Giulia’s voice lacks authenticity - we are constantly told how upset or angry or horrified she is rather than shown it. Moreover, the writing is - for want of a more eloquent word - terrible. And if you managed to ride the bike without crashing it, you are a better gamer than I. There is only so much photo development, Morse code typing, and phone dialing that you can do. The gameplay is marred to a large extent by being exceedingly linear, to the point that it feels like a walking simulator. Martha is Dead gives you the illusion of open-world gameplay, but it’s just that - an illusion. Those nighttime forays into the woods and the lake were certainly memorable, even if spooky.
There is a fairly extensive world to explore, and you can walk or bike around and even use a boat at specific points in the game. There is also authentic music from the 1940s to round up the experience, plus Italian voice acting. Operating Giulia’s box camera, developing the photos in the darkroom, using the rotary telephone and the telegraph, playing with the puppets - these immersive elements give the game an added degree of authenticity. Even if they have nothing to do with the story, they give you a sense of time and place. As stunning as the countryside was, I was especially intrigued by the detail in the interiors, and the way you interact with some of the objects around the house. (Just as well, because this is likely the closest some of us are getting to the Tuscan countryside in the near future given the state of the world right now.) The settings are based on real places and “faithfully reconstructed,” according to the developer. The game’s strongest attributes are the setting and atmosphere. As bombs fall, cities burn, aircraft patrol the skies, and unspeakable horrors take place in the outside world, we zoom into the life of 15-year-old Giulia who mourns the death of her identical twin sister, Martha, and starts to question the circumstances around the tragedy. Perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered so much if it had been a good story, but more on that later.Īgainst the backdrop of the Second World War, Martha is Dead is set in the lush Tuscany region of Italy.
That said, fair play to the developer, who does clearly state at the outset that the game content might be of a disagreeable nature. The game found itself mired in controversy even before release, when certain portions had to be “ modified” for PlayStation to remove interactivity from graphic scenes and add a censored alternative for some others. You wouldn’t expect puppies and rainbows when you set out to dabble in horror, of course, but with Martha is Dead, a first-person thriller from indie developer LKA, the intention seems less to frighten and more to shock and disgust. Have you ever even played a psychological horror game if you haven’t skinned your (fictional) sister’s face to make a mask, cut a two-headed fetus out of a teenager’s body, or cooked a child’s pet dog and made her eat it?
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