HIGH An accurate reconstruction of ’40s Italy with pleasant graphics.

LOW Too much gore and not enough research into characters’ psyches

WTF The newspaper written in two languages.

The Town of Light by Italian developer LKA was among my favorite experiences in 2016. It told a harrowing story of how patients were treated in mental hospitals back in the ’40s and ’50s, complete with case reconstructions based on historical research. Martha is Dead tries — apparently — to do the very same thing, but with a completely fictional story set in the same period and the results don’t stack up.

The story begins in 1945, in a small Tuscan villa occupied by Nazis. Main character Giulia witnesses the dead body of her sister Martha floating in a lake. The story then follows Giulia as she tries to figure out exactly what happened, and why her memories regarding the fateful day are so vague. It soon becomes clear that Giulia is an unreliable narrator and by the end it remains unclear whether the events actually took place at all.

The game raised eyebrows after Sony asked the devs to reduce or remove certain violent scenes in order to be published on PlayStation, so I played the uncut PC version for the purposes of this review. For those wondering, there are only a few scenes, though they are quite graphic — things like a body being cut open or a face being removed from a character with a sharp tool. However, since the story is about psychological horror (there are no serial killers nor any supernatural elements) this imagery feels mostly irrelevant, existing only to amp up the shock factor. Ironically, the story feels less effective as a result of its presence.

The gameplay is, as with The Town of Light, of the “walking simulator” variety — travel in first-person, interact with items, pick up a few select ones and progress the story. There is no character interaction, but LKA did try to develop a few mechanics, which mostly left me scratching my head. The first is taking pictures with a complicated camera setup, then developing said photos in a “real darkroom”. This is used a few times to further the narrative, and the game also entices players to take “extra” pictures, but the purpose is never clear.

Then, there’s the telegraph. Oh boy.

At one point the story grinds to a halt because the game offers the choice to communicate with the partisan resistance forces by using a telegraph as one would in real life, morse code and all. The problem is that, instead of providing a clear morse code scheme, there is a complicated, nonsensical picture to use as a reference. In the end, the puzzle is simple (even though sending and decoding eight messages is a bit much) but I had to resort to looking up Morse code on my phone, which definitely did not support the immersion.

Then, at the end, another mechanic rears its head — a puppet show. The point is to move puppets in the correct order to make them play out scenes from Giulia’s memory. It’s barely a challenge at all, and like the rest, seems little more than an attempt to provide some sort of gameplay apart from walking. Worse, instead of being naturally spread throughout the story (which is only around 6-7 hours) they’re all clumped closely together, so they become irritating in a hurry.

On Steam, the developers list “unashamedly authentic voice acting in Italian”. Well, I don’t know what they mean by authentic exactly, but I played with English subs on and couldn’t help but notice something strange. The subs would say different things than the voiceovers, and the discrepancies couldn’t be easily explained as slight differences in translation. I’m really not sure if I should have followed the story told in the subtitles or the one in the voice acting. There’s more language confusion elsewhere — if one reads a newspaper, half is in Italian and the other half in English. This jumble makes for Tower of Babel-like confusion.

After The Town of Light, LKA’s team of male writers decided to try their hands at writing another woman with mental health problems, touching upon issues like pregnancy, menstrual cycles and abortion. The overall message seems to be about caring for one’s mental health — something I’m sure we can all get behind — but the mechanics are too peripheral and the script is too confusing, gory and horrific for a tale that is ostensibly about a woman’s interior journey. By the time credits rolled, I was not convinced that the version of Giulia’s story present here was one worth telling or experiencing.

Disclosures: This game is developed by LKA and published by Wired Productions. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5 and XB. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game is rated M by the ESRB, it contains Blood, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Self Harm and Violence. It features quite a lot of harrowing scenes, so this is one definitely recommended for adults only (and not for anyone squeamish). The game does feature warnings before one particular scene of self-harm, even though it ends up being slightly less violent than others with no warning.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All spoken dialogue in the game features subtitles, but text cannot be altered or resized. The telegraph gameplay section is subtitled so it can still be played, even though it might be more difficult without audio. This game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: On PC, the game is controlled like most first-person titles — WASD to move around the the mouse to interact. Shift can be used to run. The controls are not remappable. there is no control diagram.

The post Martha Is Dead Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The immaculately-recreated Volterra asylum

LOW It feels like a VR tech demo with no console VR support.

WTF Icky sexual assault scenes.

Every once in a while I play a game that feels so inconsequential and uninspired that I wonder how it was greenlit in the first place — how could years of development and untold hours of work go into producing something that ultimately leaves me scratching my head? Unfortunately, LKA.it’s debut game The Town of Light is one of these.

I think The Town of Light‘s story follows Renée, a woman who was once held against her will in an insane asylum. Apparently she’s returning to its ruins to put together the pieces of what happened there decades ago? However, I can’t be certain because because despite finishing the game and taking extra time to read through post-game diary entries, I’m still not entirely sure that’s what it was about or how its pieces fit together.

From what I can tell, Renée was admitted to the asylum in the 1930s and remained there with dozens of other female patients for several years under an oppressive staff. Because of the lack of effective treatment, her mental instability was pushed over the edge by this torturous stay.

This might sound like a stereotypical setup, but The Town of Light is inspired by the true events of Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra — a Tuscan insane asylum that was shut down in 1978 due to cruel practices. LKA.it has created a fictional story (though probably not far from fact) based on the hospital’s past in a first-person narrative billed as psychological adventure.

