To be honest, this game, even if it was short and simplistic, it was decent and it fulfilled its purpose. You play as the ghost of a dead detective and you go on an adventure to find the culprit, the one who killed you.
For the gameplay itself, there's not that much to it, its more of an walking simulator but it doesn't need to be more.
A game where you play as a ghost and you interact with other ghosts isn't something you see everyday, and i feel like this was the main attraction.
That being said, Murdered: Soul Suspect is a quite unique game that captured the mortuary atmosphere well and even if the story is nothing amazing, for a 6-8 hours game i think it's worth checking.

Murdered: Soul Suspect took me by surprise. It is a game that received mixed reviews when it was released and yet, after fully completing the game, I found that I really enjoyed my time with it.

In the game, you play as Ronin, a detective attempting to solve the Bell Killer case. Unfortunately, Ronin finds himself joining the growing ranks of the serial killer’s victims but is stuck as a ghost until he uncovers the truth and reveals the killer’s identity. Overall, the story is what you would expect from a murder mystery- an unlikely partnership, exploration of various abandoned places and enough plot twists to keep things interesting. I will say the ending did catch me slightly by surprise, in a good way, as I thought I had solved the case but the writers’ decided to add one final plot twist, which was pretty satisfying to see play out.

So, how does a ghost solve a murder? Well, Ronin may not be able to talk to the living, he can talk to other spirits and there are plenty of spirits to talk to. Ronin can manipulate the world through his possession and manipulation abilities. Much of the game consists of you exploring various locations, finding clues and then piecing together the clues to solve the mystery. As far as gameplay goes, it is pretty simplistic. The developers did try to add a little more depth to the game, by including demons- ghosts that have stayed in this world too long and constantly seek out other spirits to sate their hunger. In order to deal with these demons, Ronin must move stealthily behind the demon and perform a quick time event execution. I’ll be honest, I found the demon parts of the game annoying and just served to slow the game’s pacing down. The gameplay, as a whole, is pretty simple and can feel a little repetitive at times however it has been done well, so I guess this is a case of if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Where Murdered: Soul Suspect does excel is the atmosphere it creates. This is not a horror game but it does a great job of creating an unsettling feeling in many of its locations. Firstly, it is set in the town of Salem, which is an ideal setting for a ghost story and the developers do a good job of incorporating Salem’s history in the story. The game also has a good variety of locations from your standard apartment building to a cemetery. The developers do a great job of balancing out the creepier locations, such as the hospital with a location like the church. This means that even if you don’t enjoy being creeped out, you will have some segments of the game that you can enjoy.

The final aspect of the game that adds to the world are it’s collectibles. There are a lot of collectibles- over one hundred and fifty of them. These collectibles do have a function as they add to Salem’s history, characters’ backstory and add detail to the Bell Killer investigation. My personal favourites were the ghost stories. In each of the locations, there was a location specific collectible. If you collect all of those collectibles in the locations, you will unlock a ghost story tied to the location. I really enjoyed the church’s and the cemetery’s stories but all of them add to the town’s worldbuilding. In fact, all of the collectibles do this which makes hunting them down less of a chore and more an important side activity.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Murdered: Soul Suspect. It is the perfect game for someone who isn’t a fan of horror games to play in October. It isn’t an overly long game but it is long enough to tell it’s story and do the story justice. The gameplay is the weakest part of the game as it feels repetitive in places and the demons felt like the developers were trying to pad out the game time. However, as a murder mystery game, I would highly recommend people give Murdered: Soul Suspect a go.

Game #40: Murdered: Soul Suspect

Only good thing about this game is its atmosphere apart from that story is OK but the way it's told is extremely boring. Gameplay elements are just terrible.

4/10

Sights & Sounds
- Given that this game originally released on PS3, that's a good starting point if you're trying to imagine the graphical quality. By that benchmark, the PC version I played looked perhaps a little better than that, but it's been over a decade since I even looked at a PS3, so maybe I'm a little off. In any case, sure, it's a little dated, but it looks fine enough
- Beyond the quality of the textures and lighting, the character animations look a little stiff. I also noticed that cutscene framerate appeared to be locked to 30 FPS, so they looked a little choppy
- The soundtrack is passable and notably cinematic. Sounds like a bunch of action horror movie compositions. That is to say, be prepared for a lot of anxious-sounding strings and thundering percussion

