Murdered: Soul SuspectYour Murder is just the Beginning
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4/10
James Davie |
DEV: Airtight Games
PUB: Square Enix
RELESE DATE: 06/06/2014
FORMATS: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox360 & XboxOne
Ronan O’ Connor, the protagonist behind this hard-boiled noir-come phantom drama escapade, is a totally disinterested detective with nothing exciting to gloat about. Spending most of the game murmuring and mumbling whilst a genre plucked cigarette sticks loosely between his lips, Ronan fails to admirably contribute to his job description in a manner befitting his fashionable fedora and suit jacket combo. This is important insight, as Murdered Soul Suspect shows little care with its characters, NPC’s nor its setting to extrapolate any sense of personality or intrigue. The result ends up being a forgetful current-gen offering that fails to capitalise on a promising set-up and some worthwhile ideas, providing a basic sketch of what could’ve been a welcome difference to conventional blockbuster fodder.
The plot centres around the ‘Bell Killer’, a mysterious fiend Ronan has to track down to unmask the curdling evil bewitching the town of Salem Massachusetts, as well as being able to reach his adoring and beloved wife. Ronan is shot several times during an encounter, which leaves him moping about as a chain-smoking poltergeist, with orange bulb encased bullet wounds clearly visible through the back and front of his suit jacket. Ronan’s otherworldly nature summons his abilities to contact his fellow undead, but leaves him incapable of interacting with the living, often muttering to himself when witnessing the acts of his living protégés. This all adds up to a story with some good ideas, but ends up being wholly predictable, the endgame villain is especially obvious if you follow the story through to its logical conclusion.
The concepts are certainly intriguing but Murdered devalues its potential by sending you on a goose chase across locations that are eerily generic, both in terms of their apparitional state, and unfulfilling and linear designs. Jaunts through a cemetery and a church mix in the occult with a foreboding sense of the afterlife, but there is nothing truly fearsome or edgy about stepping into unknown surroundings. There is a potent sense of history and a shimmering glimpse at the past permeating through Murdered Soul Suspect, but the cohesiveness of its vision doesn’t extend far beyond its exterior presence, leaving its internal assets anaemic and tawdry by comparison. Matters aren’t improved when locations get recycled in a nondescript manner towards the end of the game- showing the pot of tricks disappearing into a stumbling blockade.
PUB: Square Enix
RELESE DATE: 06/06/2014
FORMATS: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox360 & XboxOne
Ronan O’ Connor, the protagonist behind this hard-boiled noir-come phantom drama escapade, is a totally disinterested detective with nothing exciting to gloat about. Spending most of the game murmuring and mumbling whilst a genre plucked cigarette sticks loosely between his lips, Ronan fails to admirably contribute to his job description in a manner befitting his fashionable fedora and suit jacket combo. This is important insight, as Murdered Soul Suspect shows little care with its characters, NPC’s nor its setting to extrapolate any sense of personality or intrigue. The result ends up being a forgetful current-gen offering that fails to capitalise on a promising set-up and some worthwhile ideas, providing a basic sketch of what could’ve been a welcome difference to conventional blockbuster fodder.
The plot centres around the ‘Bell Killer’, a mysterious fiend Ronan has to track down to unmask the curdling evil bewitching the town of Salem Massachusetts, as well as being able to reach his adoring and beloved wife. Ronan is shot several times during an encounter, which leaves him moping about as a chain-smoking poltergeist, with orange bulb encased bullet wounds clearly visible through the back and front of his suit jacket. Ronan’s otherworldly nature summons his abilities to contact his fellow undead, but leaves him incapable of interacting with the living, often muttering to himself when witnessing the acts of his living protégés. This all adds up to a story with some good ideas, but ends up being wholly predictable, the endgame villain is especially obvious if you follow the story through to its logical conclusion.
The concepts are certainly intriguing but Murdered devalues its potential by sending you on a goose chase across locations that are eerily generic, both in terms of their apparitional state, and unfulfilling and linear designs. Jaunts through a cemetery and a church mix in the occult with a foreboding sense of the afterlife, but there is nothing truly fearsome or edgy about stepping into unknown surroundings. There is a potent sense of history and a shimmering glimpse at the past permeating through Murdered Soul Suspect, but the cohesiveness of its vision doesn’t extend far beyond its exterior presence, leaving its internal assets anaemic and tawdry by comparison. Matters aren’t improved when locations get recycled in a nondescript manner towards the end of the game- showing the pot of tricks disappearing into a stumbling blockade.
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As a ghostly detective, you can walk through almost any obstruction in your path without hindrance…. save for structures the designers don’t intend for you to explore further. This’ll help you find collectibles strewn about, tucked away in each of the game’s settings and pass you through otherwise inaccessible doors.
