The Medium review: This is how it runs on PC | Laptop Mag

Our Verdict

The Medium weaves its engaging mystery with satisfying problem solving elements by putting you in the shoes of someone battling the world'south traumas, but be warned, it really isn't for everybody.

For

Gorgeous graphics and world blueprint
Engaging narrative and mystery
Satisfying problem solving gameplay

Confronting

Stiff facial animations
Few puzzles
Several operation issues
Auto-saves are infrequent

Laptop Mag Verdict

The Medium weaves its engaging mystery with satisfying trouble solving elements past putting you lot in the shoes of someone battling the world's traumas, but exist warned, it really isn't for everybody.

Pros

+
Gorgeous graphics and world blueprint
+
Engaging narrative and mystery
+
Satisfying problem solving gameplay

Cons

-
Strong facial animations
-
Few puzzles
-
Several performance bug
-
Auto-saves are infrequent

I've played quite a few messed up games in my time, but none accept come equally close as The Medium. If yous had warned me what kind of themes it would be exploring, I'yard non so sure I'd want to play information technology. But I did, and now I'thousand here, to talk to you lot all nearly 1 of the kickoff console exclusives for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Serial South.

Haunting themes aside, The Medium impressed me in terms of graphical fidelity. Additionally, its engaging mystery and satisfying problem-solving mechanics kept me going the whole manner through. However, it did drag on a flake with the serious lack of puzzles, and it could have looked better in some places, especially with the facial animations.

Overall, I liked The Medium, simply information technology did feel similar there was a lot of unseen potential. I'yard not then sure it makes our best PC games list.

The ominous trigger warning

It's rare that I become enough fourth dimension to finish a game in its entirety earlier I write the review, but I did with The Medium, and wow, this game is ten kinds of agonizing. I mean, the opening of the game even displays a trigger warning, which states:

"The Medium was designed and developed by a diverse team of diverse beliefs, political views and ideologies. Information technology touches upon highly sensitive subjects with the intent of treating them seriously. Despite this, some players may find certain scenes and themes triggering."

I don't recollect I've ever played a game with that kind of warning, but it's well-deserved, because holy crap. The ii more than obvious triggering themes include The Holocaust and child molestation. With that knowledge, it's understandable why you'd want to avoid this game. I won't discuss these themes in the review, but rather analyze the overall story and writing.

Null bad e'er happens at resorts

As you might have guessed, The Medium is a psychological horror game heavily baked in trauma, and the entire game is about dealing with the manifestation of that trauma. I won't speak to how well it handles its themes, but the overall mystery about how this resort turned into a playground for evil spirits is interesting.

The Medium review — (Epitome credit: Bloober Team)

As the game states multiple times, it all starts with a dead daughter. Marianne, the protagonist and a medium, has a recurring dream well-nigh a girl getting murdered. However, it's not until she gets a phone phone call from a stranger named Thomas most the dream that it gains more significance. Thomas told her to go to the Niwa resort, which is where all the balderdash crap begins. To The Medium's credit, it only used i real jump scare throughout the unabridged game, then if you detest getting spooked, you lot'll be fine.

Throughout the entire game, you're trying to piece together what happened at the resort. One of the best things about this game is its ability to entice the role player to read all of the notes on the ground. You all know the notes I'm talking virtually; those carefully placed nuggets of expositional flotsam you notice in almost every RPG or mystery game imaginable. I felt like a damn detective trying to make two plus 2 equal five.

As I previously stated, this game is very much about dealing with trauma, not running away from it. Marianne isn't defenseless, she has badass psychic abilities to not only defend herself but also send spirits to the beyond. Although, the spirits in the game aren't just wayward souls. They're pieces of people'south souls that stand for either dark desires or traumatic events, and combating these demons is more symbolic than it is artificial in a game like Devil May Cry where you lot fight demons for style points.

