Pep's Season of Spooks - Game 16
A sad and disturbing psychological horror that starts strongly with a "whodunit" regarding the fate of the titular Martha. Sadly, the game really starts to fall apart as the psychological themes become more and more prevalent, and by the end the game goes into some incredibly misguided places regarding mental health and lost me completely.

It's a real shame as the rest of the game had me highly invested, with the use of photography and a darkroom being a particular highlight. The unusual location of wartime Italy also adds some interesting historical context to the story. It's just a shame that all the good elements of the game will be overshadowed by it's reputation of being "the game that got censored by Sony".

Don't get me wrong, there are indeed a few gruesome, highly disturbing moments within the game, but I don't feel like they are there simply for shock value. They serve to highlight the mental deterioration of the player in a way remniscient of old psychological horror movies such as Repulsion and Possession. As a side note, I thought it was funny that the only scene that the game asked if I wanted to be censored was actually one of the tamer scenes.

I want to be able to recommend this, but the sheer misguided misery of the game's final act sadly outweighs the positives. When you add in some unnecessary padding it makes the game even harder to advocate. Martha Is Dead's intentions are good, but it falls flat on it's face at the final hurdle.

Scary Rating 3/10 - Overall Rating 5/10

7/10

It's one of the best "historical games" I've ever played. At times it's kinda naive in its storytelling, and perhaps it's too ambitious towards its ending but undoubtedly it has design and narrative intuitions that are so great, intelligent, and moving that I couldn't but enjoy it.

The game revolves around identity, (historical) agency, and remembering. The loss of self is associated with a loss of memory, and the game as a whole deals with remembering something that is usually forgotten in current history and historical games, i.e., marginalised individuals, frailty, mental ilness, and so on. The game is about war but it's not a war game: it's about a girl, someone that history usually forgets. All we do as we play is striving to remember: we mostly take photos, develop them, read things, re-enact overlong technological practices that are now long gone. Remembering is both diegetic and extra-diegetic: Giulia strives to remember and playing itself is an act of remembering.

The puppets make this convergence of theme, narrative, and gameplay even more explicit: playing with them is an analogon of playing the game, in both we uncover terrible forgotten truths. And both are dramatically linear, hauntingly suspended between reality and fiction, and pre-determined by someone (the designer or Giulia herself, both are puppet masters within their respective textual framework).

The greatest thing is that playing with these puppets is the only way to remember what actually (?) happened. In a similar guise, we play with the game to remember someone who's usually forgotten, a puppet of history among others, whose agency was denied.

Censored content is something you shouldn't miss: please play uncensored versions of the game.

[Podcast incoming for all the Italian speakers interested ;)]

É um jogo com uma boa historia e bons plot, porém só isso, sem terror, muito monótono, e "decisões" que não influenciam em nada o jogo, a unica coisa interessante que fiz nele foi decifrar o codigo morse.

Pontos positivos:
-Historia e reviravoltas boas;
-Trilha sonora(mesmo que pouca)

Pontos negativos:
-Monótono;
-Podia explorar mais o terror;
-Muito mal otimizado.

aaah i really wanted to love this game and was looking forward to playing it for months, i wanted to be fully concentrated while playing it so i saved it for a time where i could 100% focus on it, sadly the game kept going down to 1 fps anytime i entered a new area / room, and kept crashing on medium settings when it's supposed to be easily running on ultra. after spending hours to solve those issues, i already played the first half of the game in bits and pieces and was so disconnected from the game itself. i think it would be a completely different experience if i could've experienced it without the constant problems, but i can't take time back sooo, the game is ruined for me, sad.