You figuratively carry a satchel of phantom tricks to aid you in uncovering collectibles and moving about Salem, acquiring each ethereal power as you progress, but they aren’t worth sticking around for due to their limited usages. Chiefly, you are given the ability to possess the souls inhabiting the town, so you can read their thoughts, influence them to a particular way of thinking and taking a peak at important information they might hold such as documents or notes in order to further enquiries to an investigation. In a positive change of pace, you get the chance to take mind and physical control of a cat as you claw your way up vines and skulk into ventilation shafts- a positive stroke of inventiveness, let down by infrequency and the disappointment of these powers when put into practice on human beings.
Mind reading sounds like it could unveil a whole swathe of interesting thoughts to gather perspectives on situations, but they are shrivelled to one or two lines of disposable dialogue. Comments often pertain to thoughtless pondering and scepticism, flavourless and throwaway responses, making you wonder if there is any personality in MSS at all. Influence and peak are mainly used in a context sensitive capacity, testing you on the significance of the clues you’ve amassed by either selecting the right pieces of information to answer a question or choosing the most relevant answers in a jumble of words to describe the state of an object or person. With restrictions crippling your interrogative abilities, you rarely feel like an integral contributor to the sleuthing and detective work you’re meant to feel apart of. Additionally, there is no penalty for being incorrect, allowing those not paying any attention, a free pass to proceed unpunished. This directly points to the relaxed sense of ease the game unashamedly flaunts, exchanging challenge and sense of accomplishment, for an accessible yet impudently child guided mode of progression.
There are other abilities Ronan can utilise outside of investigations too. The poltergeist ability allows you to elusively signal your ghostly presence unto the outside world, by tampering with objects such as telephones and printers, as a means to distract patrolling guards whilst sneaking around. Later in the game, you also gain access to a teleportation skill, handy for when you need to get somewhere in a hurry. Unfortunately, both abilities are hamstrung by the linear nature to which they can be used. Poltergeist only allows you to fiddle with objects, ruining any creative nuance it could have shared within the story or side quests. Teleport sounds like a novel inclusion, but the absurd linearity and closed off locations in Salem ensures the novelty fails to reach its fullest potential, as well as the strict limitations on teleporting minor distances.
Inspecting and examining crime scenes exposes further implications of haphazard design. You poke and snoop around cordoned off areas, tapping a button to analyse pieces of evidence, which will be added to your case immediately once unearthed. You’re instructed to collect so many clues per area, resulting in Ronan plodding about until all clues have been brushed up, some being more obvious than others. The effortlessness of nosing around in search of each factoid makes these sections abhorrently remedial, as you feel more like a museum visitor rather than a detective on the verge of solving a murder.
You figuratively carry a satchel of phantom tricks to aid you in uncovering collectibles and moving about Salem, acquiring each ethereal power as you progress, but they aren’t worth sticking around for due to their limited usages. Chiefly, you are given the ability to possess the souls inhabiting the town, so you can read their thoughts, influence them to a particular way of thinking and taking a peak at important information they might hold such as documents or notes in order to further enquiries to an investigation. In a positive change of pace, you get the chance to take mind and physical control of a cat as you claw your way up vines and skulk into ventilation shafts- a positive stroke of inventiveness, let down by infrequency and the disappointment of these powers when put into practice on human beings.
Mind reading sounds like it could unveil a whole swathe of interesting thoughts to gather perspectives on situations, but they are shrivelled to one or two lines of disposable dialogue. Comments often pertain to thoughtless pondering and scepticism, flavourless and throwaway responses, making you wonder if there is any personality in MSS at all. Influence and peak are mainly used in a context sensitive capacity, testing you on the significance of the clues you’ve amassed by either selecting the right pieces of information to answer a question or choosing the most relevant answers in a jumble of words to describe the state of an object or person. With restrictions crippling your interrogative abilities, you rarely feel like an integral contributor to the sleuthing and detective work you’re meant to feel apart of. Additionally, there is no penalty for being incorrect, allowing those not paying any attention, a free pass to proceed unpunished. This directly points to the relaxed sense of ease the game unashamedly flaunts, exchanging challenge and sense of accomplishment, for an accessible yet impudently child guided mode of progression.
There are other abilities Ronan can utilise outside of investigations too. The poltergeist ability allows you to elusively signal your ghostly presence unto the outside world, by tampering with objects such as telephones and printers, as a means to distract patrolling guards whilst sneaking around. Later in the game, you also gain access to a teleportation skill, handy for when you need to get somewhere in a hurry. Unfortunately, both abilities are hamstrung by the linear nature to which they can be used. Poltergeist only allows you to fiddle with objects, ruining any creative nuance it could have shared within the story or side quests. Teleport sounds like a novel inclusion, but the absurd linearity and closed off locations in Salem ensures the novelty fails to reach its fullest potential, as well as the strict limitations on teleporting minor distances.
Inspecting and examining crime scenes exposes further implications of haphazard design. You poke and snoop around cordoned off areas, tapping a button to analyse pieces of evidence, which will be added to your case immediately once unearthed. You’re instructed to collect so many clues per area, resulting in Ronan plodding about until all clues have been brushed up, some being more obvious than others. The effortlessness of nosing around in search of each factoid makes these sections abhorrently remedial, as you feel more like a museum visitor rather than a detective on the verge of solving a murder.
