Murdered: Soul Suspect Reviews
Murdered: Soul Suspect has a lot of great ideas, but none of them come together in a satisfying way.
And it's that underdog likeability that rescues Soul Suspect from the lower reaches of the score table. It's a Good 6, that delightful strata of games that stumble in the technical aspects, but compensate with personality and charm, somehow all the more enjoyable for their imperfections. I can't pretend that Soul Suspect is a particularly great game, but I do know that it's the sort of game I'll still remember - and remember fondly - in five years' time, which is more than can be said for most of its glossier rivals.
There are a few notable characters and story beats in Murdered: Soul Suspect, but they're completely overshadowed by unremarkable gameplay and shoddy production values.
A game where sadly the idea is a lot better than the execution, especially given the low budget visuals and mediocre script.
Figuring out the identity of the Bell Killer is a mission well worth taking, even when the gameplay is trying to pull the experience down into hell
Murdered: Soul Suspect is awash in tropes, but somehow, that's part of the charm. It's a pulpy detective tale remixed as a classic ghost story, and it works as a sort of playable B-movie.
It's easy to be overwhelmed by the many problems in Murdered: Soul Suspect, but if you dig a little deeper, there's an interesting story to uncover.
The game tells an uninspired story by forcing you through a series of repetitive, bland, and unrewarding puzzles.
I really wanted to like Murdered: Soul Suspect, but -- like L.A. Noire -- it's a detective game that manages to gets its most essential quality absolutely wrong. The backdrop of Salem lends a lot to its central mystery, but at no point will Soul Suspect ever put your deductive skills to work. That's fine if you're indulging in an episode of CSI, but I like my thinky games to require more than just passive interest.
In an adventure game, once the puzzles are over, the story is all you've got. Murdered: Soul Suspect, though it was diverting like a bit of light reading, never really hooked me. And that's its biggest problem.
I truly wanted to like this game. It combines several of my favorite tropes and ideas into one cohesive whole, and I respect what it was trying to attain. But combining an underdeveloped hide-and-seek operation with a ghost story that seems ripped straight from a casual game isn't the way to hold my attention. It's a half-baked concoction full of lofty ideas that don't quite mesh well together topped with a fedora. And I don't think that's a confection anyone really wants to devour. Save this one for a rental.
The few moments where Murderd: Soul Suspect actually makes good on its supernatural potential aren't worth slogging through the rest of the game for. It's trying to be a gripping murder mystery, but never really knows how to get there. This is one you should probably just leave for dead.
It's a distinctly average experience, but it has enough going for it that I'm glad I was able to conquer the bugs and see it through.
For all its shortcomings, Murdered remains an enjoyable romp. The lack of direct combat never becomes an issue, and the pacing of the main plot is just right. What immersion is lost through lazy NPC behaviour and limited interaction with the world is gained back by dint of the wonderfully sinister atmosphere and the likable leads. Not an instant classic but likely to do well in cult circles, Murdered: Soul Suspect is a new approach to an old genre. On the whole, there's not enough substance to make a second playthrough viable, so the value for money is questionable, yet the mystery as it stands is well worth investigating.
A B-movie plot wrapped around an F-rated game.
Murdered: Soul Suspect is one of the most surprisingly good games I've played in a long time. It manages to sell its bizarre premise and builds a solid, moving story out of it, and the plot-propelling investigations add immensely to the detective feel. Walking around as a ghost is clever and entertaining, and it even manages to inject variety into some of gaming's most overused elements.
'Murdered: Soul Suspect' is a throwback adventure game that delivers plenty of fun — no bullets required.
Square Enix's Gumshoe-cum-ghost adventure had potential to be one of the most interesting games of the year, but ends up an case study in wasted potential.
Like its protagonist, Murdered is dead on arrival. But if you do play it, gather an audience and have some fun. Sure, you shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but it's the best way to endure this particular afterlife.
A game like this, where the mechanics fall extremely short, needed a strong story to carry players through, and that's not the case here. The game is by no means broken, save for one or two bugs, it just isn't very fun to play. Much like its protagonist, Murdered: Soul Suspect is lifeless.