Murdered: Soul Suspect, is an action adventure stealth video game, developed by Airtight Games and published by Square Enix for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The game was released on June 3rd in North America and June 6th in Europe.

The game is based on Ronan O’Connor, a detective from Salem, Massachusetts, who has recently been murdered while on case. He meets his long-dead wife Julia but she tells him that he cannot join her until he completes unfinished business. This unfinished business is what the game revolves around, in a very obscure way. You go through main missions on investigating your death and how it has to do with your “living mission” of catching the Bell Killer.

Gameplay

The game play for Murdered: Soul Suspect is supposed to make you think, but it really doesn’t. You don’t have to find all the clues to move on, you can make as many mistakes as you want to figure out clues without any penalty. There is an indicator showing your guesses, but it doesn’t do anything. Just keep on guessing. For a crime solving mystery game, it doesn’t make you solve much at all. There are mini games in which you have to do to deduce your next clues, which are trivial at best. But when you are looking for clues in the game world, it’s like the old saying of “finding a needle in a haystack”. You may have a clue right under your feet, but if it isn’t the next clue in your sequence, you won’t know. Clues are highlighted when they are meant to be seen but sadly, the highlights are also the same color as things like old ghost residue so it can be hard to find. There is some combat within the game, and even though this game is classified as an action-adventure game, don’t expect good combat action or a lot of adventure. The combat seems like an afterthought of the game and was put in to try and add something else to the game. It is almost like it doesn’t need to be there. You can hide from any enemy or walk up behind an 1 hit them. That’s your combat. A neat little side part, a bit comical, is that you can possess a cat and going around as the cat collecting your clues. Weird, yes. Original, yes. Apart from that and finding out your unfinished business, there is nothing that kept me into the game. I just wanted to know the ending.

Graphics

The detail in each main character in the game is well done and very high definition. The surroundings are also very well detailed, except they all look very similar. It is very easy to get lost in the game because everything looks so close to the same thing and when you can walk through walls and doors, it makes your sense of direction a little askew. Also, the secondary characters unfortunately do not share the same great detail as everything else. You can definitely notice a lack of detail in them, and their animations do not match to their voice. Which is a huge pet peeve of mine. The cut scene movies are very well done and high definition and those are very entertaining. Be ready for cut scenes, there are a lot of them, and I mean a lot. It seems like for every 5 minutes of game play there is a 1 minute video, maybe even more. It looks nice and all, but unfortunately you cannot make a full game just out of cut-scene movies, it needs some good interaction.

Audio

The voice acting on all the major characters are really well done, and pretty much every secondary character has a voice also. If you can get past the non-matching voice to mouth then overall is decent. Like every other game, the background music changes when you encounter something useful or combat related. It really gives the game away. The ambient sounds are also quite good and the directional sound works well in the game. The only other downfall to the audio other than the voice to mouth matching, is the annoyance of the demons screams. They aren’t bad, but I just found them annoying.

Overall

The game is fun to start. You get very into the whole depth of the ghost world right off the intro and as your divulge into the game, you are sitting waiting for more…more….more! But sadly, it never lives up to it. It’s the same thing, over and over, with no climax. If the game was advertised as a mystery crime solving game, then the game may be reviewed differently and thought of differently. As a Action adventure stealth game, it definitely does not live up to that genre. There are some neat side missions and if your inner CSI wants to find out why you died, then the game will probably be fun for you, as for the rest,at a $60-$70 price tag, I would only buy it on sale. What did you think? Did you make it to the end? Leave your comments below!

-Kassquatch