First notable exclusivity of the Xbox Series, the survival-horror of the Bloober Team had convinced many players at the beginning of the year! Fortunately for the players of the Sony team, the wait will not have been too long since the title arrived on PS5 at the very beginning of the school year. Nine months of additional gestation therefore... sufficient to improve the overall gaming experience? No, not really, even if the addition of DualSense support and the arrival of a physical version published by Koch Media (on PS5 and Xbox Series) will certainly delight collectors.
The Medium, it's the story of Marianne, a woman who had a fairly complex childhood because of her talents allowing her to communicate with the realm of the spirits... A tortured soul, therefore, who knew how to grow and stand up to strange looks "normal" people. We embody the latter during a pivotal moment in her life, since she returns to her childhood home to do some sorting and bury her adoptive father. She then receives a special message, inviting her to go to the Niwa hotel, a building sadly known because of a massacre perpetrated a few decades earlier. Quite intrigued by this call, our heroine goes there to find the man who contacted her, except that the place is charged with a powerful energy that makes Marianne travel in the tangible world and the realm of the spirits... well more glaucous.
The feat of the Poles of Bloober Team is, in my opinion, to have been able to create an oppressive and psychological atmosphere rather than giving in to the too standard sirens of jump scare (there are a few - very effective - but we avoid excess). Regardless of the world you visit, the places are filled with an energy that makes the player worried and that installs him in an almost permanent state of stress. We move forward, never reassured, reviving the past memories of holidaymakers in this now sordid hotel, reading postcards, or listening to the echoes retained in certain objects. We will also interact with different characters, most of them stuck in the Realm of Spirits, who will advance the story and allow us to understand the whole story of Niwa and the characters who have gravitated around him.
The story will keep us spellbound for just over eight hours. A good average for games of the genre, especially since the game manages to renew itself effectively. Weariness does not have time to show the tip of its ugly nose, for our greatest happiness. In terms of play, we end up with a game that is a bit old-school in its proposal. The game is eyeing the side of old horror titles and adopts a fixed camera that follows our character in his movements. This is probably the only point that can put off some players. For my part, I found it excellent.
As often in games of the genre, despite our abilities, we remain quite weak and we will essentially opt for flight or for the use of the protective shield which acts a bit like a mosquito repellent lamp, except that we here will grill death's-head sphinxes. Like many of its peers from a few decades back, the game favors puzzles. In The Medium, they are all the more interesting, since they involve the two kingdoms, and it will be necessary to observe carefully the decoration in each of the worlds to find how to progress. On the whole, they are not very complicated, as long as you are a bit observant and "logical". You can also get out of your physical envelope for a few minutes to move freely in the astral plane, which will allow you to recover a good number of elements allowing you to overcome certain puzzles.
Not having played the game when it was released, I took advantage of the arrival on PS5 to install the Xbox Series X version via the GamePass in order to compare the two versions, which allowed me to note several things. Already using the Dualsense. The capabilities of the Playstation 5 controller are exploited correctly, with the exception of the audio of the controller. I've never been a big fan of this feature, especially when streaming. The voices of memories and other echoes are transferred to the speaker of the controller, but the volume is rather low, and I haven't found how to force the headset audio... Fortunately, there are still the subtitles, which can be enlarged (thank you accessibility options). On the pure technical aspect, I noted loading times up to twice as long on PS5 (from the menu to the game, 21 sec for the Sony console, against 10 for the SX, stopwatch in hand. The famous Magic SSD of the console has not been exploited, and it denotes all the more when you come out of Ghost of Tsushima, where the slightest loading is instantaneous (you quickly get used to this comfort!). Graphically, the game is quite similar on both consoles, with delays in the display of certain textures whether at Sony or Microsoft. No Raytracing, however, for the PS5 game, we have "old-fashioned" reflections, so all blurry. On Xbox Series X, although quite pixelated, the reflections are present, as on PC. Let this be clear: nothing that prevents you from enjoying the game, very clearly we are on the detail that I notice by dint of playing with the graphic settings of my PC games, which have sharpened my vision a bit.
For those who read me regularly, you know that I have a lot of trouble with horror, because of the "dirty" turn towards which we tend, and the facilities of jump-scare which totally take me out of games. Nevertheless, The Medium was a real favorite, and without a shadow of a doubt it joins my (meager) ranking for the games of the year! If you are interested in horror, go for it, the Bloober Team game is a superb work.
- PlayStation 5 - 49,99€
- Xbox Series X|S - 49,99€ (ou dans le Xbox Game Pass Ultimate)
- PC (Steam) - 49,99€
