The good atmosphere with "The Medium" exclusively on Xbox Series X / S -

Bloober Team

  • The exclusive "The Medium" is available since Thursday on Xbox Series X / S and included in Xbox Game Pass.

  • This is the new horror game from Polish studio Bloober Team after

    Layers of Fear

    and the adaptation of

    Blair Witch.

  • The game draws its inspiration from

    survival horror

    of the 2000s and more particularly from

    Silent Hill

    , from which it borrows composer Akira Yamaoka.

Video games, the ideal playground for horror?

The success of the various remakes and sequels of

Resident Evil

tends to prove it, not to mention the new experiments of its creator Shinji Mikami with

The Evil Within

and other long-term licenses (

The Dark Pictures, Amnesia, The Walking Dead

).

Finally, the only thing missing is Silent Hill, the other cult horror game, which has not given any news since the abandoned project Silent Hills in 2015. This void, the Polish studio and genre specialist Bloober Team (

Layers of Fear, Blair Witch

), intends to fill it with

The Medium

, the first Xbox Seris X / S exclusive.

The golden age of "survival horror"

The medium of the title is Marianne, a young woman who has the power to see spirits and help them find peace.

Following the death of her adoptive father, she receives a mysterious phone call and soon finds herself in an abandoned hotel complex in the former Soviet Union, the scene of a massacre and perhaps the key to her past.

With its different levels of space-time and perception,

The Medium

evokes the golden age of

survival horror

of the 2000s, from

Forbidden Siren

to

Project Zero

and of course

Silent Hill

, from which it goes so far as to borrow, for his music, composer Akira Yamaoka.

The title therefore favors the atmosphere and the psychology to the action and the tension of a

Resident Evil

, with an exemplary artistic direction, beautiful and desperate, failing to shout “next gen”.

Two realities, two screens

If the game has the airs of a DONTNOD-style narrative adventure, or even an interactive film, its originality comes from its gameplay, and from this double reality, between the world of the living and that of the dead, literally represented on the screen by a

split-screen

dear to Brian De Palma and…

Mario Kart

.

Marianne's actions in one reality will have consequences in the other, it is even the spring of the majority of the enigmas.

Unfortunately, the concept is not fully exploited, not like

game director

Josef Fares was able to do with the unique game mechanics and experiences of

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

and

A Way Out

.

The Medium

turns out to be quite classic, even interventionist, but no less captivating.

It's just that it carries the hefty label of first excluded

next gen

Xbox.

Let's say instead that it is available for free with Xbox Game Pass.

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  • Horror

  • Xbox

  • Video games

  • Culture