You wouldn’t expect puppies and rainbows when you set out to dabble in horror, of course, but with Martha is Dead, a first-person thriller from indie developer LKA, the intention seems less to frighten and more to shock and disgust. We played the uncensored version of Martha is Dead on PC, with a code provided by the publisher.Have you ever even played a psychological horror game if you haven’t skinned your (fictional) sister’s face to make a mask, cut a two-headed fetus out of a teenager’s body, or cooked a child’s pet dog and made her eat it? Just don't say I, and PlayStation, and the developer, didn't warn you. It's the sort of game people are going to be talking about, debating, and reacting to for years.

It's definitely the sort of game you want to be careful who you recommend it to, but if horror films like Haute Tension get your pulse racing rather than your stomach churning, and you can bear the patchy gameplay, Martha is Dead is definitely an experience you should seek out. But there's a moment when you're sticking scissors into a corpse, surrounded by Nazi swastika flags, where it all just feels a bit extra. I'll devour the stuff like Fruit Loops, and I think Pascal Laugier's version of Martyrs is a work of art. Don't go thinking I'm some shivering horror virgin, either.

My screenshot folder looks like an accident at an abattoir, and one scene had my trigger fingers stop in their tracks as I realized what was about to happen. Even the developer bookends the game with trigger warnings and links to a mental health charity, and the final scenes get their own special option to play a version censored by the developer itself. I can see why PlayStation censored it - the only platform to do so you'll get the full experience on Xbox and PC - because there are few sentient beings that won't find at least some part of the game truly upsetting. Sinister vibes become brutal violence, questionable mental health becomes raging psychosis, and something really, really bad happens to a wiener dog. The horror gets grislier as you make your way through the game, not unlike a body decomposing.

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