Review: Murdered: Soul Suspect

Murdered: Soul Suspect

Square Enix

2014

Many months ago, I pre-ordered this game because I thought the premise was fantastic: A detective gets killed and has to solve his own murder... from BEYOND THE GRAVE as a ghost with ghost powers and possessing people and detective work and ghost powers! So I pre-ordered it and paid it off in full and waited, eager to play as a motherfucking ghost cop with ghost powers.

The wait was not worth it.

There was so much lacking from the game that the wait only produced a middling experience at best, and that's if you're really reaching. Everything from the controls to the voice acting and everything in between seems very bare-bones and rail thin. The main story campaign can be beaten very quickly and with one eye open because it's honestly not THAT engaging.

There is a common complaint regarding modern video games that they are becoming more and more like "interactive movies" than actual games. What many mean is that the player is treated to a more cinematic experience by way of more cutscenes and increasingly minimal and less engaging gameplay (even then, you end up pressing a button every now and then).

Murdered is no exception.

All you really do is walk around collecting stuff, making guesses in a piss-poor attempt to create something that vaguely resembles detective work, without a sense of urgency, or even penalty if you fuck up.

LA Noire took the detective concept and made it work, especially with the penalty concept. It's rewarding to mess up because you're treated to a shred of more content each time but if you don't fuck up, your score improves at the end of each case.

With Murdered, if you mess up with your "investigations", nothing happens. No failure music, no angry "GODDAMN IT!" from the main character, no score penalty, etc. You can fuck up all you want and you won't notice a difference.

Even the collectibles don't really do anything cool. While it isn't fair to compare LA Noire to Murdered, it has to be said again. Collecting stuff in LA Noire actually gets you stuff like suits and content. Murdered treats you with audio ghost stories which even then are very few and in the end not that worth it considering all the searching you had to go through with narrow spaces and such. And god forbid you should get so far into the story you can't go back to other places which brings me to my next point.

The game is so linear it hurts. You can't truly explore every nook and cranny because you haven't unlocked a specific ghost power which in turn leads to a lot of dull backtracking through areas you already visited and must visit again if you want to get all the collectibles. I'm not judging because I did the same thing so I could get all the trophies and get every penny's worth of my foolish purchase. And even with the game being linear, you'd think the game would get better but it just stands around with its hands in its pockets like some lame-wad.

The story is probably the only thing with a shred of redemption. It's all right and has a pretty good twist but even then it feels so contrived that the people behind the game just tossed it in to make it seem more interesting.

There was a lot of potential. The ghost powers could have been better, the stuff with the demons and combat could have ACTUALLY EXISTED instead of "move really slowly and then press these buttons." It would have been a much more engaging and interesting experience if one could have played with a better combat feature. Ghost punching, ghost weapons, full possession, etc. Instead it just feels like some decent movie with a few point and click elements tossed in to meet someone's minimum standards.

If you're one of the people who haven't played the game, count yourself lucky and just watch a playthrough on YouTube.

The cat possession stuff was okay. Funny for a few minutes but then quickly descends into tedium.

4/10