Warning: This article contains mentions of child abuse, domestic abuse, child sexual abuse, the Holocaust, and slight spoilers for The Medium.

It’s hard to describe The Medium as a delight. Not because it isn’t, the last game that came this close to punching me in all my rather specific emotional weak spots might have been Dishonored when I last replayed it back in 2019. I can’t stress enough how bizarrely, inordinately pleased I am to have been moved to unexpectedly cathartic heartache by a game.

Delight is the word for my feelings on Bloober Team’s latest grief-choked, complex, beautiful venture. However, The Medium comes with a heaviness that has stayed with me too. It is this seeming contradiction in terms that characterize the game’s tender yet painful approach to its subject matter.

Starting the story with a simple yet lovingly wounded opening sequence, Marianne goes about saying a final farewell to her adoptive father. No such anticipated peace follows, though. It isn’t long before unnerving intrusions make themselves known, ultimately drawing her into a perilous, painful journey. This journey leads to her reckoning not just with herself and her family but with the broader national shame and trauma hanging over 1990s Poland.

Drawn inexorably to the hollowed-out shell of the Niwa Resort, an overgrown post-Soviet ruin, Marianne peels back layer after layer of a complex, compelling story. A narrative that grapples with the supernatural yet never loses its sense of a fundamentally human story about loss, both individual and collective trauma, identity, and memory.

The Medium finds particular strength in (essentially) being its own game. There are clear and deliberate nods to the game’s predecessors such as Silent Hill. However, The Medium is in many ways telling the story it wants to tell, rather than the one it might be expected or “supposed” to, in order to fill its anticipated niche as a genre work. The story has a tender grief to it that weaves through all the horror and gives it particular gravitas that I have continued to appreciate days after wrapping up the narrative.

So too does The Medium handle its sensitive topics with a degree of nuance and empathy I was pleasantly surprised by. There’s a clear understanding that grief, loss, abuse, trauma, and the kind of collective shame, rage and hurt that comes with historical cataclysm and genocide have no easy or tidy solutions. They don’t just fade away or resolve with the death or removal of a perpetrator.

Neither did these elements fall under the all-too-common tendency in horror to simplify them or utilize them as cheap exploitative knocks. It is a series of careful, deliberate, tasteful choices that are going to stay with me well into the future of my other gameplay.

This intelligent and thoughtful balance is complemented and supported by a fantastic voice acting cast. Marianne (in particular) feels and sounds great through Kelly Burke’s performance. She comes across as resoundingly alive and compelling as only a messy, complicated, tender-hearted yet vindictive protagonist can be. Troy Baker as the voice of The Maw blew me away with a range of tonality and expressiveness I wasn’t expecting from what could have been a one-note monster if left alone.

It should be said that though a content warning is provided at the game’s opening screen, it isn’t to my mind on the screen long enough to be fully taken in. It also is not specific enough to really prepare players in a meaningful way for what’s to come.

While I was fortunate to not experience the game’s intelligent and nuanced approach to abuse and sexual trauma, as triggering, I would have stood an even better chance still of weathering them if I’d had the heads up in advance. With that said, there were deliberate choices to tell more than they showed, and to treat the survivors with respect that was appreciated.

Similarly, the game telegraphs fairly early on that it is grappling with the collective burden of the Holocaust’s aftermath and the shadow of the Soviet Union. Despite this, I do feel the audience would have benefited from including this more explicitly in a more constructive content warning, to begin with.

The game remains highly satisfying on a sensory level, all things considered. Its visual designs are gorgeous and unsettling, particularly for the “spirit world” segments of the game. There are clear nods to Silent Hill in the dual-world nature of the game, but they are made new with the split-screen approach and the inspirations grown from Polish dystopian surrealist artist Zdzisław Beksiński.

The game is best played with a controller, not just for ease of movement but also to experience the controller vibrations in tense moments. Alternately, the vibrations are helpful in response to environmental cues that have gameplay feeling exactly as involved and immersive as the developers clearly intended. The soundtrack is beautiful, with an unnervingly oppressive instrumental score co-composed by Arkadiusz Reikowski and Akira Yamaoka (yes, that Akira Yamaoka). There are also compelling vocal tracks supplied by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and Troy Baker toward the end of the game.

The approach to puzzle-solving offered by the game also suits my brain very well, making for an enjoyably thoughtful experience of thorough, contemplative exploration. I can concede that this might not be for everyone, but it marries well with the overall tonality of the game. It is honestly a delight — there’s that word again — to delve into some puzzle solving that is less about stretching and frustrating the brain out of shape, and more about being thorough, methodical, and willing to take one’s time.

The Medium does need a little extra polish or TLC, though. The stumbles I experienced were very minor on balance, but there are a few frame stutters or glitches that trouble an otherwise gorgeous game with delightful mechanics.

Equally, there’s a spot or two where The Maw’s AI as principal enemy seemed to glitch out, leaving it stuck in a corner or unable to spot me when it arguably should have. Again, this was only once or twice so it feels very minor when set against the whole. All the same, it still would benefit from some reworking to really let the Maw live up to the long shadow it poses over the story.

These limitations have far from undermined the game for me, though. They’re much more a case of “this game I love could be even better if …” than they are a true takeaway, and I can say with confidence that I’ll be carrying The Medium‘s beauty, terror, intelligence, and sensitivity with me for quite some time.

A PC review copy of The Medium was provided by Bloober Team for this review.

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The Medium

$49.99

9.2

Score

9.2/10

Pros

• Gorgeous visuals and set pieces
• Enjoyable puzzle solving and scarier sequences
• Interesting mechanics
• Beautiful soundtrack
• Tasteful, moving approach to story

Cons

• Content warning at the beginning of the game needs to be more detailed
• A few frame stutters and visual stumbles