How can I explain Murdered: Soul Suspect? What can I compare it to? The answer is I can’t explain it completely and it compares to nothing you’ve ever played. That’s what makes it so great! I will try my best to do so without giving away any sort of spoilers.
This game has a very deep storyline and although it “looks” like a 3rd person “shooter” type of game, it is not. There are some combat elements to it, periodically, but they are few and it is more story driven. Kind of like Alan Wake.
The act of possession is your best friend, not a gun, even though you are a “former” Detective. You’re dead and now a ghost remember? Ghosts and guns don’t really go together. Think of the movie Ghost where Patrick Swayze could touch things in the material world but not until he learned how to. The same goes for this game. You will eventually learn to possess objects and not just people.
Let me tell you, possession can be just as much fun as a gun. It makes the game actually. It’s fun to just possess random people in the city and read their thoughts. They only say about two things and start repeating, but it’s a cool feature and a very unique way to approach a game. Possession goes much further than that though. You can spy on what people are looking at, and influence the way they think. A really nice touch, that adds a really unique aspect to the game.
As a ghost you can do things people can’t, but they can also do things you can’t and sometimes you need their help and they need your’s. There are other ghosts you can help too (side quests, if you will) and they are pretty good and worth doing. It adds so much to the game because these side quests are not usually boring at all like in some games. They are really good actually. You are trying to solve even more mysteries (eg: helping a kid who thinks he killed his friends in a drunk driving accident) as well as your own mystery, which is, who killed you?
The killer is terrorizing the city and you want him for that reason and to unravel his motives for killing you. The nice thing is, the story does not lose you with it’s complexity. They manage to keep it simple but interesting.
You may be immune to certain things that kill the living, but you are not off the hook. Demons can kill you. They are mean too. Stay out of their sight you are ok, but get caught and they scream a horrible screech and alert other Demons in the area to your presence. You will die quickly unless you can “hide” in “remnants” of dead spirits. There are usually many in one area and you can jump from one to another to avoid Demons.
Demons may lose track of you when hiding in one of these but if they get close enough to one they will re-discover you and kill you. You need to jump from one to another in strategic fashion till they give up and leave the area.
These Demons are apparently “not that hard to kill”, but get a few of them on you and you will die fast. It does add a more challenging aspect to the game, that might otherwise make the game too easy or maybe even a little boring as it is a very “casual” game. These guys keep you on your toes, for sure. They can be killed if “executed” from behind, but timing has to be good and it is just best to avoid them by hiding in spirits and keeping out of their field of vision.
The graphics and audio in this game are amazing! I love how they decided to make your ghost go through the game with the 7 glowing bullet holes that killed him. Nice touch that makes him, like this game, completely unique. The musical score suits the game very well. The voice acting is second to none.
Overall, this game really blew me away due to it’s very fresh approach. It is very well thought out and put together from a story and environment perspective and it just works well. I tip my hat to them for coming up with something “different”. It’s too bad some people have knocked this game because it is something truly unique that is sorely needed in a cokkie cutter gaming industry.
