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The concept of sticking around after you’ve died to resolve the rest of your life’s business isn’t exactly a new one. It’s one of those afterlife tropes, right along with getting used to being able to walk through walls and feeling a little violated when someone walks through you. Murdered: Soul Suspect has you traipsing about as Ronan O’Connor, a detective of the Salem Police Department – who must have some of the most lax hiring practices ever – trying to solve the mystery of the Bell Killer. The Bell Killer’s most recent victim? Ronan O’Connor.
Each and every tattoo on Ronan’s rather inked body is either a major life achievement, or a major felony. Yet somehow, he’s been accepted to the police force and advanced through the ranks to Detective and genuinely wonders why some of the other cops don’t like him. If you can suspend your belief for long enough to accept that ghosts are real, then I guess this isn’t exactly too far-fetched. He’s your stereotypical bad-boy turned boy-in-blue because of love, because why not because of love? Love can make kings and vagabonds leave the very best. We learn very early on that Ronan doesn’t leave behind a widow. It’s another trope from the afterlife: the ghosts of your loved are ones telling you of some unfinished business.
The crux of the gameplay in Murdered is in investigative work. You need to find small pieces of a very large puzzle and piece together the mystery of not just your murder, but several other side quests. The side quests are entertaining enough, and full of enough substance to get you by, but don’t expect anything radically different than the game itself. Unfortunately, hunting and pecking for small swaths of pixels to hover your cursor over can get incredibly tedious.
Solving the investigation requires you to piece the evidence together by picking out the most important evidence, or piecing together the order of events in a certain area (based on the evidence you collect). You can’t exactly lose the investigation, but you can get stuck if you didn’t find all of the evidence.
In addition to the main quest, there are several side quest investigations that you can also pick up, like finding out about Ronan’s life, solving the murder of some hapless ghost who hasn’t figured out what’s happened to them, or just finding out bits and pieces of information about the town. Adding a little bit of danger to the mix, you also have holes in floors that lead straight to what I would imagine is Hell if you step on them, and at certain points in the game, demons search for you. Although it’s pretty easy to avoid these by either hiding in ghostly mists (eww) and taking out the demons via stealth kill, or possessing people to bypass the holes. When the demons show up though, it just feels like an annoying way of padding out the game.
Ronan may be very much dead, but the world that he is in is so alive. Environments in Murdered are extremely detailed, a mix between modern day Salem with cityscapes and people walking around, mixed together with what the town might have looked like in the late 1600’s, during the Salem Witch Trials. Ethereal visions of burning buildings and stocks and hanging platforms are littered throughout the environment. This being Salem and not literally anywhere else, there are also a lot of visions of ghosts around town; some of which seem to flitter out of your view as you approach. It’s beautiful and eerie, and every bit what you would imagine something between here and the afterlife would look like.
Some of the character models, on the other hand, could use some work. Important side characters in the story look decent enough, but your average NPCs look like their faces are melting, and I doubt that’s by design, creepy as it might be. The NPCs can’t see you as you move about the world, but you can possess them, and get really close to them, so this lack of foresight is disappointing.
You also get to possess a cat and while the devs were somehow able to program some sass into the cat model, that kitty-face could definitely use some work.
Fortunately, the game not only looks pleasant, it sounds pleasant too. Voice-acting and other sound design is all really well done, thanks a lot to the script. The lines don’t make you want to hit your head against a wall, although some of them will definitely cause an eye-roll. The only flaw here in terms of sound design is that the music can sometimes overpower or not match what’s actually happening in the game at the time, so you may have a very ominous music playing while you’re talking/possessing someone who seems very happy to see you/whoever you’ve possessed is talking to.
Murdered has the potential to be an amazing game. The visuals and audio are good, and the story is not too complex, but not entirely pandering. While I do wish the investigative work required a little more than pixel-hunting, it’s not particularly bad at what it does. However any potential that the game had to be great is squandered by its control scheme. It doesn’t feel intuitive or logical and it’s not only frustrating, it’s a nightmare to use.
I’m using a PC, using a mouse and keyboard. Using a mouse, why do I have to press enter on my keyboard to make a selection? How do I scroll between entries? I can’t, I have to use the arrow keys. How do I scroll between tabs in the menu? Buttons 1 and 3. And before you ask, the answer is no – you cannot re-bind the keys. For a PC game, that’s shooting yourself in the foot – it’s stupid.
As immersive as the world is, there wasn’t a whole lot luring me to the next stages of the game. It’s not particularly long, and the controls made playing the game extremely frustrating. Any other flaws the game had (of which there were few) could be forgiven, but the bad, unchangeable controls were definitely a deal-breaker. That’s a shame for Murdered, because it had a lot of potential.
(6 / 10)
Above Average
(6 / 10)Rely on Horror Review Score Guide
