There's the adage that any press is nice press, and Martha is Dead publisher Wired Productions sure took this telling heart when it announced that the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 versions from the game could be censored by having to remove the interactive facets of certain disturbing scenes. The story relating to this censorship could easily be the very first time that many people had even heard about Martha is Dead, and achieving a game in the psychological thriller genre with content that's so disturbing that Sony deemed it inappropriate for players to engage with might be a selling point for any certain type of audience.
Having played my review copy of Martha is Dead on PC, I'm able to only make an educated guess regarding which scenes developer LKA changed, there are many to select from. Actually, one of them is literally the most disturbing thing I've ever observed in a relevant video game-and no, it isn't the one that you could experience in the demo. But I also feel that, in some ways, the controversy works as a distraction from the fact that Martha is Dead is a bad game.
Part from the reason why Martha is Dead became such a disappointing experience happens because it begins so strongly. Occur 1944 Italy, the story follows a woman named Giulia K., the half-Italian daughter of the Nazi general and twin sister of Martha. Martha became deaf after suffering an accident in early childhood, and both the twins' mother-and Giulia herself-come to blame Giulia for that accident. Because of her mother's hatred on her, Giulia spent much of her childhood with her nanny, who often told the girl a story about the White Lady-a ghostly figure doomed to haunt the lake near Giulia's home after her lover murdered her under false pretenses. Years later, using the war entering its climactic moments in the background, Giulia has gone out in the lake taking photographs when she finds her sister's dead body floating within the water. She wades out to retrieve the body, and when her parents show up, Giulia decides to visualize the identity of her sister instead of declaring that parents-specifically the mother that hates her-the truth.
Can you may well ask for a better setup for any psychological thriller? Nazi dad! Stolen identity! Creepy parallels from a ghost story along with a murder! Actually, it seems like such a solid setup that it'd be nearly impossible to mess up. Yet the rest of Martha is Dead surrenders on the best parts of its story fairly quickly, reducing the game to another boring, overwritten narrative a good unreliable protagonist while also somehow having a misguided method of discussing incredibly sensitive topics of mental health and psychosis.
Early on, LKA seems to deliver around the promise. The primary gameplay mechanic involves taking pictures by having an old-school twin-lens reflex camera and taking advantage of different kinds of films, apertures, and shutter speeds to patch together the clues of Martha's death. It's cool enough the actual steps of photography are utilized as a puzzle-solving gameplay mechanic, however, you reach get the pictures, too. Although this process is fairly dumbed down for the sake of gameplay, it does lead to some interesting reveals of what your camera actually caught. The game also includes a few gameplay moments of Giulia needing to pretend to be Martha that just end up serving as an idea of what could have been a much better and more interesting game.
I can't really explain why Martha is Dead's story is really disappointing without spoiling pretty much anything, but it is almost as when the game's writers didn't have any aim of continuing the storyline once it starts. One character who could have added a lot of complexity to the plot is just killed off-screen moments after her induction into the story in an anticlimactic voice-over. The challenge that Giulia faces in both pretending to become Martha while also solving her murder is undermined for no discernible reason apart from the writers didn't feel like after that thread to its fullest conclusion. And while the setting from the war adds some interesting context and story beats towards the main mystery of Martha's murder, the sport winds up juggling too many elements without getting a way to connect them in a way that's thematically satisfying. Instead, it winds up counting on balance less interesting trope of a narrator that could or might not be struggling with intense psychosis.
Beyond that, Martha is Dead introduces far more gameplay mechanics than it must without fully developing them-no pun intended. As the photography could have served being an ever-evolving foundation for the entire game, I ended up never needing to fully make the most of all of the tools it offers, including new lenses and types of film. Likewise, you are able to perform divinations with tarot cards once an in-game day, however the messages from the cards never seem to really hint at any secrets or new gameplay opportunities, or even predict in which the story is going. You are able to ride a motorcycle around the K. family's villa, but it is movement and range is severely limited. Finally, a playable puppet show-which is advertised like a “key feature”-only shows up at the end of the game in ways to deliver backstory. There are weird on-rails moments, some dialogue choices, and a lot of stuff that you are able to “examine,” but none of these gameplay elements ever wind up uniting into a cohesive experience.
As the sport went on, I found going from elation at the game's clever story setup to disappointment to how it was handled, and with the game's closing moments, I finally landed on disgust. I almost felt like the game itself was gaslighting me. A “sympathetic” message after the game about mental health and understanding that there's always an easy at the end of the tunnel seemed so disingenuous and thus condescending, especially given exactly what the game had inquired about to do, which i honestly couldn't believe things i was seeing. If you are trying to get the message out to people experiencing depression or, god forbid, literal psychosis, it should be an awful idea to preface that message with hours of disturbing imagery that may potentially trigger the type of episode you're telling people to get help for.
I would never state that Martha is Dead deserves to be censored. But, if your game will ask a person to believe that the moments of gruesome and disturbing imagery need to be in a game, then its creators at the very least have to not betray that trust. Unfortunately, that is what Martha is Dead winds up doing.
