Martha is Dead review
Let's start our review with a funny situation
about the game Martha is Dead, where the game was liked by many players, this appeared
in a hashtag on Twitter titled marthaisdead, it seems normal for our community
of players, as for those who are not interested in games, their minds lost them
when seeing the hashtag, Where some thought that the American businesswoman
Martha Stewart had passed away, and began posting tweets expressing their love
for her, others began publishing memes to link the hashtag with Martha's
character from Batman V Superman.
A dark, carefully woven story
Martha is Dead is a psychological horror game
produced by Wired Productions. The game begins from the perspective of Julia,
the twin sister of Martha, who live with father Eric and mother Irina, an
Italian family living in peace until the death of Martha, the spoiled daughter
of her parents, and it seems that her killing is not an accident, After Julia
decides to impersonate her sister in front of the parents, she begins her quest
to uncover her sister's killer.
The game takes place in a small town in
The combination of the horrors of war and the
tragic story experienced by the family, especially Julia, greatly serves the
main objective of the game, which is psychological horror and integration into
the game's story. The development of the events is wonderful and is well woven,
as the shocks follow in the second half of the game and for me all of them are
justified, except for some things, and to avoid burning, it suffices me to say
that some events are contradictory with others.
For a different experience you can change the
language to Italian, it is the default language for voice chats in the game,
English is also excellent, but I advise you to try the Italian language with
English texts, you may get a feeling similar to my feeling of immersion in the
story more.
horror elements:
Our game is a psychological horror game, so it
is important for the player to feel nervous, afraid or uncomfortable. In the
game Martha is Dead, you will feel the tension in the atmosphere of the forest
at night and you will pass several times next to Martha's body, this was helped
a lot by the general atmosphere of the game, which left mixed feelings between
being affected by the events and what might happen soon.
During the first seconds in the game, you will
get two messages to confirm the presence of scenes of severe violence and
scenes that may harm some people who suffer from some psychological and organic
diseases, and the game also got an age rating of +17 for the same reasons. We
are used to these messages especially from horror games, but Martha is Dead
contained some scenes that I could not bear to look at for a long time, and
that left a strange impression on me,
Other than those disgusting scenes, the game is
not so terrifying, most of the game’s events take place in broad daylight in
the atmosphere of trees and the sounds of birds, which in turn gives you a
sense of safety, after spending about 5 hours in the game, I did not feel very
nervous or afraid except in 20 minutes, for example .
The acoustics and music are not stable
The acoustics are excellent and help to enter
the atmosphere, and serve the basic idea of the game, which is psychological
horror and tension. As for the music, it was in place and serves the dramatic
events in many times, and at other times I did not understand why I heard this
sad music while walking in the forest. terrifying.
Graphics:
What distinguished the game most besides the
wonderful story is the graphics and their excellent quality, the trees and
forests are designed in a distinctive way that gives value just to stand and
look at the scenic views, as for the interior designs of the house and the
tools, they all carry very beautiful details.
Technical problems spoiled the experience
Despite being a game that does not represent a
big load on our devices, whether PC or platforms, the performance on PC was
very poor and spoiled all the features of the game. My experience with the game
was on a mid-range PC which wasn't a hindrance to my experience of bigger
games, but it was sluggish Martha is Dead feels like I'm trying to play it on a
ten year old PC, a lot of stuttering and freezing on high or medium settings,
when set to low The problems did not completely disappear but became playable
at the expense of the graphics. I tried to delay the review in the hope that an
update would fix these problems, but here we are, several days after the game
was released, and an update has not yet been released.
It is worth noting that these problems appeared
more in specific areas and in specific cases as well, for example in front of
the house in the daytime was the most choppy time, you might lose your nerve
while going down the basement ladder that contains a bug that turns the camera
in the opposite direction.
The reason for this may be a lack of experience
from the developer studio, according to the opinions of the community, the game
works very well on other platforms.
Mentioning the positives, some technical
solutions that were not revolutionary but considered a great cleverness from
the developer studio, for example, to avoid the poor quality of animating the
faces of the characters during their conversation, which appeared at the
beginning of the game and was not good enough, the studio made most of the
conversations of other characters such as father and mother Talk behind a door
where Julia is listening to them without them knowing, great technical
solution.
playing style:
The game can be considered more like a walking
simulator, in most moments of the game you move between places looking for
clues that take you to another place to perform another task, there is not much
we can talk about this aspect. Some moments were happening in Julia's dreams while
she was only controlling the directions of Julia's perspective, they were good
but very short, not more than a minute or two.
Julia loves photography and always carries a
camera in her bag, it was a great addition, not new but well designed, you will
enjoy a lot of taking pictures and adjusting focus and lighting, image
processing in the dark room added a special fun and was the most important
characteristic of the gameplay.
Briefly:
A distinctive horror game with a dark and
dramatic story, horrific and disgusting scenes that dig into the mind, balanced
and smooth gameplay, varying elements of horror, some of which stir tension in
the player's heart and others do not move, in short, we are facing a good
experience that would have been distinctive if it had not been spoiled by
technical defects On PC, if our experience had been on another platform, I
think our evaluation of it would have been a lot different.
advice:
If you are a platform owner, whether
Playstation or Xbox, I advise you to try it if you are a fan of psychological
horror games and dark stories, especially since the game is available at a
price of $ 30, it is not expensive, as for PC owners, it is better to wait for
an update that fixes technical problems before you spend your money.