• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The Medium Review Thread

Roberts

Member
Finished it. I was ready to give it a 7/10 (and it's a good score in my book) half-way through the game, but I think it deserves 8/10 purely on the strength of its mood and storytelling. Also, it's not often you get to play a political/historical game that talks about sad realities of Soviet regime. And while the writing is not perfect, I'm glad it avoided the cheap sentimentality and other banalities of, let's say, David Cage's stuff.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
S

SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member
Can someone tell me about the gameplay, is it similar to Silent Hill with combat, puzzles, and slight item management or more of a straight-up walking sim.
 

Roberts

Member
Can someone tell me about the gameplay, is it similar to Silent Hill with combat, puzzles, and slight item management or more of a straight-up walking sim.

It's less of a walking sim and more like a a very simplified point and click adventure game. The puzzles are very easy: let's say you need to find a crowbar to open a door, well, the crowbar most likely will be in the same room or the room next to it. And there's only a few case where you need to combine objects in your inventory. Once in a while you need to run to survive or block an attack. It's definitely not a game that wants you to suffer trying to solve a puzzle.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

nikolino840

Member
Can someone tell me about the gameplay, is it similar to Silent Hill with combat, puzzles, and slight item management or more of a straight-up walking sim.
An adventure game..mmmh..more like still life then silent hills..there's no combat,you have to avoid with stealth ,hold breathing and "magic shield" ,find keys or other tools to open doors,find masks and info of the spirits to free them...some running gameplay where you have to turn left or right with tricks becouse seems an open road but when you pass something block the road
 
S

SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member
Thanks for the replies. Kinda expected it to be more old school horror survival, but I'll check it out once I got an Xbox Series X.
 

point decay

Member
thought it had quite a strong opening, Im about halfway through now and getting a bit bored though. Good to see its made its production & marketing costs back already.
 

Maxwell Jacob Friedman

leads to fear. Fear leads to xbox.
Just because reviewers hate it doesn’t mean they aren’t great games.

Crackdown3, Sea of Thieves and Halo MCC are all doing great now in sales and in players.

But keep pretending Gamepass is the problem.

Medium is already doing great and your boo hooing about it isn’t going to slow it down.
Do you have numbers on how crackdown actually sold? Did it even pass 5 million actual sold copies yet, even sea of theives how much did that sell? And im asking sold not users here people so dont get confused. Yea and MCC was great until it took them damn well almost 2 years to fix it and finally when it hit pc to which it probably sold more on pc than even on the xbox.
The medium is the midium because again, they dont have anything to compete with nintendo or sony. I want compeition i dont care for these mid games. I dont go to the theatre to watch fan films, I want to see john wick, avengers, dune etc. But keep praising mediocrity because that will deff get MS to change and make better games....why ask for more when they can give you less right?
 

BigLee74

Member
Do you have numbers on how crackdown actually sold? Did it even pass 5 million actual sold copies yet, even sea of theives how much did that sell? And im asking sold not users here people so dont get confused. Yea and MCC was great until it took them damn well almost 2 years to fix it and finally when it hit pc to which it probably sold more on pc than even on the xbox.
The medium is the midium because again, they dont have anything to compete with nintendo or sony. I want compeition i dont care for these mid games. I dont go to the theatre to watch fan films, I want to see john wick, avengers, dune etc. But keep praising mediocrity because that will deff get MS to change and make better games....why ask for more when they can give you less right?

You are boring us all, mate. This is a Medium review thread, not a thread for you to bang on about game pass and your obvious hatred of MS.
 

Droxcy

Member
This isn’t the kind of game i was expecting to play. Really disappointed thought it was a 3rd person story/gameplay like tomb raider. Also the camera and PC performance is horrible.


The concept is awesome just wasn’t executed the way I would’ve like to play it.
 
Last edited:

driqe

Member
This isn’t the kind of game i was expecting to play. Really disappointed thought it was a 3rd person story/gameplay like tomb raider. Also the camera and PC performance is horrible.


