Murdered: Soul Suspect

Criminal-turned cop Ronan O'Connor is on the trail of notorious serial killer, 'The Bell Killer'. He pursues him to an apartment building. Without waiting for back-up, Ronan rushes in. After a struggle, he is overpowered and sent through the window, falling to the street below; barely surviving. The Bell Killer returns to the streets, picks up Ronan's gun and finishes him off with several bullets. In ghostly form, Ronan learns that in order to leave limbo and reunite with his wife in the afterlife, he must solve The Bell Killer case.

Solving the case with the limitation of being a ghost would be impossible. Luckily, he finds a young psychic-medium girl called Joy whose abilities allow her to see and communicate with him. Although reluctant to team up, Ronan convinces them they need each other and share similar goals. Ronan needs to resolve the case and see his wife again, whereas Joy's Mum is missing and is in danger of the Bell Killer.

Since you are a ghost, you can pass through objects, but have several limitations. You cannot enter or exit buildings without going through an open door or window because each building in Salem has been consecrated. Once inside, you can pass through closed doors, unless they are blocked by ghostly objects. These ghostly objects are also scattered around the outdoor environments, so in the end; it doesn't play too different from other (non-ghost) games.

Another one of your ghostly abilities is possession. Once you have entered a living person's body, you can mind read them which gives you a couple of pieces of dialog. For the average person, it's just a throwaway comment, but this can give you clues if you are at a scene, either by directly reading their thoughts, or by viewing objects more closely through their eyes. You cannot control a human's movements, but there's a few places where you can take possession of, and control a cat.

Once you arrive at a scene, you walk around the area finding the hotspots to observe the evidence. These can be physical pieces of evidence, or ghostly forms of past events. You are told how many pieces of evidence there are in total, so you know when to stop. Once you have found them, you can conclude the case by selecting the most salient pieces of evidence which progresses the story.

The task questions are a bit vague, and sometimes a bit pointless. You find a ghostly image of the girl and priest together and are asked to choose a piece of previous evidence for 'cross referencing', so you choose an image of a 'church'. In these moments you end up choosing the wrong one because you think it would be silly for it to be that obvious. For some reason, Ronan can see flashbacks of events which he didn't witness, so solving this clue reveals that the girl you are searching for is in the attic. The other type of task is where you have to select a few descriptive words from the list. So you will see a girl with her back to the wall, peering around the corner, so you select "scared", "hiding". This can be insultingly easy.

When you have a choice to select pieces of evidence, there seems to be no consequence for failure, so you basically have unlimited guesses. You do get a ranking but it has no meaning or effect on the game.

The other aspect to the game is the stealth sections. Demons follow simple patrol routes and will kill you quickly if they spot you. You can eradicate them by sneaking behind them and holding the Right Trigger on your controller, then quickly enter the correct combination that appears on screen which involves a direction and a button. Ronan can enter ghostly residue to hide from the Demons and startle crows which distracts them. The Demons seem to merely exist to pad out the game and add a bit of variety.

On your way between locations, you may come across ghosts who are also stranded in purgatory. These are mini cases where you find a couple of clues to resolve their troubles. There's not many of these cases which is a shame since they are a nice distraction.

There's also plenty of collectibles which give you a couple of sentences describing the location, past murders or your relationship with your wife, Julia.

The overall aesthetics and sound create a creepy atmosphere. It's a pretty 'dark' game but isn't too scary since it's more of a crime game than a horror. Since it is set in Salem, it is no surprise the story is centred around the town's historical link to witches.

It seems that each aspect to this game is basic and feels like wasted potential. The detective parts don't require enough thought, the world is too restrictive to be enjoyable to explore, the collectibles aren't fun enough/take enough effort to find, and finally, stealth is too basic to be interesting. I really enjoyed the premise of the game and the aesthetics/atmosphere, but the actual game is a huge disappointment.

Even though it has a promising story and concept, its execution is completly lacking. It seems that making a game in which you play as a detective is a thing big studios cant nail down. There isnt any big shootouts like in LA Noire, but you have some stealth sequences which are abysmally bad. They are by far the worst segments of the game and there is nothing about them that works well. Besides the actual detective work is very basic and linear, with solutions which are really stupid. For instance in once scene you go after a key, and in a moment you find three objects on the ground and are commanded to point which one is the most relevant, and those objects are a key, a fork and a knife. Its just a stupid game at times, and the solutions to puzzles are at times forced and awkward. It also has no reason to open world, as it is just an excuse to dump the world with all manner of useless collectibles and NPC sob stories that arent satisfying in any manner.

Overal i still had some enjoyment over its short lenght, but its a poor game.

Murdered: Soul Suspect tries way too hard to be a game.
The idea of the game is simple: you were killed by a serial killer, and you become a ghost, and have to figure out who he is and why he kills people.

The problem with this game is that it isn't just a detective game. There's more to it than just examining crime scenes and following leads.
In this game, there are demons that hunt and kill ghosts. They'll show up every so often and patrol a short path repeatedly. You then have you sneak up behind them and QTE them to death. If they discover you, you need to hide because you have no means to defend yourself.
This quickly becomes annoying. Frequently, you'll make some revelation in the plot, or find an interesting lead, and you'll hear that Goddamn screech. Time to stop what you're doing and fuck about for ten minutes! I haven't beaten this game yet, because every time I hear that fucking screech, I just want to huck my controller into the TV.

There are also demons that live in the floor. Normal demons can be seen through walls by holding RB, but no such luck for floor demons. It's completely possible to phase through a wall into certain death by no fault of your own.

The plot is well-paced, and decently well-thought-out so far. The game even gives you some ghost powers that are fun to play around with. In one section, a ghost train speeds by on a rail, and you have to time your teleportation to hop from alcove to alcove.
But for fuck's sake, I don't want anything to do with the demons.

However, the game seems unfinished. There are four ghosts that you can help solve their problems and get them into heaven, but they're all right at the beginning of the game. Throughout, you'll meet more ghosts, but they'll tell you something and your guy will just say "sorry can't help". I would gladly have taken more of these side missions in exchange for the demon bullshit.

I'd never thought that my main complaint about a game is that it tried too hard to BE a game, but this game has defied all logic.
There's a lot to like about this game, but I found myself hating the bad parts more than I liked the good parts.