Story & Vibes
- Surprise, you're dead. Yup. Five minutes into the game and our protagonist has already kicked the bucket. The good news is that the afterlife is real. The bad news is that you have to figure out who killed you and why before you move on
- It's a fun twist on the usual detective/investigation premise, I must admit. Unfortunately, in practice, Murdered: Soul Suspect often feels like just another investigation game. Just make all the bad guys demons instead of thugs, and you're 80% of the way there
- There is a fun little narrative undercurrent that paints parallels to the Salem Witch Trials owing to the fact that the game takes place in Salem, Massachusetts. It's a little bit of a stretch, but I never mind having a little bit of real-world history in my games. I'm just glad that they were able to weave that history into the overarching narrative in the latter third of the game, or otherwise it would have felt a little forced
- That said, there was no mention of Giles Corey despite the references to the "pressing" method of execution. Seriously, if you're unfamiliar with the story of that man, look him up
- Vibe-wise, despite being full of ghosts and demons, Murdered: Soul Suspect isn't very scary (or even all that creepy). The only time I was ever slightly disturbed was when I interviewed a well-hidden ghost woman hanging out a balcony to hear about why she died. Her story was a bit more unsettling than the other ghosts I interviewed, to say the least

Playability & Replayability
- This title plays as a (mostly) open world affair with heavy emphases on investigation, exploration, and collectibles
- The main gameplay loop involves going to a waypointed mission locale, poking around for collectibles and evidence, and trying to navigate to an investigation location. Once you enter one of these investigation sites, you'll get a little notification (and often a cutscene) to let you know that you need to poke around in that area a little harder
- Once you've gathered all the clues--or at least the ones necessary for progress--you can conclude your investigation and make some conjecture that should direct you to the next plot point. Don't worry, the answers are usually pretty clear, and you get 3 strikes before failing
- "Combat", if you can indeed call it that, is just about as barebones of a stealth experience as I can envision. You just sneak up behind demons and do a quicktime event. That's it
- Beyond your uninspiring demon-slaying, you can also walk through walls and possess cats. That's about it for abilities, unless you count being able to hide in "shadows" during stealth segments as an additional ability (I don't)
- I managed to 100% the game, so I don't think I'll be back for a replay

Overall Impressions & Performance
- Murdered: Soul Suspect is not a bad game. Not a good one either. It's got a nice premise going for it, but the rest of the game is surprisingly bland. None of the characters are all that likeable or relatable, the gameplay isn't very fun, and the story doesn't live up to its billing. It does just enough to keep you from getting bored while also doing nothing to surprise or impress you
- It ran flawlessly on the Steam Deck, at least, which was nice

Final Verdict
- 5/10. When it comes down to these coinflip ratings, I usually go with a gut feeling regarding whether or not I should recommend it. If you can pick it up deeply discounted (not hard) and are a detective game diehard, give it a try. If not, you're not missing out on very much

The town of Salem is haunted by The Bell Killer, a serial killer who has left behind many bodies and very little leads. Ronan O'Connor, a detective working on the case, tracks the killer down to an apartment building in town, but ends up overpowered by the killer and becomes a victim himself. Bound to this world by his inability to close the case in life, he sets out to search Salem for clues as a spirit and try to find closure.

Like its protagonist, Murdered: Soul Suspect was done dirty. The game was developed by a small-ish studio called Airtight Games, pitched by Square-Enix as part of the publisher's initiative to capture more of a Western audience, a push that, in 2022, we know didn't end well. Square never really understood what Western audiences wanted and racked up many failures while blaming the studios for it. Murdered was one such failure. Upon release, Murdered was priced at $60 and was marketed unrealistically, resulting in a mixed reception, lukewarm sales, and the closure of Airtight Games just weeks after the game hit store shelves..

Which is sad, because it's such a fascinating game. It can't be said that it is a masterpiece, nor that it justifies its original price tag, but at the prices the game is usually sold -- I bought it for a paltry $4 -- it offers a great bang-for-your-buck, so long as you approach it as the mystery thriller, almost story-driven game that it is.

It centers around investigative gameplay: the map is semi-open for exploration, but generally, Ronan will be led from location to location as he discovers new facts about the case. Whenever he spots a place of interest, like say, a place the killer has visited, the game enters an investigative mode in which Ronan poses questions and the player searches the scene for clues that can answer it.

