![]() The Medium picks up Silent Hill’s vibe and runs with it, even including a few obvious references to Konami’s franchise. It takes quite a bit of inspiration from Silent Hill, a series with a tumultuous history and a lack of recent releases. The Medium’s release is also well-timed for horror fans. The Medium isn’t quite that showcase, but its wonderfully dense forests, tragically decayed interiors, twisted spirit world, and surprisingly lifelike real-world objects all make you feel like you’re kicking the tires of the new console you just paid $500 for. Although the Xbox Series X can make games like Gears 5 run better than on the Xbox One X, we haven’t seen an Xbox-exclusive game that shows off the power of the new console just yet. Microsoft has been scoring all kinds of exclusivity deals with smaller and independent games like this, but The Medium also serves another purpose. The 10 essential Xbox Game Pass games to install on Christmas morning It can succeed for the same reason people might watch the latest Netflix-exclusive movie just because it popped up when they launched the app. Why not give it a try? Even if it ends up being bad, you got it for “free,” so you’re not losing much by playing it. And it’s easily accessible if you have a subscription. For one, it’s a notable game in a dry season. I was disappointed with it, but it seems to be picking up a particular kind of word of mouth. That scope is an important part of why The Medium is perfect for Game Pass. By contrast, you can see what The Medium is all about in just a handful of hours, whether you stick with it or bounce off it for something else. Larger, more expansive titles may last longer, but that also means you might end up spending at least two months playing, say, Dragon Quest 11 S, effectively spending $30 on it alone. The Ultimate version of the service isn’t exactly cheap at $15 a month, but it’s a good enough deal that if you’re playing something on it regularly, you’re saving quite a bit of cash over buying games individually. The Medium’s length makes it perfect for Game Pass. Instead, it’s a psychological thriller that you can complete in just under 10 hours.īut that’s why it fits into Microsoft’s game plan for this generation. It doesn’t have a skill tree to fill out, side quests to complete, or a giant map to cross off objectives on. ![]() It’s not a sweeping open-world action-RPG, nor a lengthy prestige game, nor is it a multiplayer mainstay that can eat up dozens of hours. In a way, Xbox Game Pass - which is available on both Xbox and Windows PC - is the platform now, with the Xbox hardware acting as a way to get into that ecosystem.įollowing the delay of Halo Infinite, Microsoft marketed The Medium as one of the first big exclusives for its latest round of consoles, but it isn’t the kind of game that you’d think might entice people to buy one system over another. Instead, Microsoft’s big draw is Xbox Game Pass, its game subscription service boasting over 100 titles at any given time. The story of Xbox in the last few years has been about how the platform doesn’t have the exclusive games it needs to compete with Sony, which is known for big-budget franchises from first-party studios like Sony Santa Monica, Naughty Dog, and Insomniac Games. But even as that disappointment set in, I couldn’t help but think that it’s exactly the kind of game Microsoft needs more of right now. I ended up disappointed in it overall, surprised by its nuance early on then let down by how it squanders its potential. In a month with few major releases outside of Hitman 3, The Medium had a surprising amount of hype behind it when it came out on Jan. The Medium, Bloober Team’s latest psychological thriller, might have arrived at just the right time. Take our mittened hand and let Polygon’s Winter Games package for 2021 guide you through the playground of wintertime games - what’s great, what’s not, and what exciting features await you in the games coming out in February and March.
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