Game Over: Murdered: Soul Suspect

Few games begin with your character dying, and even fewer see you trying to catch your killer as a ghost. But that’s where Murdered: Soul Suspect comes in, from developer Airtight Games, with Ronan O’Connor being gunned down by a serial killer known as the Bell Killer. It was released on 5th of June 2014 for PC, Xbox 360|One and PlayStation 3|4.

Taking place in Salem, Massachusetts (of Salem Witch Trial fame), Ronan finds himself unable to communicate or interact with the land of the living, and so being unable to help direct the investigation into his murder. However, his ghostly powers allow him to possess people and listen to their innermost thoughts, a skill that sometimes expands to letting him see their direct memories. As the story progresses, he discovers other powers too, but none of them extend to opening doors.

See, as Salem is such a reported hotbed of supernatural activity, most of the buildings had been consecrated with holy water. As such, Ronan can’t walk through walls, doors, or windows at least outside in the street. Making things a bit more challenging are the ghosts of old buildings, items, and vehicles that can also block the way, because ghosts can touch other ghosts.

Speaking of which, Ronan will meet a variety of other spooks who haven’t yet moved on because they haven’t accepted what happened to them. Usually, you can investigate a bit and put together the story of what happened, then help them to move on to the afterlife. Whatever that looks like, because the whole game takes place on Earth.

Investigating is a big part of what Murdered: Soul Suspect is about, gathering clues and picking the correct ones to answer whatever the question is. Sometimes it’s multiple questions, other times it’s multiple clues, but if you know what you’re doing then the game takes much less time to complete. In fact, while it took me eight hours to complete, there are speedruns taking only one.

Adding to the challenge are demons that try to drag you to Hell, which you have to avoid by hiding behind things or inside the old spectral material of other ghosts. Luckily, you can distract them by scaring crows, or by sneaking up behind them and discorporating them. Not always a simple thing if there is more than one, depending on their patrol patterns. Since I’m not a fan of horror games, while I didn’t particularly like the demons, they were certainly tolerable given the few times they appeared.

To flesh out the world are collectable objects with a certain amount in each area. Once you have them all, you are treated to a story which is, unfortunately, just voice played over a still image. They can be creepy given the music and voice acting (kudos to them!), but I think they could have been better.

The voice acting throughout, as well as music and general sound design, are all fantastic. Paired with some decent choreography in cutscenes, it’s really a joy to watch. Sure, you have to remember that these are AAA graphics by 2014 standards, but I’ve seen worse on the Switch.

Murdered: Soul Suspect may have received middling reviews when it was released, but given that you can regularly pick it up for less than £2 I think that it’s definitely worth a try if you like third-person mysteries with light horror elements. I’ve owned the game for ages, so I’m a little upset that I sat on this for so long before finally giving it a go.