Review: Murdered Soul Suspect

G'day there guys and gals!
*Warning: This review contains minor spoilers in regards to content, not storyline. Read at your own caution*

Once again I flew into a game with very little knowledge on what to expect or how the game would play. Enter in Murdered Soul Suspect, a relatively average story with a twist: Ronan O'Connor is a criminal turned detective on the search for the Bell Killer, a mysterious killer targeting the people of Salem. In the midst of duty he discovers this fiend only to be thrown from a window and die. With literally nothing left to hold him back, Ronan now sets his eyes on nothing but the Bell Killer and how to bring them to justice.
Murdered Soul Suspect offers a different variation of a mystery and puzzle solving game with few horror elements to enjoy. Although the game does have some terrific moments, it's sad to say that everything is sub par of what it could have been.

Let's start off with Gameplay. In your deceased form, you are practically a ghost stuck in limbo: while the world is at your finger tips, any concrete building cannot be entered unless a window or a door is left ajar to which only plotpoints allow this to be. White/blue objects of the past (Such as 19th century buildings) despite being ghostly forms themselves cannot be interacted or passed through despite most, if not all, ghostly object being at your fingertips. The game does offer slight horror factor in other ghosts and their stories, or plain ghosts that disappear as you come closer, while the big factor lies in demons. Hungry for souls trapped in limbo, demon pits will be placed randomly on the ground blocking your path while Demon themselves will patrol specific areas until you sneak past or kill them all, which is only achieved by approaching their backs and performing a Quick Time Event. With this and your few ghostly powers (Such as Teleportation and making objects disappear) players must traverse the area to a specific point in which you must hunt for clues.
Clues can consist of anything in the world, such as broken glass, keys, pictures ect and some won't appear until you perform a specific action such as using your Poltergeist ability to distract a living person to remove papers off pictures, seeing through their eyes at clipboards or using already gathered clues to spark their memories. 
By now you're thinking "Wow, that sounds cool!" But what the game fails on is how repetitive and boring this becomes over time. NPCs are boring and lacking, with a total of 4 side missions to complete (Unless you collect memory objects in specific areas to unlock more) whereas other side characters will have one or two lines) As Ronan you question witnesses about five times throughout the game and the rest of it is spent travelling from point to point or searching for clues. The game does offer you to quicken this by solving the riddle of the case earlier but this is flaw massively. Each mistake you make will take a badge off your perfection meter in that particular clue to the murders BUT the game will offer this option even if you don't have the clue you need, making you fail on idiotic clue over-thought to have meaning to the case. 
The ghost abilities, while cool, are almost useless and you won't use them often instead of the "Hide" option when trying to kill Demons. Transport it twitchy and only useful in small areas and making walls/doors disappear is used ONCE in the main story.

Enough about that. Onto the story. As I said, Ronan has been killed by the Bell Killer and now sets off to escape limbo to rejoin his wife in peace, as she was killed several years earlier. The story does pull at your heart strings now and again with the ties between Ronan and his wife or Joy (A teenage medium) and Ronan but these happen rarely and a bond created doesn't hold mass for long due to the voice acting. Jason Brooks as Ronan does a great job in connecting players to his story but animation in his character can fail this connection as his mouth may not move or match during cutscenes. The rest of the cast feature unknown actors in the voice acting genre and many blend in or hold no significance. The musical score of the game is brilliant and the sound effects add to this, especially around Demons adding to the horror elements. Playing as a cat and meowing is also a brilliant touch. Graphics, while looking clean, also tend to be bland and unappealing outside the living realm. This adds to the ghostly appearance of the game, much of the game's beauty is lost in the blackness or plain look of the game when it truly tries to connect with you the most. The final moments of the game hold very little weight as the game rushes you to an anti-climatic "Boss Fight" (which is nothing more than an interrogation) and ends the story on a sour, predictable and cheezy note. 

Overall, there's nothing I can really say about this game to benefit it in any way. I had no glitches or KTD issues throughout gameplay and enjoyed the 12-15 hours of simplistic gameplay. But at the end of the day that's all that can be said about Murdered Soul Suspect: Simplistic. An average story with an interesting twist of fate, repetitive gameplay with few "more fun than chore" moments and forgettable characters that hold no real meaning by the end. A game for those after easy achievements or some time to kill but for now, in my detective skills, it's not worth the asking price.

Out of 10, I give Murdered Soul Suspect a 4/10

+ Interesting story telling
+ L.A. Noire, ghost style
+ Great voice acting, at times
+ Few, but good, horror elements
- Gameplay is repetitive, fast
- No real drive to explore Salem
- Ghost powers have too few useful moments
- NPCs are boring and plain
- Storyline predictable
- "Boss Fight"/ending extremely rushed
- Relies too heavily on back button
- Characters talk, no mouth/face animation or movement
- Salem free roam nearly pointless

Murdered Soul Suspect is out now for the standard price of $100
Not worth it. Wait until it drops a bit.