*This article is compiled from IGN US and is not reproduced without authorization.
"Martha is dead"? This is probably the last thing Batman and Superman want to hear. Sorry, I can't help but make this joke, after all, the content of this review will be darker. Martha Is Dead is a dark first-person psychological thriller about the tragic death of a young woman, Martha, and the mental torture that follows her twin sister Julia. All of this took place during the most painful period in human history – the Second World War. This dark game takes you into a small Italian village carefully crafted by the development team and experience a terrifying nightmare that is not suitable for players who are sensitive to this genre. The game lasts about 5 hours and is engaging and creepy from time to time. However, after completing the level, the game brought me more confusion.
After Julia finds the body of her sister Martha in a lake near her home, her grieving mother mistakenly believes that it is Julia who died, and Julia inadvertently continues to live with Martha's identity. Julia has always known that Martha is her mother's most beloved child, so instead of clarifying the truth, she pretends to be Martha to investigate the truth of her sister's death. The pressure of living in lies, combined with uncovering the horrific details of Martha's death, drags Julia into the abyss of madness. As the plot progresses, Julia's painful dreams and sad realities become blurred, causing her story to become more blurred and more terrifying.
Deadly format
To uncover the secret of Martha's death, players need to travel to specific locations around the family manor, take photos with an old-fashioned camera or retrieve lost film, and return to the basement darkroom to rinse out each photo. Players can add additional lenses and flashes to Julia's camera, which doesn't just add to the game's built-in camera mode – when looking out through the camera, demonic whispers invade you from the surrounding forest, and the washed negatives reveal more secrets... The game also uses these methods to let you experience this deep sense of foreboding in detail.
In Martha Is Dead, almost all of the story goal is for me to go somewhere to collect photos, so the player needs to manipulate the camera's aperture settings and carefully complete each step of the film processing, and the player has the most freedom in these ways. An optional mission brings unexpected surprises and requires the player to decipher a telegram sent through Morse code. I really wish the game had more puzzle solving sessions and made players more engaged in the investigation process. The game is set in 1944, and while I don't have much motivation to analyze the details of each scene, I appreciate the efforts the development team put into it, such as the daily newspapers and radios that detail the haze of war that hung over Europe at the time.
However, listening to the events on the front lines of World War II in Martha Is Dead is one of the least frightening aspects. Because many of the story chapters of this work are dressed in horror vignettes, the scene where "Rainstorm" cuts off its fingers seems like a small witch. In some scenes, the player is completely passive, such as tripping over a dead man in the woods who has just stepped on a mine and dying; some parts are more interactive, such as the player having to cut off the face of a particular character with the angular part of the necklace pendant. This is a relatively less terrifying example, but in fact, many of the scenes in Martha is dead enough to make Mortal Kombat players sigh.
Changes to the PS version
While neither the PC nor Xbox versions of Martha is Dead have any review changes, the PS version has made some changes. The game canceled some of the bloody interactions, removed some explicit descriptions, and put a more specific disclaimer on the theme of the story at the beginning. In addition, the game offers an optional mode where players can skip some uneasy scenes. While these scenes didn't bring me any joy, I think they did give me a better sense of Julia's increasingly fragile mental state. Therefore, I personally prefer to feel the experience of the original game.
Super Puppet Theater
As shocking as the scenes of the story just mentioned, in the end I found that they were not as impressive as the puppet theaters on the floor of Julia's bedroom, which left a deeper impression. By manipulating the puppets of these family members, Julia relives the repressed memories of her childhood. Whenever Julia playfully imitated her mother and father, it seemed to alleviate the blow left by each traumatic act. In addition to being very different in appearance and feel, these mini-shows also play a valuable role in giving players insight into Julia's upbringing. In contrast, it better shows the origin of julia's constantly emerging violent images in the story of Martha is dead.
Other narrative techniques, however, are less effective, such as letting you experience a series of forked routes, where opposing word options are provided, and you need to choose one of the words to complete an unknown phrase. If you guess wrong, you can only start all over again. In Martha Is Dead, these tedious designs aren't the only parts that feel superfluous. Just like the bicycle in the game, it seems to be only a little faster than Julia's running speed, but the difficulty of handling is not low.
Although most of the stories in Martha Is Dead appealed to me, its overall narrative is still relatively ambiguous, and I am a little disappointed with its ending. As Julia's mental state deteriorates and more and more characters die, players become increasingly confused about what is a dream and what is reality. Who killed Martha? What the hell is going on? Are these all true? I don't get definitive answers to these questions. I think there are any problems with the practice of leaving blanks in the artwork, but the game ends up presenting an unsolved puzzle, which is really frustrating. Of course, I also have my own inferences and guesses, but it's like finding an envelope containing the murderer's name in a reasoning game, and when I open it, I leave only a piece of colored paper.
summary
Martha is Dead is a heart-wrenching, engaging game that takes players step by step into the darkness, and the plot sometimes feels deeply disturbing. But the ending of the game is not clear enough, which makes me less satisfied. Judging from the traditional detective novel's arrangement of revealing "who the murderer is", this game is not particularly satisfying. But as a work that explores the supernatural and terrifying effects of traumatic experiences on people, it brings a wonderful journey that can be deeply disturbing rather than enjoyable.
merit
The plot is fascinating and creepy
Excellent historical atmosphere to create
shortcoming
The ending of the story is ambiguous and confusing