Juxtaposed just-so between the piles of skulls and frozen death masks, Bloober's canny use of fixed vignettes means every shot is perfectly dreadful and dreadfully perfect, and only further enhanced by the soundscapes sculpted by composer Arkadiusz Reikowski and Silent Hill sound director and producer, Akira Yamaoka. I know it's weird to say that - this netherworld is a burnt, broken place it's not somewhere you'd choose to holiday - but there's an undeniable beauty here, too, secreted between the alien flora, fungi and fear. well, medium length, at around eight-ish hours.īut oh my lord, is it beautiful here. It was the story that kept me gripped, and while that too perhaps lacked the depth I'd been hoping for, it's nonetheless an intriguing yarn that - like its title - was neither too long nor too short, but. I can't say I particularly warmed to Marianne, either though fearless, her character was a tad too one-note for me. You no doubt already know that Troy Baker lends his talents to terrifying antagonist The Maw, and yes, he's predictably wonderful as it - the creature's guttural mutterings and furtive soliloquies hint at something vaguely human, or at least attempting to appear so - but otherwise, the voice performances are a little uneven. The tank controls, too, are better in theory than practice. The fixed camera angles undoubtedly enable the developer to spin a more sophisticated visual narrative, as well as heighten tension and uneasiness, but I am forever impaling Marianne on environmental hazards I simply can't see. That said, there's a reason why some of those old horror tropes have been left in the past. There have been flickers of it throughout the studio's horror-heavy back catalogue, but no game has come quite as close to The Medium in terms of unadulterated adoration. There's no attempt to conceal Bloober's unabashed affection of old school horror, either. It draws heavily on the ying-yang of contrast - good and bad up and down happiness and sadness - and recycles it endlessly, thematically and literally. Even in this reality - her safe place, supposedly - she's an undertaker, and that's where we find her as her story begins, preparing to bury the only man that ever showed her any kindness. It begins with The Medium's opening line - "It all starts with a dead girl" - and doesn't waver right up until the credits roll. Dead.ĭeath is all Marianne has ever known. It's the kind of place that someone coined the word "hubbub" for, a room that's supposed to ripple with laughter and footsteps and the endless ting of the bell on reception. A hotel is frozen in time, the scattered belongings of its guests - suitcases and odd shoes and forgotten toys - sprinkled throughout the ruins. Later still, the entire world will be soaked in a blood-red filter as you scramble up mountains of paperwork and giant, haphazard filing cabinets.Įven the 'real' world is scattered with reminders of what used to be. Later, arms will hang down from the ceilings and shattered bones will jut out of the ground. Availability: Out January 28th on Xbox Series S, Series X and PCįungus blooms everywhere and doorways quiver, blanketed with a thick, terrible, alien skin. I know that makes no sense - how can you tell that from a video game? - and yet you know that's what it smells like, a muddy, earthy, cloying scent that sticks in your throat as you tiptoe across the razor-thin edge between Here and There. Bloober Team goes back to the classics for possibly its best effort yet.ĭeath is everywhere here.
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