It's not that I think all games should be shiny and sanitised some of the best games I've ever played have inverted expectations and taken me to dark, dismal places. The problem is, we've been sold a spooky thriller about twin sisters and a haunted lake - a pretty good premise, by all accounts - and what we actually end up with is a bleak, blunt, and not particularly nuanced exploration of mental ill-health, pockmarked with gratuitous body horror violence, few scenes of which carry suitable content warnings. I read the disclaimer - this "horror drama" will be "visually unsettling and may cause discomfort" as it explores "the complexities of the human mind, psychological trauma, and self-harm" - and was confident I'd be okay. Watch on YouTube The release date trailer for Martha is Dead.įor the record, I played an uncensored version of Martha is Dead on Xbox Series X, so it's possible the version I experienced will be very different to the one you do, but know that while I am easily spooked, I am not easily grossed out.
There are several sequences, in fact, that may spark the outrage of pearl clutchers everywhere, scenes that are so gratuitously obscene that even I - a card-carrying lover of deliciously dark stories with a penchant for psychological horror - struggle to justify, and that some may struggle to stomach. I don't think it's the scene we will be talking about. The scene everyone's talking about right now - a scene at the beginning of the game where a girl deftly slices off the face of her twin sister's corpse - is not the scene from Martha is Dead that we should be talking about. Availability: Out now on PC, PS4/PS5 (censored version), Xbox One and Series S/X.
Consequently, though I promise to minimise them, it's unlikely this review will be entirely without spoilers. Whilst I do my best to keep my reviews spoiler-free, it's incredibly difficult to critique Martha Is Dead without reflecting, in part, on some of its more problematic story beats. A good premise and gripping start is undermined by a second half of bugs, bad writing, and grossly overused clichés of mental ill-health.
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