Review | Martha Is Dead - Horrors Beyond War
Much has been made of Martha Is Dead’s graphic content, with Sony even opting to censor certain scenes on the PlayStation. However, the trigger warnings for this game definitely serve a purpose. Martha Is Dead is gory and oftentimes horrific, but it is not the psychological horror I was expecting. In fact, you spend most of the game trying to work out who you are, what happened to your sister, and why so many of your memories are blocked off, rather than being struck with the gore and horrifying events in a sequence that makes it feel like a horror game. The game often feels more like a walking sim with shock content thrown in, than a true survival horror.
This review contains spoilers.
Content warning for gore.
The game is set in 1944 Italy, as conflict is intensifying between Germany and Allied forces. As this is happening, a young woman, Martha, is found dead. You play as her twin sister Giulia, setting forth on a mission to find out who exactly killed Martha, and why. I found it really interesting that the default voice-over language the game is set in is Italian with subtitles, as it made for a much more immersive experience for me. However, I much preferred the English voice acting during extended play because subtitles would break immersion, and when I was streaming the game it made it easier for both my audience and me to use English.
For a game from a small team, the graphics are beautiful, however, animations are often janky and textures don’t hold up when you get too close. It is also quite demanding, as I found if I had anything else running on my computer in the background I would lose frames constantly - forcing me to play on the lowest graphics settings for most of my playthrough which made the game look less than pretty. It is a shame, as despite the patches that continued to release during my time with the game performance never improved by much, making the whole thing feel poorly optimised.
Martha Is Dead is a fascinating game, thanks to a story that forks out into different paths depending on the quests you do. For example, you will learn about Giulia’s father’s current relationship with the Nazis as a German General, and you have the choice to side with him, or stitch him up. There is also a fascinating morse code puzzle mechanic, which I found to be really difficult. However, despite often having a tough time with these puzzles, I liked what they brought to the game, and how they played into the narrative of the game.
The main story of Martha Is Dead is heavily rooted in superstition and fairytales, and constantly plays into the morbid history of classic fables. A lot of the game revolves around the story of The White Lady, who’s a fascinating character, that you can only talk to through a questline that involves the use of tarot cards which have the most beautiful illustrations. Whilst the game revolved so heavily around The White Lady, her involvement ends up feeling somewhat pointless. Whilst her story is resolved in the game, with her being reunited with her lover, once reflecting back on the game as a whole, it didn’t really make much sense as to why she was truly there. Giulia’s character felt like it revolved so much around The White Lady, but then once the questline is done, she is rarely mentioned again, if at all. Which, to me, is massively disappointing. She is by far the most interesting character in the game, I was hoping there was a reason she was there. However, based on the information she told me, it felt like she was only included for the sake of allowing more fairytale comparisons.
It is after you meet with The White Lady that the intensity of the gore begins to ramp up. Personally, it didn’t bother me too much, apart from one scene in particular which just felt unnecessarily mean-spirited to me. I’m not a squeamish person when it comes to watching horror films or medical dramas, but seeing a dead pregnant woman being cut open with a pair of tailoring scissors was just a lot. Even a written content warning description could do with its own content warning, and much of it does just feel unneeded.
There are scenes of implied child abuse and animal abuse at the same time, which are particularly hefty. Whilst the violence in this scene was inflicted on mannequins, it still made me grimace throughout the whole scene. I understand the story the writers are trying to tell with Giulia, and why she acts the way she does, but a lot of the scenes come off as gore for the sake of it. At times I felt that there was a different, better way to tell this story. A bit of restraint and “show don’t tell” would have gone a long way and have probably made for a better psychological horror.
Despite the scenes of gore that to me personally didn’t make much sense, one early scene in the game did make do it right. It is the scene that most are probably familiar with, but when Giulia ‘steals’ Martha’s face. While it is a very gory scene, the psychological horror elements that come along with it make perfect sense. It all revolves around Giulia feeling like she had stolen Martha’s identity, and it was the one thing in the game that stuck with me the most because I really enjoyed that part and how they did it.
After watching streams of this game and also playing the game myself, I can understand why this game is so distressing to many people, not even including the scenes previously mentioned. The sequences of child abuse and the pure vitriol that spills out of one character’s mouth toward Giulia become overwhelming at a point and just leave you feeling heavy.
Things get much worse when you are forced to play as a puppet of a woman called Irene and have to act out the actions not only of murdering your own pregnant daughter but also of beating your daughter when she is only a few years old. I thought that the part of the game that makes you engage with the violence would be the worst of it but there is a later scene you witness that just seems pointlessly mean-spirited. We know this character is evil at this point and it just seems cruel at a point.
Overall, there feels like there is a lot of this game and actions that go unexplained. Why does Irene, that character that enacts most of this violence, act the way she does? What is the medication she is taking? Why does she hate Giulia so much? I found myself having to read fan explanations for answers, otherwise, I truly wouldn’t have known at all.
Martha is Dead is a good game by many measurements, it's a game where if you like horror and gore, you will probably enjoy it. However, does it feel true to the psychological horror genre in the sense that there is a story that you can piece together and analyse, or it’s more so a grouping of gory scenes strung together with a plot that is near impossible to untangle? I’m not entirely sure.
Finally, it is worth noting, that there is an additional triggering scene at the end where Giulia then ‘kills’ herself, by slitting her wrists. The developers added an option on PC where you can censor this sequence. I was relieved to have this option, however, like enforced edits on Playstation, I do think that the option should be available to censor the rest of the scenes should you need to, if you want the experience that game without having to be deeply upset.
Martha Is Dead truly is not what I expected at all.
