The Medium Reviews
The Medium looks pretty, but outside of that, this game is not special.
The Medium is quite offensive to those who suffer depression or trauma. It uses people who suffer as a narrative crutch to tell its story. I expected better.
Bloober Team's beautiful-looking exploration of intergenerational trauma is ripe ground for innovative storytelling, but fumbles its big themes
Instead of high-tech thrills and survival horror chills, this disappointingly mundane thriller struggles to impress with a muddled narrative and unengaging gameplay.
The Medium is a poor game that is rife with bugs, bad ideas, and some nice things to look at.
A good horror game can make rifling through old postcards and personal letters a compelling experience. But The Medium seems entitled, in that it expects me to be titillated by its character design and atmosphere but won't give me enough context to actually care about them. Between that and its tired puzzle-based progression barriers and dull character powers, The Medium fails to justify its existence.
The Medium will scratch the horror itch for some for a while but fails to live up to its potential in a number of significant ways.
Bloober Team has summoned a rich atmosphere, under all that writing, and one or two sequences offer glimpses of a purer game.
The Medium tries to do a lot but never really seems to stop and see if any of it's working.
I found myself rather bored a lot of the time, and straight-up hating several sections for being tedious or repetitive.
Despite its technical prowess and stunning visuals, The Medium is a drag. From slow, uninteresting gameplay to a confusing and poorly executed story, Bloober Team's latest makes for a good tech demo, but not much else.
The Medium is a game with more highs than lows. Bloober Team has taken a definite step in the right direction with this latest venture and I look forward to seeing them build on these foundations.
The Medium seemed like one of the more promising games coming to Xbox Series X. Visually, it makes pretty good use of the hardware, and the environments are stunning at times. Unfortunately, poor controls and seriously flawed gameplay design choices hold this back from being the instant classic that it could have been.
If you’re after a new linear narrative adventure game set in a creepy world to play, you’ll likely enjoy The Medium, but if you’re hoping for a more involved experience, I’d suggest skipping it.
As a narrative focused experience, The Medium generally impresses. In terms of gameplay, it often just feels too easy and lacking in depth. But even with criticisms towards the latter, if you're looking to embrace a horror game for one dark night or two, The Medium is a worthy choice. It's clearly the vision of a team who loved the concept and wanted to take players on a narrative driven adventure, filled with dark themes and systems such as the dual-reality mechanic that feel integral to the story. If you can accept The Medium for the experience that it is, you're in for a good time, but dial back your expectations for the actual gameplay.
The Medium isn’t a bad game by any stretch of the imagination – it’s just nothing special.
Much like Bloober Team’s previous horror efforts, The Medium features an interesting story in a compelling and creepy world but is let down by often boring and dragged-out gameplay sequences
Despite some impressive DualSense implementation, the blemishes embedded into The Medium's gameplay and narrative still show on PS5. While The Medium is an intriguing horror game, it certainly isn't a great one.
The Medium impresses with its next-gen graphics and unique, split-screenplay that lets you jump between the human and spirit worlds. Unfortunately, the horror game's not particularly scary.
The Medium is an enjoyable survival horror that's held back by a lacklustre narrative and a signature mechanic that never reaches its full potential. Even with Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka's score ringing across the twisted soviet world, Bloober Team's latest project pales in comparison to the legends that came before it.