Taking a fairly respectable seven or eight hours to complete, Bloober Team’s new title, The Medium, is a game that is well worth investigating even for people without Game Pass. Even though The Medium is fairly short by modern standards, it doesn’t feel like the game ends too soon. Nearly every plot question that is presented to the player is answered by the conclusion of the game.
That being said, there is always something more to do in a video game after completion whether it be simply seeing how quickly someone can finish the game again or by taking the time to unlock every achievement.
10 Replay The Game
The Medium’s story is heavily based around Marianne discovering the history of Niwa Resort as well as her own past. There’s no reason not to simply dive right back into the game once the credits roll and see if there is anything you missed the first time around.
Information presented to the player at the beginning of the game has very little context outside of the few lines of dialogue that Marianne speaks. Reading these letters or hearing her monologs again can shine new light on all that information and give players a better understanding of the story.
9 Attempt A Speed Run
The Medium is a game that can very easily be completed much more quickly than an average game. This might be due to the game’s structure around solving environmental puzzles with objects that the players pick up.
Once you know where everything is found and where it needs to go, this makes any subsequent playthrough go much faster the second or even third time around. However, this does mean that players are going to miss out on a few story elements from time to time.
8 Play Observer or Layers of Fear
Before Bloober Team made The Medium, they also made a handful of other games in the same vein in Observer and Layers of Fear. This is particularly the case for Observer, an atmospheric and spooky game that focuses on its unique visuals and mysterious story over action-packed gameplay. The main differences here are its sci-fi setting and first-person perspective.
Layers of Fear follows the same first-person, atmospheric horror gameplay as Observer, though is focused on a painter in the 1920s trying desperately to finish his masterpiece. Thankfully, both games are available on Xbox Series X/S which makes it easier for anyone who loved The Medium to try Bloober Team’s other games.
7 Play Similar Titles
Aside from Observer and Layers of Fear, there are many other supernatural and horror games that The Medium draws inspiration from that are worth everyone’s time. The most notable is the Resident Evil series from which The Medium takes most of its design influence even if it is lacking in the horror aspect that made Resident Evil so iconic.
Other games like Alan Wake, which is also on Game Pass, portrays the similarly mysterious world of Bright Falls and follows the titular character as he searches for his kidnapped wife among monsters consumed by darkness.
6 Explore Jack’s House More Thoroughly
Many of the story elements found in Niwa are fairly impactful and stick with the player due to the knowledge of what happened. But the information presented in Jack’s house is decidedly less so. It requires a bit more investigation.
With new information about Marianne’s past, a player might find that they missed something the first time around in Jack’s house. This includes some finer details of the Good Morning Cracow Newspaper.
5 Track Down All Of The Memory Shards
This is one for all of the completionists out there. After all, not all Memory Shards are necessary for Marianne to learn what happened in Niwa Resort. But the majority of them do present players with useful information about a character.
In particular, there are several surrounding Ursula, Richard, and Lily that can be missed on a first time playthrough. They are extremely well hidden where they are in their respective levels.
4 Track Down All Of The Echoes
Many of these are required to progress the story forward. However, like the Memory Shards, not all of the Echoes are needed for Marianne to understand the story of The Medium. While many of the Echoes will be accompanied by a whispering voice to let the player know there is one close by, others will only be discoverable if you use Insight to intact with objects.
There are also several telephones in The Medium that have their own Echoes attached. Thus, it can be very easy to simply run past, but they tend to give backstory on Henry and his investigation into Thomas, so they are worth looking for.
3 Find All Of The Postcards
Another collectible that is easy to miss is all of Francis’ postcards which are found just about everywhere in The Medium. It’s a curious thing since he should have sent them all off to his mystery friend. But that makes them all the more worth finding.
For the most part, they are simply the groundskeeper describing the events going on around him without the knowledge of the supernatural elements attached to them. Finding all of the postcards will reveal what happened to Francis after Maw is set loose, as well his involvement in setting Lilianne free.
2 Find All Of Richard’s Diary Entries
Richard is one of the more troubled characters in The Medium. He’s also, unfortunately, the entire reason why the Niwa Massacre happened in the first place. After all, he is responsible for the creation of Maw.
Therefore, finding his diary entries scattered around Niwa bring some much-needed context to his actions before control switches to Spirit Thomas when he manages to discover it all for himself in a much more brutal manner.
1 Find The Troubled Man’s Notes
The last collectible that players should try to find before putting down The Medium is the Troubled Man’s Notes. Like Richard’s diary, these collectibles give some much-needed backstory to the main characters of the game.
This time, it is focused on Thomas rather than Richard and shows some of the problems he faced while running Riwa Resort – including dealing with Richard and Francis.