The concept is awesome just wasn’t executed the way I would’ve like to play it.
Jeff Goldblum What GIF by The Late Late Show with James Corden
 
71 on MC?

Seems pretty much in line with Bloober Team's previous efforts.

I predicted right (between 69 and 80 MC score - based on their previous games).

I was hoping it would come in a bit higher, but for whatever reason the rating spread is pretty wide. Seems to have been pretty polarizing.
 

Starhowl

Member
Played through all of the game and don't know why, but, the developers weren't willing to give us any music, so it was at best a 67/100. Rated it to 3 stars on the Microsoft Store though since that was closer to what I thought! 🤷‍♂️

There was a study saying that music makes, like, 60% of emotion in a movie. Let's say a contra-bass playing while the protagonist walks the stairwell upwards.

In the game there was quote "Sunrise doesn't translate well to text though.":
S6MFrXV.png
 
Last edited:
I was definitely interested in this believing it was a horror adventure game with some light silent hill gameplay with the 2 worlds central to everything, instead of a gimmick.

didn’t realise it was another extremely short walking simulator with garbage performance.

Im not sure why these small indie titles are being pushed as big exclusives, when it’s the definition of perfect for game pass or 15 dollar small title.
Will give it a go next time I sub to game pass for a dollar.
 
S

SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member
Played through all of the game and don't know why, but, the developers weren't willing to give us any music,
Okay, this makes me a little curious, because the reason why I want to play this game is the clear Silent Hill inspiration including Akira as the composer for the soundtrack.
 

Foilz

Banned
By no means is The Medium a masterpiece but it's not "shovelware" or "bad". It's an ok game that deserves a solid 7.5-8. Even if this was a "masterpiece" there would be a huge amount of people poopooing all over it just because it's on xbox or gamepass.

Everyone has a right to their opinions because everyone has different tastes. I for one hated spiderman and the last of us and got much more enjoyment out of ghostbusters and games like shadow warrior
 

sainraja

Member
The game isn't that bad but I was hoping for a new age (a little traditional) horror experience that controlled like RE3/3 remakes.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
@davidjaffe with his review/impressions.

The other day I put up a review of the new Xbox Timed Console Exclusive THE MEDIUM.

Overall, I liked so much about it BUT there were too many execution problems to keep me from loving it and wanting to stick with it.

So I quit playing after 3+ hours and then made a video review.

The Medium Defense Force? They were not happy.

So instead of writing back to each and every one of them in the comments, I made this video as my response to them.

Hope ya be well, ya salty piratez!

JAFFE
 
Last edited:

fatmarco

Member
I finished it last night. Thought it was great but I had 10 or so hard crashes during my time with it. Probably an 8.5, really enjoyed the story.

I'm not quite sure why the game has been destroyed by some critics, outside of the often awful technical failings. I know a lot of American critics destroyed Alien: Isolation at the time for it not being the game thy wanted, which was bizarre.
 

Self

Member
An adventure game..mmmh..more like still life then silent hills..there's no combat,you have to avoid with stealth ,hold breathing and "magic shield" ,find keys or other tools to open doors,find masks and info of the spirits to free them...some running gameplay where you have to turn left or right with tricks becouse seems an open road but when you pass something block the road

That's not the gameplay at all man. The gameplay is 97.99% walking around, reading letters and listening to logs. Occasionally there are, minor puzzles, scripted chase and hide sequences.
 

meech

Member
I finished it last night. Thought it was great but I had 10 or so hard crashes during my time with it. Probably an 8.5, really enjoyed the story.

I'm not quite sure why the game has been destroyed by some critics, outside of the often awful technical failings. I know a lot of American critics destroyed Alien: Isolation at the time for it not being the game thy wanted, which was bizarre.
Dont had any crashes on Xbox, but strange "color bubbles" two times.
 

PooBone

Member
This game has really covered the gamut of opinions. I like it a lot. Wouldn't give it a 10 but I plan to replay it and 1000/1000 it. The soundtrack gets an A+.
 