As a issue, the horror doesn't actually come up from visuals or jump scares, but rather, the idea-provoking reasons why these demonic-looking beings be in the commencement place. The Medium leans into the psychological horror more than I'd like, but I suppose that'southward the point. However, did The Medium have annihilation worth proverb when it comes to its agonizing themes or does it apply them equally a simple catalyst for the story? I genuinely can't say. I as well tin't actually say that information technology went too far with its themes, equally it doesn't explicitly testify annihilation, but I also don't take any authorisation to speak on those subjects.

Exterior of those scenes, the game is generally well written, despite there being some obvious plot twists. One thing that really bothered me nearly the story was the ending. Without spoiling it, I'll say that the developers wrote themselves into a corner. It seemed like a determination was made to open room for a potential sequel, just not enough room for it to be a given. The unabridged ending felt like a cop-out.

Problem solving and cinematic combat

The best way to describe the gameplay of The Medium is to compare it to the Resident Evil franchise. It's basically the same minus all of the gainsay. The goal is to get from point A to point B and figuring out how to practise that by collecting items and putting them in the right place. That'southward essentially information technology.

Ironically, there aren't many puzzles, which was disappointing. In total, in that location are probably effectually three existent puzzles, and while they're fun, they're very few and far between. The Medium could have used some hardcore, mind-bending puzzles to raise the bar considering permit's be honest, you lot're but running around doing mini fetch quests. It can exist oddly satisfying, merely it also gets tiring after 10 hours without any shift in gameplay.

However, the coolest thing about the gameplay is playing in ii realms simultaneously. Marianne exists in two worlds: the real earth and the spirit world. When spiritual activity is high, her body is divide between worlds and she has to walk two lives at the same fourth dimension in social club to go anywhere. If one way is blocked off, that means the other is too. These 2 worlds are displayed on the screen at once, and sometimes information technology tin can be difficult to figure out which ane to focus on, just ultimately, yous take to be vigilant. This does brand the problem-solving sequences much more interesting.

Of course, there'southward too the combat portions, and I employ the term "gainsay" loosely. Your spirit abilities can block and parry spirits, but in nearly every instance, these scenarios are scripted, and so it's not like you'll have to instinctively react with your abilities. Yous'll almost always know when y'all have to use them, and you'll even take to prepare to use them by gaining energy from certain places in the game.

There are also portions where you lot simply have to run, hide or effigy something out to escape a more threatening spirit. These parts are the most heady and definitely ramp upwardly the tension even if they aren't very challenging.

The biggest issue is that The Medium prioritizes the narrative above all else, so actual gameplay takes a back seat. That's disappointing because there'due south so much potential here to have more interactive gameplay that lets the role player employ Marianne'southward abilities to the fullest. If in that location happens to exist a sequel to The Medium, I'd like to see a major gameplay genre shift.

For a game that'due south just $fifty, I wasn't expecting The Medium to look spectacular, merely my expectations were crushed past a gorgeous, detailed globe that fooled me into thinking that my poor old graphics card was capable of ray tracing.

From the reflections of the rain on the concrete pavement in the real world to the desolate, glowing monolith that is the Niwa resort in the spirit world, it's difficult not to go sucked into the enticing world pattern shown in The Medium.

Nevertheless, when it comes down to the animations, The Medium acts like a concluding-gen game. Marianne'due south face up is the stiffest affair about this game. Don't become me incorrect, the confront models expect bang-up, but it'southward when they're attempting to mimic man emotion while speaking where it falls flat. It's like everything above her mouth is paralyzed during cutscenes.

If I didn't know any improve, I'd say that the poor facial animations are the reason why you don't see many faces in this game at all. And while the reason for the spirits hiding behind masks isn't lost on me, it doesn't assist that the few faces we exercise see fall short in regards to realism.

The Medium is very much an indie game, despite being an Xbox Series 10 console exclusive, and so information technology's understandable if this happened to exist a upkeep issue (I'm merely speculating). It would be nice to see better tech or more money thrown toward the facial animations if another installment of The Medium is to e'er come virtually.

