Murdered: Soul Suspect asks you to solve your own murder. It came out in June 2014 for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, developed by Airtight Games and published by Square Enix. The hook is one of the better ones of that console generation. The execution is not.
Trailer, via IGDBcom.
Ronan O’Connor and the Bell Killer
You play Ronan O’Connor, a Salem police detective with a chequered past. He tracks down an infamous serial murderer the game calls the Bell Killer, gets thrown out of a window and shot to death in the fight. He comes back as a ghost. His long-dead wife, Julia, tells him he has to solve the Bell Killer mystery before he can rejoin her.
That is the whole engine of the thing: a dead cop, a case he cannot let go of, and a limbo world called Dusk he has to escape. It is a strong premise for a detective story, and Murdered: Soul Suspect knows it.
Salem, Clues and L.A. Noire
The game is played in third person across a fictionalized Salem. You get a church, an apartment building, a graveyard, New England-style wooden houses, narrow streets and Gothic churches. Clues are collected in a way similar to L.A. Noire’s investigation sequences, and there are hundreds of collectibles, including Ghost Girl Messages and scraps of paper about Ronan’s life.
Ronan’s ghost abilities carry the rest. He can teleport and possess. He battles demonic spirits to preserve his soul. He also works with Abigail, the ghost of a Puritan child.
Joy, Cassandra and the Psychic Twist
The supporting cast does more work than the combat. A medium named Joy witnesses the fight and hides in a church. She is looking for her missing mother, Cassandra, who was consulting with police on the Bell Killer case. Joy initially refuses to help, tries to break into the police station and gets arrested. Ronan helps her escape so she can help him touch the physical world.
The middle stretch is where the story gets interesting. A hostile officer named Baxter, who is holding onto Ronan’s criminal files, was working with Cassandra. Her research leads Ronan and Joy to the Salem graveyard, then to the ghost of a drowned girl named Sophia, who says the Bell Killer asked her about a contract.
What the Case Is Actually About
The best idea in Murdered: Soul Suspect is that the Bell Killer is killing psychic mediums. Ronan and Joy learn that at a mental hospital, where they find the killer’s surviving victim, Iris, who can also see ghosts. Iris is possessed by the spirit of her sister, Rose.
That is a real mystery structure, and it is why the game’s story earned praise even when the rest of it did not. Ronan’s detective instinct and his new supernatural abilities are the same tool, which is the cleanest thing the writing does.
Where the Game Falls Apart
Most criticism at release centered on the poor combat, the short length, the lack of replay value and the lack of difficulty. All of that holds up. The demonic spirit fights are the weakest material in the game and they show up too often. The clue sequences rarely push back. You move through Salem in order, level by level, and the game almost never asks you to be wrong.
| Release window | Platform |
|---|---|
| June 2014 | PlayStation 3 |
| June 2014 | PlayStation 4 |
| June 2014 | Windows |
| June 2014 | Xbox 360 |
| June 2014 | Xbox One |
Our Verdict on Murdered: Soul Suspect
Murdered: Soul Suspect is a good mystery wrapped in a thin game. The Bell Killer case, the medium twist and the Salem setting are worth the trip. The combat, the length and the difficulty are not. It is a game you finish for the story and then put down, and it knows it.
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