Murdered: Soul Suspect (Xbox ONE)

Murdered: Soul Suspect has a unique story. You play as Ronan O’Connor who is immediately shot dead at the beginning of the game. That’s right, immediate protagonist death! Game over.

Only joking – you play the entire game as Ronan’s ghost as you try to catch your own killer. You join forces with the oxymoronic teenager, Joy who is a medium and can see you as you travel through the various areas of Salem trying to find clues to the identity of your killer.

It’s probably because I’m still getting used to the graphical superiority of the Xbox ONE, but I thought the game was really well designed and very pretty. The characters look really well done and their facial expressions pull off their actual moods and dialogue very well.

The sound effects are appropriately eerie for the ghost realm of Salem but they are not overdone like they are in most games of the same genre. There is no solid background music that grinds down your soul which adds the emphasis of when you are actually facing danger. When demons come up, there is a noise that actually made me jump a few times and that is good use of effective sound.

The gameplay elements are mainly investigative with the occasional fighting of demons. You will mainly have to search different locations for clues, some of which required a lot of graft without a guide to help. You get scored based on how well you do which felt like a bit of kick in the face with how obscure some of the clues were to find.

The demon fighting is interesting. In order to kill them, you have to sneak up behind them and complete a quick-time event to execute them. It makes the game very in-keeping with its own genre and doesn’t convert to the ‘kill everything in sight!’ mentality that dominates most modern day releases.

One of your ghost abilities involves being able to possess people to read their thoughts... and also cats. When you possess a cat, you can control it to get to hard to reach places and this is, by far, the coolest feature of the game, especially when you can press ‘Y’ to make the cat meow at a whim.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 48 Achievements

Okay the basic thing to remember before embarking on an achievement quest is that you only have one save per playthrough and there is a point of no return which will make 29 of the achievements impossible to get. The game does warn you of this though so it’s not too much of a problem.

Solving the mystery and completing the game will net you 19 achievements. The other achievements are for getting all of the collectibles. After that, you’re done. The only tricky part about the collectibles is gathering the ghost girl drawings. They are the only ones that don’t show up glowing on the map, however you can sort of locate them by using the strange images scattered throughout the gaming world.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I did enjoy playing the game, however after one playthough it offers no replay value. That’s the main problem with story-based games. There isn’t anything that varies from the linear progression which is same issue as I raised with the CSI series.

That said, I did think it was a very well executed story with an original idea and is definitely worth giving a go.