In LKA.it’s efforts to tell a story about this historic asylum, it’s obvious they went to great lengths modeling Volterra as accurately as possible. After finishing, I looked up articles to flesh out my knowledge about the disturbing facility, and the in-game version looks incredibly similar to real-life photographs. Old beds molder, wheelchairs and tables still lie around the hospital grounds, and debris and splitting paint line the once-sterile halls. This truth is reflected well in the atmosphere.

This might sound intriguing so far, but my issue with The Town of Light is that it doesn’t seem to have any inspiration other than “Let’s recreate these hospital ruins as accurately as possible”.

For Europeans (or others) familiar with this infamous hospital or aware of its heritage, this electronic replica and the narrative sewn into it might be intriguing enough to prove successful. However, for an American who didn’t know anything about the hospital before starting, I found this short narrative exercise to be boring and creepy — but not creepy in the ways it was meant to be.

For example, a handful of segments reflect Renée’s longing to find a companion on the asylum grounds, and that opened the door for awkward cutscenes of naked women in a shower together touching each other intimately. Some other sections feature rooms of naked women moping around while appearing to be insane, and — again — touching each other intimately. Meanwhile, other scenes show sexual assault between staff and patients.

Yes, it’s possible that these exact scenarios were taken from real accounts of life in the hospital, but it has the strong odor of male gaze permeating everything. It’s comparable to how Hollywood often rolls out the trope of an empowered woman being sexually assaulted in some way before overcoming adversity. If it’s possible to explore this subject matter tastefully in videogames, The Town of Light sure isn’t pulling it off. Of course, these scenes were meant to inspire discomfort, but that they explicitly exist in the first place made me feel bad for how LKA.it chose to ‘honor’ the memory of this asylum’s patients.

These scenarios aside, The Town of Light doesn’t have much going for it. Basically all I did was walk Renée around the asylum grounds and solve one dull puzzle after another. One opening objective has Renée finding an old stuffed animal she used to own, putting it in a wheelchair and rolling it in front of some surgical lamps to keep it warm. Although this puzzle seems straightforward, I had a hard time understanding why the bear needed to be wheeled around instead of carried. This disconnect might reflect Renée’s mental deterioration during her time in Volterra, but it didn’t seem like a strong way to capitalize on it.

A later segment fares slightly better when it has Renée trapped in a maze of hallways until she finds a certain amount of drawings scribbled on the walls. Unfortunately, this kind of puzzle has been done a thousand times before in other games. Meanwhile, No enemies or dangers exist anywhere, which subtracts a sense of danger or urgency and puts all the weight on the environment and story.

When players find certain text logs, different dialogue responses can be chosen to coincide with certain entries, but it’s hard to tell what response will trigger which path. A little insignia flashes on the screen after each response, but the game never explains what each insignia stands for or how it’ll affect the story. Also, sometimes I’d have to read text logs and other times, Renée would read the logs out loud, which I found inconsistent.

While these story branches might suggest some depth despite not being flagged well enough, from what I can tell the final chapter remains the exact same no matter what Renée chooses. It’s possible LKA.it wanted me to feel as confused and futile as Renée felt during her stay in Volterra, but I feel chalking my unsatisfying experience up to something intentional would be giving them too much credit. To me, it just feels unpolished and confusing, and the lack of any sense of urgency doesn’t do the pacing any favors either.

Although Oculus VR support for the PC version was added months after its February 2016 PC release, I can find no information on VR support for consoles. Perhaps it’ll receive a PSVR patch in the future? Seeing the environments in virtual reality might help The Town of Light go from feeling like a VR tech demo without VR support to an actual VR tech demo, which is about as good as it can hope to get.

I hate to be so harsh on a game with ties to incredibly traumatic real-world events, but The Town of Light feels like something that was produced as some sort of virtual reality tour and was later cobbled into being a videogame by adding an undercooked story. As it stands, this experience isn’t cementing nor commemorating a dark chapter in Italy’s history as elegantly, interestingly nor effectively as it seems to think it is. And the narrative, with its overabundance of awkward sexual scenes, lack of meaningful suspense and story that left me confused does nothing to validate the painstaking care that must have gone into recreating the asylum.

For those interested in the history of Volterra, save some time and money and look up articles online instead. Those will provide better information and more context, and the only head scratching that’ll occur will be about how this asylum stayed open for so long in the first place — not how it got the greenlight as a videogame. Rating: 4 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed LKA.it and published by Wired Productions. It is currently available on Playstation 4 and Xbox One. The PC version launched in February 2016. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher code and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 3 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed once. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated Mature and contains blood, intense violence, language, nudity, and strong sexual content. This game is only suitable for mature adults. Scenes alluding to sexual assault are present, scenes of naked women (both in-game and in stylized cutscenes) groping each other exist, and a pretty gruesome depiction of a woman receiving a lobotomy rounds it out. This is serious stuff and not displayed in any kind of cartoony way to gloss over its impact.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The Town of Light contains optional subtitles for all dialogue. The game is slow-paced with most dialogue being monologues given by the character as she walks. Nothing intense or action-packed happens, so no visual guides are necessary for actions. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game’s controls are not remappable. The Y axis can be standard or inverted, and a reticle in the center can be toggled on or off.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options. Most of the game is in earth-tone colors with no intense pop-ups or icons flooding the screen.

The post The Town of Light Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

In this episode, Corey & Brad discuss…

– Kingdom: New Lands

– Harvest Moon: Lil’ Farmers

– Sniper Elite 4: Italia

– Pandora’s Tower

– Crossout

– Ryse: Son of Rome

– The Town of Light

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogames (at) gmail (dot) com.

The post GameCritics Radio: So… Videogames! Episode 35 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.