The Medium PC performance

I encountered one-besides-many issues while playing The Medium. They weren't game-breaking per se, but at that place are at least two occasions where the game crashed on me and I had to make up the progress that I had lost. This wouldn't exist as frustrating if the game machine-saved frequently, but it doesn't, so my anxiety is just artificially loftier at all times.

Additionally, there accept been many occasions where the game would stutter, chug and occasionally ho-hum down to a crawl. Needless to say, my review session has not been a smooth experience, but it's non unplayable, just annoying. Then again, it's understandable considering this game is one-of-a-kind in that it's a single-player game displaying two separate instances at once.

I've besides experienced numerous death bugs. While performing an action that would salvage my life, I was likewise tardily and the expiry cutscene played, just the activity was still happening in the background, which ended the cutscene and allowed me to live. On the flip side, I've had multiple scenarios where I did the correct thing and died anyway, but the game carried on every bit if I were nonetheless alive.

Equally far as the settings go, there are quite a few things y'all can mess around with. The basic display settings include the resolution, HDR, Ray Tracing, overall quality, V-Sync and max fps. If you swoop into the Advanced settings, yous'll find settings for antialiasing, DLSS quality, FidelityFX sharpening, shadow quality, texture quality, SSAO, SSS quality, divide translucency, LPV, furnishings quality, shaders quality, motion blur and lens flares.

There'southward not an all-encompassing amount of accessibility settings, only y'all tin can edit the subtitles to mess with the text size, background, speaker name, speaker colour and to include bold text.

The Medium PC benchmarks and requirements

At offset, I tested The Medium with my desktop Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 GPU with 8GB of VRAM at 1080p on Medium settings, which got 62 frames per 2d. However, when the worlds carve up, and the game was technically running twice at the same time, I was getting a little over 30 fps.

I as well tested it with the Gigabyte Aorus 15G, which has a mobile Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU with 8GB of VRAM at 1080p on max settings, and that got roughly 58 fps. Meanwhile, during the simultaneous gameplay, the laptop but got over 30 fps.

If your PC is a couple of generations backside, I recommend playing The Medium on the Xbox Series X, which will net y'all super-fast load times and more than detailed graphics.

The minimum requirements for a system to run The Medium is an Intel Core i5-6600 or AMD Ryzen 5 2500X CPU, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super or GTX 1060 or Radeon R9 390X GPU and 8GB of RAM.

The recommended specs are an Intel Cadre i5-9600 or AMD Ryzen vii 3700X CPU, GTX 1660 Super or Radeon RX 5600XT GPU and 16GB of RAM. If you lot desire to go all-out on 4K settings, the developers recommend at least an RTX 2080 or 3060 Ti or Radeon RX 6800 GPU.

Bottom line

I felt similar I was hit with a whirlwind of trauma. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous how much trauma one person can experience. Even only in the few minutes of the game, we know that this is going to be a messed up story. Listen, if you're into psychological horrors, The Medium volition exist correct up your alley.

Nonetheless, if you're just interested in playing an Xbox Serial X exclusive or something akin to Resident Evil, take a step dorsum and inquire yourself if this is really what you desire. This is non a fun campy, spooky game. This is an amalgamation of some of the world'southward most screwed up issues represented through the lens of creative video game design.

I can't speak to how well information technology handles its themes, but equally a narrative-driven video game, I liked it, despite its problems.

Rami Tabari is an Editor for Laptop Magazine. He reviews every shape and class of a laptop as well every bit all sorts of cool tech. You tin detect him sitting at his desk-bound surrounded by a hoarder's dream of laptops, and when he navigates his mode out to civilization, y'all can catch him watching really bad anime or playing some kind of painfully hard game. He's the all-time at every game and he just doesn't lose. That's why you lot'll occasionally take hold of his byline fastened to the latest Souls-similar challenge.