Of course, there's the twist highlighted by the game's title: Ronan, the main character, is dead, which brings a series of mechanics to the investigation that make the game stand out as unique. As a spirit, he can go through walls, which lets him visit places living people cannot. He can also possess people, and while that doesn't allow direct control over them, he can listen in to their thoughts and even subtly nudge them towards performing certain actions.

Each area is also filled with collectibles that yield some information about the game's world. It could be a character, or the town, or historic events. It might not even relate to the plot at all. While some may cringe at the thought of having so many collectibles in a game, it felt, to me, like Murdered was enhanced by their presence, as they allow it an opportunity to enhance its setting and characters. Plus, if you pay attention to the tidbits you collect about the Bell Killer, you might figure out some of the twists in the story before they happen, a testament to how solid the overall plot is as a detective story.

The game is mechanically solid, with the most direct comparison I can make being either Frogwares's Sherlock Holmes games, or Ace Attorney but in 3D. Walk around inspecting everything you think is relevant, talk to those present, and present the correct clues to advance in the case. Sometimes, there's also puzzles to be solved. It's simple and straightforward as far as investigative games go, which makes me think that the expectation for AAA mechanics and storytelling where the only thing that made reviewers look at the game so negatively.

Okay, that's not necessarily true. There's one aspect of the game that's disfunctional in a way that feels jarring when held against the overall experience, and that is the combat. Not a single soul ever praised this, and for good reason: there is one (1) enemy type in the game, a demon, which Ronan is defenseless against unless it's approached from behind, from where he can perform a stealth takedown.

There's about ten instances of such combat sections popping up in the game, and each of them feels like it was set up so that you can get dispatch every enemy quickly and then go back to the actual fun part of the game. It reeks of meddling from upper management, as the way in which it feels disconnected to the rest of the game is like it was made with the explicit purpose of ticking a box that higher-ups thought the game needed to be successful.

Ultimately, more than anything else, Murdered: Soul Suspect feels like a wasted opportunity. Had its scope been kept a bit more under control, had the game been marketed correctly, and had it been given a more approachable price tag, much in the vein of Frogwares's work with Sherlock Holmes, there might have been room for a franchise here. As it is, if you're a mystery fan, get it on a sale -- the developer is gone anyway -- and kick back for an enjoyable whodunnit story.

By Request Review #1 - 2021

It's a really clever game, ruined by unpatched game breaking glitches that kept me from progressing. I've had people say nothing happened to them on their playthroughs, and others say they did. Unfortunately, it happened so many times, I had to just set it aside. It's a shame, because I love the idea of a ghostly detective having to solve his own murder. I'd love to return to it in order to see what happens and give it a proper review, but until then, shelved. Hopefully all that gets fixed, but I'm not confident given Square Enix probably has no interest in funding the devs to patch a game from 2014.

Detective and paranormal thrillers are each both great genres, so imagine combining them only to create something so subpar that you begin to wonder if the two are best separated.

Murdered: Soul Suspect tries to create a captivating, story driven experience and almost utilises the mechanics seen in the Sherlock Holmes games (but better), but falls off really hard in it's execution sadly. The gameplay is really repetitive, running around Salem, hiding from demons and basically solving cases in the most watered down way possible for a runtime of 7 hours. For it's 7 hour runtime, there were still some interesting moments and I still had some fun with the eerie atmosphere and general worldbuilding which made it worthwhile in the end.

The atmosphere of this game instantly sold me, I loved the eerie feeling of walking through the spirit world, interacting with certain things like the "side quests" (which were honestly more interesting than the plot itself) and discovering past stories through admittely tediously finding objects.

What I hated the most was the gameplay, I absolutely hated the sections where you had to evade or execute demons. It felt like such a fucking cock block at times to progress the story and was obvious time padding too. Just the way the demons were placed is pretty awful and you have to be really precise otherwise you spend half of the section constantly evading. I didn't mind solving cases, though. Going around crime scenes and piecing together what happened was honestly one of the more fun aspects of the game and though it's pretty much the core mechanic, I didn't get too tired of it at least until the last two sections of the story, which...

really fucking sucked, honestly. Ronan was likable enough and Joy was an okay companion, but everything else was just lackluster as fuck. Way, way, way before things really started getting into motion, I already figured out one of the twists in the story which, to be fair, was kinda subverted and bait and switched on purpose at the end, but that didn't really make up for it. The actual twist itself was pretty underwhelming, I mean... there are like four twists, only two were actually mildly interesting, but the plot itself didn't grab me enough to really actually be blown away by it.