PooBone

Member
Dont had any crashes on Xbox, but strange "color bubbles" two times.
I got that once. Restarted the game and haven't seen it since. At first I thought it was an effect but then it was showing up on the real world and spirit world sides of the screen.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Played through all of the game and don't know why, but, the developers weren't willing to give us any music, so it was at best a 67/100. Rated it to 3 stars on the Microsoft Store though since that was closer to what I thought! 🤷‍♂️

There was a study saying that music makes, like, 60% of emotion in a movie. Let's say a contra-bass playing while the protagonist walks the stairwell upwards.

In the game there was quote "Sunrise doesn't translate well to text though.":
S6MFrXV.png
This I agree with heavily, music were lacking, that's the most dissapointing part.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Played through all of the game and don't know why, but, the developers weren't willing to give us any music, so it was at best a 67/100. Rated it to 3 stars on the Microsoft Store though since that was closer to what I thought! 🤷‍♂️

There was a study saying that music makes, like, 60% of emotion in a movie. Let's say a contra-bass playing while the protagonist walks the stairwell upwards.

In the game there was quote "Sunrise doesn't translate well to text though.":
S6MFrXV.png
This is surprising since they were making a big deal about the composer, if I remember correctly.
 
Finished it a couple of nights ago :

This , in my humble opinion is Bloober team's best effort so far, these guys love and know how to (properly) do atmospheric set pieces.It's one of the things they excel at.
Really nice camera angles/shots/framing (that Niwa resort wide-shot, hhnnnGgg), really good art-direction and Yamaoka's music, while most definitely not his best work is A-OK, kudos to Arkadiusz Reikowski too, some really nice and atmospheric tunes there.
Writing was mostly OK, no complaints there as was the whole story.Marianne's funny(?) one-liners/monologues were hit 'n' miss and maybe unneeded, no need for such light-hearted humour when dealing with such oppressive environments, just let the game bask in its misery/oppressive tone, this is a horror game after all.

The main problems i found with the game were :

- The absolutely amateurish facial expressions/animations, they're so G'damned bad most of the time that they really destroy any kind of immersion, it's like they hired 3D modelers straight out of university/schools.
Same with the general animation quality : while not the worst out there they weren't exactly what i'd call good, for example, when you leave a character standing still/idling...it's like they're in that typical 3D model T-pose, completely lifeless, coupled with that vacant stare where characters look like they're gazing into infinity without even blinking it's another immersion-breaking factor.
Also : The running animations are like the characters have a stick up their ass.

- Other technical hindrances like micro-stuttering in some parts, weird flickering blue/red/white lights when split-screen/dual reality is active and generally speaking, making my console feel sluggish when pausing the game in specific spots(usually during cut scenes) which would sometimes freeze the game AND the console for a good 10+ seconds(i.e: guide button would become unresponsive/couldn't do anything).

- The split/dual reality was...mostly for show and in my opinion, unneeded since there weren't any "real" puzzles in the game that felt that they couldn't have been there if not for the dual reality.This thing ended to be more a like a bullet point for "hey, look how cool is this thing we're doing with the game !"
Also, it wasn't worth the graphical and/or performance trade-off, 30fps on the XSX + framerate almost halved on PC (when split-screen is active) is not a good look, they could have spent their energy and resources elsewhere, it's basically a gimmick (and not a good one at that).

-The voice acting for Marianne was mostly good but everything else...yeah.
Thoma's voice acting (and writing) was friggin' abysmal 99.9% of the time with the constant "fuck you's", here's a character where in one scene has a loved one - YOU KNOW WHAT - and in the next exact scene (where gameplay starts) he immediately starts spouting witty one-liners coupled with 10's of "fuck you's", it's just horrible stuff and writing which completely takes you out of the experience. The actor's whole delivery was also bad.
Sadness's was meh as was the Commie guy.They various voices for the creatures were OK.

The ending - IMO - was fantastic, yes it's a cliffhanger but it was done masterfully, it ended when it needed to endr without dragging things out, really looking forward to what the next chapter brings.Gameplay wise, i could have done with 2-3 hours more.

