An impressive title when it first released for the Xbox Series earlier this year, we once again find ourselves venturing deep into Bloober Team’s latest psychological horror, The Medium. This time, however, it’s on the PlayStation 5. With a SSD that boasts faster speeds than its competitor, and a controller packed with some innovative features, there is much to be excited about The Medium’s PS5 release. Do the folks at Bloober Team do the hardware justice, or is this perhaps one port you may want to skip out? Read our The Medium PS5 review to find out!

If you haven’t already, go ahead and check out my original review for The Medium that I did back in January for the Xbox Series. Honestly, with this new release much of my original opinion remains unchanged from that review.

To give a brief recap, I found The Medium to be one of Bloober Team’s best titles to date, as it tackled the horror genre with a brilliant, psychological approach. It wasn’t a horror game for its shock value, but more so how much it could get under your skin by intertwining grand set pieces that really made you rethink what being scared really meant. Its twisted look at reality was but a reflection of our own inner monsters; the ones we hide. Loved The Medium for what it is, and PlayStation fans looking for something a bit different than what’s out there should no doubt give this title a spin.

Now with nearly nine  months passing since the original release, I suppose some are wondering what makes this version of The Medium any different than the Xbox Series version. Well, there are quite a few, some good, some bad.

Forget About Dual Reality, The DualSense Takes the Spotlight

One of the big exciting aspects of the PlayStation 5 is its innovative new controller, the DualSense. While we have had plenty of titles to utilize its features, I have found most of its more prominent, unique showcases to be in the first-party offerings.

No surprise, though there have been some third-party studios that have utilized it, which brings us to the Medium.

Take Marianne, the main protagonist of The Medium, she has a number of abilities that connect her between our world and the spirit world, thus the title of the game.

When she is able to transport into the spirit world, the controller will make use of its haptic feedback as an indicator of how much time you have left in this world. The faster it pulsates, the less time you have. And sure, you could say, “well it’s just rumble,” but having experienced it myself I can tell you for a fact that it doesn’t feel like that.

With the adaptive controller they serve as resistance to charge attacks. It’s a cool feeling as you see a light slowly growing in brightness on screen as the triggers build up against your own press. Running has a bit of this effect in that it clicks as soon as the action is performed.

Object inspections also make use of the controller’s gyro function, as you’ll be able to control the camera by simply moving the controller. Not the biggest motion control fan, but I did like that The Medium kept it to just inspections.

The speakers also get used when a player interacts with a memory. It’s a cool touch, considering the theme of the game and all.

While all that doesn’t seem that big, it’s just one of the cases where you need to experience it to truly understand. Features that many would call gimmicks are starting to prove to be some of the best immersion-inducing opportunities, and The Medium leans strongly into that.

Definite Version, But Also Not

If I were to solely base everything on the DualSense controller, I would say that without a question, this is the definite way to play The Medium. The controller just feels that great to play with.

However, this being the first port of a game from one next-gen console to the other (at least from Xbox to PlayStation) there’s a bit of a spotlight on The Medium. Sadly, I don’t think Bloober Team has taken full advantage of the hardware offered from the PS5.

The SSD on the PS5 has time and time again proven to have faster loading on next-gen versions, which is as it should be since it boasts twice the speeds. Yet in the case of The Medium, the PS5 version has noticeably longer (almost double) loading than both the Series X and S.

Further, reflections appear to be missing from the PS5 version, putting it almost on par with the Series S, (made worse because of the loading). In other visual areas, The Medium on the PS5 does appear to be on par with all the other platforms, so at least you are still getting one very beautiful game.

What does bother me is that there is still a presence of frame-pacing issues. I noted this in my previous review, while the game is locked at 30 frames-per-second, it does have a jitter look due to pacing issues. I was really hoping this was going to be fixed by the time the PS5 released. I’m no tech guru, so I don’t know the inner workings of The Medium, but I do at least feel the PS5 version should be performing better than a weaker system running possibly the same game configurations.

Like the Xbox Series version, and even PC, I think this is just a case of poor optimization rather than hardware limitations.

Verdict

I’m a bit torn on this one. As a game, I think The Medium is an excellent entry in what is hopefully a long running series. The story, and the visual presentation behind it are just so much fun and engaging that I can’t help but want more. The added DualSense features are by far some of the best implementations we’ve seen from a third party studio. Bloober Team is quick to familiarize themselves with it, we only wish that same attention went into utilizing the PS5 hardware. Still a great game, just an “OK” port.

Score: 8.5/10

Pros

• Visually stunning.
• Excellent voice performance from all the cast.
• Gripping story.
• Evenly paced, plenty of lore.
• Dual-reality is no gimmick!
• DualSense features are a gamechanger and well utilized.

Cons

• Feels unoptimized – PS5 version lacks reflections and suffers longer loading.
• Frame-pacing is an issue in this version also.

A review code for The Medium was provided by the publisher and played on PS5. You can read SP1st and MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.