In the end, if you're looking for a pass time detective game where you solve shit akin to Sherlock Holmes, this is definitely the better option between the two, but if that's your soul reason (ahahaha...) for picking this up, idk, just play L.A. Noire.

Um detetive com um passado criminal é assassinado por um famoso Serial Killer da região que deixa marcas de Sino em suas vítimas, após o protagonista morrer não podemos seguir em frente para o nosso destino de ir para o céu ou inferno pois a sua alma está em dívida de descobrir quem de fato é esse assassino, e assim se começa a história de Murdered Soul Suspect, um jogo com uma premissa bastante interessante e curiosa sobre a nossa pós-vida, agora fora todo o valor que tem no seu enredo, o maior problema que temos aqui é dele ser linear demais, chegando a ser um tanto quanto monótono pela repetitividade em suas ações, acredito eu que funcionaria bem mais se fosse uma série do que um jogo de verdade.

!!!YOU CAN POSSESS A CAT AND RUN AROUND MEWING INCESSANTLY AT EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE!!!

GAME OF THE YEAR!

Anyway, it was a decent enough game with a boring protag, decent side characters and game play that was engaging enough but sometimes frustrating.
Has a few actually scary moments but those rarely happen in the main plot.

why do i keep finding the mediocre games i have played ten years ago and logging then to appear in my page as "games i have played". maybe im going literally insane.
in this game, the reason why you, a ghost, cannot ghost through walls, is because - and they make a point in telling you this - all the buildings, every construction in the goddamned town were, in some point of the past, consecrated. every. single. one. of them was blessed, anointed or whatever. thats the kinda of game this is. agressively mediocre.
and i know that i beated it this game back then but, kid you not, i dont remeber who killed the guy. who the fuck is the soul suspect???????

I haven’t been so misled by a game than Murdered. A murder mystery game about a cult in Salem, Massachusetts (my favorite type of murder mysteries) all wrapped around a serial killer known as the Bell Killer. You play as a ghost detective named Ronan who gets murdered by this killer during an investigation. You have a bratty teen named Joy who helps you in the real world and the story all comes to a nice close at the very end.

It’s everything in between that really disappoints. This game not only feels about 10 years old but is sometimes downright boring. In each area, you have items that need to be “examined” this turns into pixel hunting like the adventure games of yore. Some times I found myself to frustrated because the examine button wouldn’t come up unless you were facing it just the right way, that’s glitchy and annoying. Once you find all clues in an area you conclude the investigation by picking three of the clues that relate to the scene. This is where some of the nonsense gameplay comes in to play. Most of the time you don’t even need all the clues to conclude and most clues are pointless for the scene. I feel like I’m hunting for all these clues as just filler for gameplay.

Is there any combat? Not really. A shoehorned combat scenario was put in by sneaking around demons and executing them with weird button combos. Sneaking around them is pretty tense, as is running from them. But was this merely an excuse to be able to die in the game to call it a full on game? The only other way I died in the game was getting hit by a ghost train in one area. There’s also an open world which is boring and lifeless. The game is also full of items to find which is archaic and just plain boring. Why would I run around in an empty boring world finding items I could care less about?

There are actually rules to this game though. Just because you’re a ghost you can’t walk through everything otherwise you’d be clipping into gaming abyss. Most items can’t be walked through and ones that can’t have a blue aura around them. You can teleport yourself which only comes in handy for a few parts of the game. You can possess people to read their minds or influence them during an investigation. This isn’t nearly as cool as it should be.

The only thing that kept me going was the story. The twists and turns were just interesting enough to make you think you figured it out and then it turns out to be something else. The game actually has a satisfying ending with no cliffhanger. When I played through this whole game I just couldn’t help but feel how dated it looked and played. The graphics, while not ugly, are simple and boring. This game would have looked amazing about 5 years ago. I also didn’t feel an attachment to any characters because of how boring and cookie cutter they felt. Ronan is just your typical New England cop, Joy is a snotty goth brat, and the other characters don’t really show up enough for you to care about them. Soul Suspect had a lot of potential but in the end, it felt like there wasn’t really a goal of what to do outside of the story.

If you’re a fan of adventure games I would give this a shot. Murdered isn’t going to revolutionized the nearly forgotten point and click adventure style gameplay, but it is worth slogging through the gameplay for the interesting story.