Recent reviews by IronGun

The Medium is a walking simulator. It advertises itself as a horror and puzzle game but neither of those are really true.

Yes, objectively speaking you'll both find puzzles here as well as things that are unknown and more powerful than you, attempting to kill you. However neither of those elements are fleshed out. Neither of them is interesting enough to justify calling this Art Exhibition, Horror or Puzzle.

Do you think having to sneak past a monster that walks in circles in a section that lasts less than 2 minutes is Horror?

Do you think looking for a key to a keyhole and finding it it in the same room, in a drawer, is a puzzle?

If yes, then the Medium might be for you after all. I expect more however. Especially with it's performance heavy mechanic of being able to see two worlds at the same time. It does very little to nothing with it.

So ignoring the worthless gameplay. What is there left? Art and story.

The art is mindblowing. Graphically, The Medium is likely one of the best looking games I have ever played. It has become a bit of a tradition for Bloober Team to flex their talent, justly so. Every little pixel, polygon and texture has been polished to their best quality. The approach of the artstyle by using the art of Zdzisław Beksiński as inspiration has worked in their favor. The end result is nothing short of mindblowing.

As for the story....well, the developer certainly did an outstanding job with the presentation. It manages to grip you very quickly and give you a good feeling of watching a well directed movie. Sadly things do fall apart by the 2nd half. The mystery unravels and the reveal is...underwhelming. With the very ending itself being a spit in the face in form of one of the dullest movie cliches known to man.

Which brings me to the conclusion.

The Medium is an art exhibition and nothing else. The puzzle and horror elements have been build into it for the sake of being able to market it as more than just a walking simulator. The end result is a visually pleasing but otherwise very uninspiring mess.

Purchase this game only if you'd like to look at pretty art and really hate your money.

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Additional information if you're asking yourself about my gametime. About halfway through the game, I soft locked the Medium by completing one of the puzzles in the wrong order. Which in of itself is a ridiculous reason for a soft lock. It's a known issue and sadly there is no way to resolve it besides reloading an older save file. However that became impossible as there is no manual saving system and all save files have already been overwritten. Which left me with only one choice, I had to replay the entire game again. Yes, there is no chapter select.

As soon as I started the new playthrough, I dropped The Medium soon after and watched it via a friends stream instead. Since the game doesn't offer much in terms of gameplay, it didn't change the experience for me at all. The game is ultimately is a walking simulator after all.

I hope this will clear things up.

Nostos is a title that has a promising amount of potential but is crippled by many technical problems that make the game difficult to enjoy in it's current state.

- The Settings menu needs a proper rework that allows full control over the graphics
- The game needs a push to talk function, as well as a function that allows you to mute other players
- General Performance improvements are required as the game stutters, lags and freezes even on powerful machines
- Server stability improvements
- Starting a mission shouldn't be forced through a 3D lobby. Let me use the main menu instead to be able to jump in quickly
- The combat needs complete rebalancing

Once again, I believe this game could be amazing but it the devs will have to put a lot of work into it to get it there. I'm very hopeful and I will hold onto that faith, but will be sticking on the sidelines until it's there.

I have made a small video of the one hour of playtime within Nostos:

https://youtu.be/28P6NO57V0E

Artistically this game is more than impressive. It manages to create environments that are capable of rivaling a game like Skyrim. I was looking forward to spending many hours exploring this environment, relaxing and taking screenshots.

However the game did not allow me to do that. The environment is as seen on the screenshots inhabited by humanoid animals who speak your language and don't shy away from giving you generic side quests. Sadly those side quests are not just optional content that can be skipped since they provide you with currency which is used to be able to bypass invisible barriers that prevent you from seeing most of the world.

Simply put is if you're trying to take a break from generic rpg questing and annoying character interaction then this is not the game for you. The environment is there but being blocked off by characters who tell me that I should go and find them feathers really breaks it for me.

I was hoping that this would be the game that I could relax in after a hard day of work. Instead it showed me how even a fantasy world dedicated to beauty has to suffer from the uglyness of reality.