This game needed more soul

User Rating: 6 | Murdered: Soul Suspect PC

Soul Suspect has an interesting premise: you are a cop in Salem, Massachusetts who is killed on the job and is investigating your own murder... as a ghost. Now, I like my video games to be a little more realistic than that, but I'm always up for a good detective story, and this is was enough to get me to check this game out.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment. You quickly get the feeling that there's very little substance behind the story, very little character behind the characters, and very little depth behind the gameplay.

The more the story unravels, the less interesting it got. By the time the major reveal came through in the end, I could not care any less. The game gave me no reason to care. All the characters -including the protagonist - were poorly developed, not likable, and not believable.

As for gameplay, it basically follows this formula: you enter a building, find a room of interest, collect some clues, watch cut scene. Repeat for 6 hours until the game is over. Occasionally, some demons would show up on your way, and you're supposed to execute (kill) them, by sneaking up behind them and clicking some buttons when prompted. These demon encounters seem tacked on just to add some gameplay. They were totally unnecessary and felt like mere not-so challenging but irritating obstacles on your way from point A to point B.

If you find the setting and premise interesting, this game might be worth a look when it goes on sale for $10-$15 or less.