Developer: Airtight Games
Publisher: SQUARE ENIX / Eidos Interactive
Rrp: £19.99
Released: 5th June 2014
Available on Steam and the Square Store
In Murdered: Soul Suspect you play as Ronan and you are dead, well that was a short game. Well time to move on to the next game then, 10 out of 10, would definitely eat here again. Oh hang on, it’s still going… Ah, I’m a ghost got it. Ignore what I said earlier.
The setting of the game is Salem, Massachusetts spooky capital of America and your character, Ronan, is, or was, a Detective in local law enforcement.
As you progress through the game you’ll unlock ghostly powers, you start with possession but quickly gain the ability to reveal and remove select ghostly objects as well as a few other powers. Possession was one of the more fun powers to use (and a good thing too since you’ll use that a lot) as sometimes you get to influence the possessed and also read their minds. Sadly you quickly realise that each individual will only have two thoughts and with many of the npc’s wandering the hub world they tend to be thinking the same things. Of course you get to possess a cat which was weirdly fun. Seriously how has nobody made Cat Simulator yet?
On a graphical level this game is pretty damn good looking, in a grim and spooky way. The colours of the world are slightly desaturated and the objects in the ghost world give off a haunting glow. The character models are great as well, very nicely detailed. Unless the character you’re looking at is a npc then the models are pretty bland.
Between missions you’ll traverse through a small hub world filled with ghost npc’s, living npc’s, collectibles and a few side quests. At first wandering the city feels confusing because there’s no map system, but after a bit of exploration you soon get to know its twists and turns. The thing about the hub world is that it feels underused, there are a few side quests there just aren’t enough.
While I’m on that subject, the side quests… As interesting and entertaining as they were they didn’t give anything as a reward, that might seem such a petty thing to complain about but there just isn’t an incentive to actually doing these side quests.
The interesting thing about the collectibles that are scattered around the hub world (and various missions) is once you’ve completed a set your given a spooky short story, I love that kind of thing and it made me want to collect them all. Sadly I found the stories from the collectibles were spookier and more memorable than the main storyline.
The investigations were fun and finding all the clues can be quite challenging, but in the end it’s actually pointless finding everything. Like with the side quests, there’s no reward for discovering everything and you can solve a case without all the clues. Once you start attempting to solve a case all the clues you have will appear as pictures and you’ll have to select the right one or the right sequence before you can move on. But as seems to be a theme with this game there is no reward for getting it right the first time and no punishment for failing to do so apart from your Detective rank dropping which has no influence on anything else.
So you’ve concluded you investigation and need to move on to the next scene? That’s great but… First you’re gonna have to get past or defeat a bunch of demons.
I truly don’t understand why these demons are in this game, they just seem needless and force the player to do a unnessicary, and frankly shoehorned in, stealth section. The ridiculess thing is they are very easy to beat, just sneak behind them and follow the short instructions and “POOF” it’s gone.
Eventually you find your sidekick and it looks like she’s been reading the video game sidekicks rule book because she’s a close contender to the most annoying sidekick ever. The title however is still held firm by Ashley of Resident Evil four.
It’s a shame when I can say that one of the most memorable and best parts in the game was when I got to possess a cat. I really wish this mechanic was used more often, not only because it was fun to run around as a cat meowing to people but also because it completely changed the feel of the game without breaking the theme. It just feels like another missed opportunity, it would have been great if you could possess a cat and a bird and use them to solve puzzles or navigate an area.
The whole game felt like a series of missed opportunities mixed in with lots of great ideas. Less of the demons, more of the investigation and unique puzzles to solve. Would I recommend it? That’s a tough one. I suppose I would, but not for the Rrp, the game takes maybe eight hours to complete or there about’s. If you can find it for about £10 then yes it’s worth a look.
