Martha’s Dead Review – A Psychological Study of a Restless Soul

In 2016, a small Italian development team from LKA came up with a depressing psychological title, Town of Light, in which we met a young 16-year-old girl, Renee, who has survived a hell of a lot of hell on Earth in a mental state. institutions, which, of course, had a negative impact on her condition and life. The project dealt with various important problematic topics when it was accompanied by a really unpleasant atmosphere, helped by the fact that we looked into 1938, when the healing practices of that time are now more established.

And their second project, Martha Is Dead, which you may have heard about due to the fact that the authors had to censor some of the “more colorful” scenes for the PlayStation, has a similar theme and ambition (this does not apply to other platforms). But it would definitely be a shame to remember the game just because of this controversy, as it offers an interesting and unique experience that should please fans of similar games.

• Platform: PC (peer review), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S
• Publication date: 24.02.2022
• Developer: LCA
• Genre: First person adventure
• Czech location: Not
• Multiplayer: Not
• Data to download: 17.75 GB
• Game time: 6 o’clock
• Sales version: Digital
• Price: €29.99 (760 CZK) on Steam

Sun, hay, death

Year 1944 – Italy. The Second World War is in its final stages, and young Julia, the daughter of a local Nazi general, goes to the lake on a gloomy morning to photograph the local landscape. However, he does not linger too long and notices a strange floating body in the water. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that this is a human body. Worse! This is her twin, Martha. Julia can’t believe her eyes. Why did this have to happen to her? And was it a coincidence or murder? So those are the questions that you will try to find answers to at the beginning of this approximately six hour story. And that sometimes it will be a rather strange and annoying search.

The game blurs the line between fictional and real.

From the very beginning, the title clearly blurs the imaginary line between real and fictional, when basically, like the protagonist himself, you will not always be completely sure whether these events really occur or whether this is a product of simple fiction. And over time, the uncertainty will only increase, when even the end itself, which gives room for different interpretations, will not give clear answers. Of course, this may bother someone, for me it is a feature that I really like, because I can project a part of myself into it.

Annoying frankness

However, the road to your destination itself is lined with a really unpleasant atmosphere that won’t leave you too laid back most of the time, and I really appreciate the lack of any cheap and sometimes even annoying traps. Instead, we find very explicit scenes that we bit into in the intro and were subject to the aforementioned censorship. You can argue about them later, when everyone seems to treat them completely differently, but personally I dare say that censorship was not needed, since this is a product clearly designed for an adult audience. But I admit that I didn’t really feel good playing with them and I tended to look away, which hasn’t happened to me for quite some time. But despite the slightly more exploitative element, they did not seem out of place.

The road to your destination is paved with a really unpleasant atmosphere.

In the end, I’m sorry that the story is a little drowning in its own ambitions. The authors tend to cover too many topics related to the inconveniences of wars, the drama of family relationships, violence, abuse, mental disorders, feelings of depression and anxiety, revenge or love life, all complemented by one ghost story. It’s too much and some of the twists don’t go much, so sometimes it looks fragmented and random and part of the main idea gets lost. Eventually, however, the experiences will stay in your head for a while and make you think about them, which is what matters.

The camera is man’s best friend

But let’s move on from the story to the game itself. As you probably know, the game belongs to the category of adventure games, more precisely, perhaps, to the subgenre of the so-called walking simulators, where the main component is exploration and movement through the environment. And I definitely want to briefly dwell on the environment. The Italian countryside from World War II is a well chosen location that is also very beautiful and detailed, so you can breathe in the old atmosphere, which is enhanced by well-chosen historical music, which, along with a report on the progress of the allied troops on the radio, but also dubbed in Italian (English version available). You may remember that dubbing did not suit me very much according to our impressions, but in the full version I was already able to fully tune in to it and enjoyed it a lot.

The local environment is lovingly and detailed.

In any case, the authors themselves are trying in various ways to revive this environment. Almost from the beginning, your faithful friend will be the camera, with which you can immortalize various moments, which can then be recalled in a dark chamber, which will also play a key role in the main plot. In addition, you will gradually unlock various accessories such as a flash, a tripod, other lenses or special films that will make using it even more special. In addition, we also have tarot card reading, biking and boating, using telegram to send messages or control puppet theater. Here you will even encounter some side missions, among which we will find a successful guerrilla bypass. However, most of the time is still taken up by reading all sorts of basic and accompanying texts, which are often presented to the recipient in a completely lifeless way, due to which the pace is sometimes delayed, as well as the character’s movement itself.

Computer rape and eardrums

Unfortunately, the launch of the game is also delayed. I already mentioned that even though I followed the recommended requirements, the Full HD title didn’t work very well for me regardless of the settings. And in the full release, unfortunately, the situation did not improve, so the frame rate fluctuated smoothly from 11 to 72 FPS during games. It seems that optimization in this case is a rather vulgar word. Unfortunately, the developers have not gotten rid of various bugs, so there are various obstacles (usually you need to load the last saved position, but autosave is often done), audio disappearing, titles disappearing and animations breaking during interaction. . And it doesn’t leave a good impression.

Optimization is a rather rough word in this case.

But in order not to approach the end so negatively, I have to dedicate the paragraph itself to the soundtrack. I already mentioned early music, it’s great. But even more magnificent is the original music, which accurately complements the events taking place on the screen and is able to evoke the right emotions in you – from mournful nostalgia to sheer horror. And it is in the unpleasant passages that the lion’s share clearly contributes to the overall atmosphere, when there is string rape and various noises that arouse physical nausea in you.

So Martha Is Dead definitely offers an experience that fans should book for inconvenience and adventure as they will be pleased with the successful atmosphere, interesting timing, explicit scenes and great music. You just have to be prepared for the experience to be slow, with the pace sometimes too slow and the writers sometimes covering too many topics.