1. Alcuni avvenimenti particolarmente impattanti non hanno un adeguato accompagnamento musicale e accadono fin troppo in fretta;
2. Il doppiaggio, sia in italiano che in inglese, è atroce (fa eccezione unicamente la protagonista stessa, che occasionalmente a sua volta offre performance abbastanza scadenti);
3. Occasionali problemi nel mixaggio audio;
4. Gli attori non riescono assolutamente mai a trasmettere la tragicità o importanza di un evento attraverso il doppiaggio stesso (a parte la madre della protagonista, una volta o due);
5. C'è un certo shock value, e il tutto è orchestrato in un modo interessante in termini di agentività richiedendo semplici azioni da parte del giocatore (banalmente, un esempio è la rimozione del volto di un altro essere umano). Queste scene assumono particolare forza grazie al fatto che la protagonista, col tempo, non sembra più essere in grado di distinguere il sogno, la fantasia e i ricordi dalla realtà e dal presente: credo, però, che ciò accada in modo troppo disordinato e che la discesa non ci sia una buona direzione (specie man mano che vengono trovati documenti che testimonino quanto realmente accaduto). Ciò si ricollega al fatto che la protagonista è effettivamente affetta da un grave disturbo, ma, anche tenendo ciò in considerazione, ci sono varie situazioni ed elementi nel gioco che non mi tornano;
7. Il ritmo stesso degli eventi è, spesso, sconclusionato e irragionevole: in particolare il simil-spiegone con l'impiego delle marionette immediatamente successivo a un interrogatorio subito da parte di soldati tedeschi. Tutto ciò può essere giustificato se consideriamo che - PLOT TWIST - nulla è reale tutto è lecito, e in questo caso andate a fare in culo;
7. A un certo punto, c'è un pigro e centrale plot twist à la Shyamalan e quindi ripeto il mio sonoro vaffanculo diocane;
8. L'utilizzo della macchina fotografica è potenzialmente molto interessante ma, in questo gioco, sfruttato fin troppo poco all'interno del gameplay.

Martha Is Dead is a really powerful experience that left a lasting impression on me. The story is the game’s strongest aspect, touching on themes of loss, war and personal identity in meaningful ways. This game features female body horror delivered in a no-nonsense manner, creepy dolls, and truly spectacular set-pieces that is a delight to horror fans like myself.

While the gameplay could have been improved and the horror elements could have been further emphasized, the game is still meaningful and thought-provoking gaming experience.

★½

Let me start this review by stating that I truly enjoy the walking simulator genre. My favourite game of all time is Death Stranding, which obviously isn't your conventional walking simulator, but I also love games like Layers of Fear or Firewatch. Now, this game has some incredible graphics, an unbelievably realistic art style, and one of the most hauntingly beautiful soundtracks that I've heard in a video game. The setting is also interesting and allows for some interesting character backgrounds and motivations. However, that is about where my praise for the game ends. This game was seriously exhausting and excruciatingly boring. Firstly, similar to many other reviewers, I experienced horrible optimization issues and was plagued by low FPS throughout my entire playthrough. I also experienced multiple instances where I had to close and reload the game because it either completely froze or questlines would break and would not allow me to progress. To relate back to my original comment about walking simulators, I think many of the gameplay aspects of this game should have been left out of the game (and allowed it to only be a walking simulator), as many of these mechanics were either inconsequential or excruciatingly tedious. There are game components that I do not think that you should have the player do, and should just perform them for the player. The camera was an interesting mechanic for the first few times, but is only used 4-5 times throughout the entire story, but the worst mechanic was the telegraph. You had to fully code and decode morse code messages, which took an incredible amount of time and was not fun as a gameplay mechanism at all. I also played the game in the native Italian language and I thought the voice acting was subpar, where the main actress did not feel emotionally invested and provided emotion and enthusiasm in the wrong places. Furthermore, I feel as though the story is more akin to an audiobook than playing a video game. The main story beats are told through text on a black screen and major plot points are either told in this method or skipped over so quickly you are not given enough time to emotionally process them. Similarly, I don't think the story itself is meaningful, powerful, or important in any way. The story is terribly shallow and told in way that does properly emphasize or draw importance to mental health. Finally, the ending is probably the worst part of the entire game. The last ~30 minutes are probably one of my least favourite video games moments ever. The entire story is poorly summarized in a puppet show (telling the story that we have already seen and telling it in a really poor medium). The ending itself does not pack the deep emotional punch that they think it does or that it should based on the subject matter. Moreover, the gore and extreme visuals feel as though they're added just for the sake of having them present rather than beginning importance to the story or themes. Ultimately, I expected a lot more from this game and felt like it severely underdelivered and was definitely disappointed.