I'm justified to be extremely sniffy in my impressions lol

[Nag]

They were apparently advertising for a combat programmer just after this released, including melee... Not Silent Hill incoming.

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Started this up on Saturday night and was am quite impressed with it so far. 

 

Right out the gate I was surprised how impressive it is graphically, the detail in the environments so far have definitely been of a 'next-gen' standard and have impressed me way more than I thought they would, I really didn't expect this at all going in. Unfortunately (as others have said) the faces and animations are much less impressive, with the old school fixed camera angles it kind of works in a really weird way, the weirdness of the camera is matched by the weirdness of the Protagonists movements and facial animations. 

 

I'm only about 45 minutes in, just finished the Prologue in the Apartment building and am currently in the Morgue. So it's very early days but it's off to a good start, I'm looking forward to going back to it at the weekend and putting a few more hours into it, which I really didn't think I'd be saying. 

 

Pics:

 

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[Nag]

I think if you have any love for old style Resi or Silent Hill you'd get something from this as minus the combat that's pretty much what it is.

 

It's no masterpiece for sure but as a Game Pass offering it more than did the the job.

[one-armed dwarf]

I think if anything positive is to be said about the Medium is that it's artistically very well done outside of the shit characters.

 

I might take another peek at it to test the OLED on it, but won't be completing it at this stage. Anyway lets hope these guys cook up a good Silent Hill lol

[mfnick]

Glad you’re enjoying it. I think this game gets a unfair kicking whenever it gets brought up. I thought it was good. I still think Niwa is a great ‘horror’ environment too. Loved exploring that place. Surprised you think the environments are next gen looking though. Even as someone who liked it I didn’t think it looked that great. 
 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Put a few more hours into this over the weekend and am still really enjoying it. 

 

As others have said Niwa is a really cool environment. It's just a great place to explore that has a character of its own, it's very Chernobyl-esque in its design and oppressive atmosphere whilst still maintaining an identity and dark history unique to itself. I would preferably like a little more breathing room to explore, solve puzzles and all that jazz, but I think the linearity works well here, guiding you through all these different rooms and realities from one key story beat to the next, once I get started with it I find it difficult to put down (as others have said) as I just want to push on to find out what's around the corner.

 

Whilst initially I thought the dual realities would be a bit of a gimmick but I have found myself being increasingly impressed by it as the game has gone on. The way the realities shift in a split second using the mirrors is impressive and a great showcase for the XSX SSD, as a puzzle element it works really well too. The resolution definitely takes a big hit in these moments and the graphical detail drops considerably but considering everything that's going on on screen it still manages to handle it. 

 

The way it plays lets it down somewhat though, I don't mind the lack of combat and don't actually think the game needs it but there is definitely something missing in the mix that would elevate it from serviceable to excellent which is a shame. There's one section where you have to put a mask back on a statue, once I'd done this once the game was like 'oh, you're doing this a few more times bud don't you worry'. I have had a lot of fun with the puzzles though, they're simple but effective, making you scratch your head for a little bit but not enough to annoy or frustrate me.

 

The more I play it though the more I think this was almost an audition (or a failed pitch) to show Konami what they could do with SH if given the right amount of funds and time to make something. Everything about the game from Niwa itself, the camera angle (of course), the atmosphere and the way the mirror world is so similar to SH's otherworld. 

 

So yeah, fun game overall so far. The atmosphere, environments and uniqueness of the dual reality set up is great but the way it plays lets it down just a little bit, so far so good. 
 

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[DisturbedSwan]

Finished this over the weekend, took me about 9 hours I think.

 

Unfortunately once I left Niwa the game took a massive nosedive in quality for me. Lots of very linear sections, (some with recycled environments copied from their Blair Witch game I recognised) with not much use of the dual realities, mirror reality swapping, puzzles or exploration that I enjoyed so much in Niwa. Luckily it picked up again after awhile with the dual realities and mirror switching coming back into play in a garage section and then a really great puzzle investigation in the 'Red Room' section which brought it back up again. 

 

I have to say I never expected the story to be as good as it is either, there were a few moments towards the end where I was a bit confused of exactly what was going on but I managed to get my head round it and felt it was really satisfying as a result. 

 

So yeah, a bit of a mixed bag overall with Niwa being the big highlight for me along with the puzzles, dual realities and mirror swapping but it just fell a bit flat in the second third of the game unfortunately, which put it down a bit in my estimations. I would still recommend it though, it's a cool little game. 
 

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