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Despite being something of a cop, Ronan isn’t a combat savvy gumshoe. Yet there are miniscule stealth sections in the game, where demons hover about in pockets of game’s environments. These encounters give you a slight prong of unease, as alerting them will have you scuttling to find hidden silhouettes you can seek refuge in, but they make sparing appearances, and are offensively simple to dispatch of by swallowing their ghostly apparitions from them, in a similar way to using the Vacuum in Luigi’s Mansion to suck up ghosts, albeit more insipid and far less involving and memorable than Mario’s moustachioed sibling’s supernatural frolics because amidst the danger of getting caught, there is always respite and not enough difficulty to give players any sense of accomplishments or feel any element of danger. Making matters worse, these bits cater as the most unnerving parts of the game, and they can only be found whilst playing through the story.
Outside of the main bulk, you can wonder around Salem, with integral landmarks beckoning a short loading screen as you move in and out of each location. You’ll find people in need of help, which is the furthest the game gets to having intrigue and depth. You will find lost souls who need comforting, as they share their woes with you. These problems commonly include a newly deceased individual regretting the circumstances leading up to their death, with themes of coping with the past lingering in their troubled minds. What you actually partake in is the same sequence of to-do’s as you’ll be familiar with from the single player path, only this time you are learning more about the situations of your fellow ghostlings and the inhabitants of the town itself. The most successful of these asides is a sit-down at a church with a stalker and his victim. Suffices to say, confronting moments like this indulges Murder Soul Suspect into subject matter it completely misses the mark on elsewhere, further illustrating the twilight of imagination amidst the ruins of missed opportunities.
Murdered Soul Suspect looks passable save for a garish looking female apparition, who looks like John Travolta in sister act attire. Environments and settings look and feel similar, both with linear sections and hallways and rooms cluttering together with barely anything worthy of taking in visually. Likewise the voice acting is abysmal with Connor’s emotionless grunting standing beside a disgruntled teenager and a receptionist who sounds far younger than she looks. The camera tends to lose control of itself in tight spaces too, only adding to the list of sins Murdered commits without hesitation.
Like Ronan himself, Murdered Soul Suspect has things to say, but most of it isn’t worth sticking around to hear. A murder mystery so simplified it belongs in a remedial class for the mentally disenfranchised, but even they will be dumbfounded by how offensively easy everything is. Containing a cast of dullard characters in a game world littered with painfully slack jawed people, nothing impactful ever truly happens in Salem. The great concept and ideas are unlaced by sloppy execution, showing a wealth of nuance that astonishingly fails to materialise, leaving a soulless exoskeleton and a forgetful mystery.
Outside of the main bulk, you can wonder around Salem, with integral landmarks beckoning a short loading screen as you move in and out of each location. You’ll find people in need of help, which is the furthest the game gets to having intrigue and depth. You will find lost souls who need comforting, as they share their woes with you. These problems commonly include a newly deceased individual regretting the circumstances leading up to their death, with themes of coping with the past lingering in their troubled minds. What you actually partake in is the same sequence of to-do’s as you’ll be familiar with from the single player path, only this time you are learning more about the situations of your fellow ghostlings and the inhabitants of the town itself. The most successful of these asides is a sit-down at a church with a stalker and his victim. Suffices to say, confronting moments like this indulges Murder Soul Suspect into subject matter it completely misses the mark on elsewhere, further illustrating the twilight of imagination amidst the ruins of missed opportunities.
Murdered Soul Suspect looks passable save for a garish looking female apparition, who looks like John Travolta in sister act attire. Environments and settings look and feel similar, both with linear sections and hallways and rooms cluttering together with barely anything worthy of taking in visually. Likewise the voice acting is abysmal with Connor’s emotionless grunting standing beside a disgruntled teenager and a receptionist who sounds far younger than she looks. The camera tends to lose control of itself in tight spaces too, only adding to the list of sins Murdered commits without hesitation.
Like Ronan himself, Murdered Soul Suspect has things to say, but most of it isn’t worth sticking around to hear. A murder mystery so simplified it belongs in a remedial class for the mentally disenfranchised, but even they will be dumbfounded by how offensively easy everything is. Containing a cast of dullard characters in a game world littered with painfully slack jawed people, nothing impactful ever truly happens in Salem. The great concept and ideas are unlaced by sloppy execution, showing a wealth of nuance that astonishingly fails to materialise, leaving a soulless exoskeleton and a forgetful mystery.
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+ A great concept supported by several promising ideas,
+ There’s a sense of history to Salem, + The receptionist is laughably voiced. - Ronan is a boring character with nary a hint of emotion in his voice, - NPCs have nothing interesting to say, making the mind possessing gameplay tedious, - The settings are predictable and clichéd for this calibre of game. |
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