However, it’s the use of Marianne’s reality-phasing abilities to uncover and obtain these items that makes The Medium feel distinct, and that kept me engaged in clearing a path through its increasingly ominous obstacles. There are plenty of odd-shaped keys to find, valves to turn, and broken lever handles to repair, which on paper may sound like dated throwbacks to the likes of Alone in the Dark. That said, it’s not just the haunted souls of the hotel you’ll have to contend with, but also the ghosts of horror games past. This can be as simple as sending Marianne’s spirit to deliver a blast of energy to power the fusebox of a broken elevator or, in a more memorable sequence later on, manipulating the hands of a grandfather clock in the real world to scrub forwards and backwards through time in the spirit realm, revealing clues to a hidden door from the phantom presences that appear along the timeline. In fact, the complimentary use of mortal and spiritual abilities is paramount to solving the bulk of The Medium’s puzzles which, while never stumping me enough to halt the surging story momentum, still required a substantial amount of lateral thought that extended to either side of the split. During these times Marianne is able to trigger an out-of-body experience, relinquishing control of her earthly self for a short period of time in order to send her spiritual form to areas otherwise unreachable within the mortal realm.
The medium xbox one skin#
You frequently reveal new areas by slashing through sheets of human skin with a blade made of bones.Displaying both realities at the same time isn’t just done for stylish effect there’s a practical purpose, too. On that note, in this otherworld you frequently reveal new areas by slashing through sheets of human skin with a blade made of bones, which also sounds like the opening lyric to the most metal song ever made. On both sides of the divide the environments are exceptionally well realised, but it’s the spirit world that is particularly eerie to explore, with unearthly tendrils sprouting from the floors, outstretched hands clawing at you like stalactites from the ceiling, and your general surroundings resembling a nightmarish landscape the likes of which isn’t normally seen anywhere outside of a heavy metal album cover. It’s an incredibly striking contrast on one side of the screen the flesh and bone Marianne will be moving along a dimly lit hotel corridor, on the other, her silver-haired spiritual form will be stalking through a hollowed-out hallway to Hell. At predetermined points along the main story path the screen will split to reveal the spirit world side by side with the material world, and you’ll suddenly be controlling two versions of Marianne at the same time. Of course, almost every room in The Medium is a dark room, and they only get darker. But elsewhere there are some satisfyingly hands-on methods you need to employ, and I particularly enjoyed the simple pleasure of arranging trays of photography chemicals and dunking the paper in the right sequence of solutions in order to develop a photo correctly in a dark room. Much of the clue gathering is admittedly fairly straightforward in a mechanical sense, using Marianne’s insight ability on discarded objects found in the world to reveal information about the fate of their owners, for example, or to highlight the ghostly footsteps that point the way forward.
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