All in all, a very "honest" 7.5/10 "AA " game let down only by Bloober team's typical incompetence/lack of experience/lack of good 3D modelers and budget, just imagine this fookin' game with an actual good engine and nice character models (with proper animations), it would have been a thing to behold, instead, what we got is the typical and mediocre Bloober team game - that is to say, a nice/OK and working game let down by the usual (for them) technical limitations.
These guys need a bigger budget and way, way more experienced 3D modelers/animators.

TLDNR : a honest AA game mostly due to Bloober team's good art-direction/aesthetics let down by their usual lack of technical expertise
 
Last edited:

Arachnid

Member
Just finished it myself. It was a 6/10 for me personally. It's the best Bloober has ever done, but all their past games were poor so that's not a high bar. All in all, it boiled down to yet another linear walking simulator.

Good voice acting/dialogue, great soundtrack (though far from Akira's best), and pretty cool environmental design are my main positives (as cool as it all looked, level design/layout was poor; all linear). Also, Spirit Thomas was cool as shit, though way too confident for my liking (I get he was meant to be a stark contrast to normal Thomas, but we didn't get to see that dynamic outside of one scene; I loved that one scene though, and it was the best acting in the game IMO). Same with Marianne actually. They both killed the horror by cussing at and talking down to every demon they came across. Never once, did I feel fear in this game. The Maws 'cookie monster' voice did the complete opposite of instilling fear.

The puzzles were poor (with the exception of the red house which was just OK). 70% of the time, the solution was just picking up an item 10 feet away. The other 30% are puzzles so basic in their execution that you literally just walk through them. A 6 year old could manage this game.

The dual world stuff was just a gimmick that never realized a fraction of its potential. I expected some really cool puzzles from this but got a bunch of basic trash.

The story was just passable. Using amnesia as a plot device only to slowly unravel the protagonists ties to everything and everyone is pretty trite by this point. The ending was also poorly done. I get that was supposed to be their big revelatory moment akin to James finding Mary's tape at Lakeside, but it just felt like a poor attempt at depth via ambiguity. No one is going to be arguing about her choice by the end of it.

Marianne never felt interesting as a character. Never once did I connect to her (EDIT: You know what? There was an exception to this. The opening with Jack was fantastic, and she sold it well). She came across as super 2D.
"I want to help people and learn about my past!"
"You are a BAD demon, and I'm going to send you away!"

Sadness and Thomas were better. I think I actually would have preferred playing the entire game as them. I would have LOVED to see Sadness' side to all this. I also would have liked to see more from normal Thomas. I liked the two scenes we had for him, and I enjoyed everything the game environment implied about his character.

Marianne's connection to the story was also super flimsy. She really had nothing to do with these events in any way.

Gameplay wise? Like I said, walking simulator. There was no AI to speak of for any of the demons. Most of them are just cutscenes you don't actually interact with. The Maw, who is the exception to that, basically just walked in circles when he showed up allowing you to just walk by when his back was turned. There were around 3 of these sections and they each lasted around 45 seconds tops. No combat, no depth, no interaction. Just walk by, or get caught and see a really poorly done instant death screen. Other than that, the rest of the game was just walking from point A ---> B.

All in all, pretty meh.
 
Last edited:

meech

Member
So what if a was a "walking simulator". So were Detroit and Heavy Rain. Good games, but "walking simulators". But at the medium had far less annoying Qte.
 
Last edited:

BigBooper

Member
Just started it tonight and about 30 minutes in. For the first 20 minutes I was thinking I wouldn't like it enough to finish it, but after the first event happened, I'm sure I'll finish it this weekend.
 

Lux R7

Member
did someone here play Song of Horror? becasue i'm playing it right now and i think it's amazing (the atmosphere is top). How does The Medium compare to it?
 

Redlancet

Banned
It doesn't just look way better, it has multiple choices and branching paths. The medium has really nothing on offer in that regard.
Facial animation on Detroit its one of the best of the industry,this game fácil animation its ps3 circa era, also enviroments, animation, etc you can díss Detroit all you want, but on the tech, assets its a league apart from this
 
Top Bottom