Criminal-turned cop Ronan O'Connor is on the trail of notorious serial killer, 'The Bell Killer'. He pursues him to an apartment building. Without waiting for back-up, Ronan rushes in. After a struggle, he is overpowered and sent through the window, falling to the street below; barely surviving. The Bell Killer returns to the streets, picks up Ronan's gun and finishes him off with several bullets. In ghostly form, Ronan learns that in order to leave limbo and reunite with his wife in the afterlife, he must solve The Bell Killer case.
Solving the case with the limitation of being a ghost would be impossible. Luckily, he finds a young psychic-medium girl called Joy whose abilities allow her to see and communicate with him. Although reluctant to team up, Ronan convinces them they need each other and share similar goals. Ronan needs to resolve the case and see his wife again, whereas Joy's Mum is missing and is in danger of the Bell Killer.
Since you are a ghost, you can pass through objects, but have several limitations. You cannot enter or exit buildings without going through an open door or window because each building in Salem has been consecrated. Once inside, you can pass through closed doors, unless they are blocked by ghostly objects. These ghostly objects are also scattered around the outdoor environments, so in the end; it doesn't play too different from other (non-ghost) games.
Another one of your ghostly abilities is possession. Once you have entered a living person's body, you can mind read them which gives you a couple of pieces of dialog. For the average person, it's just a throwaway comment, but this can give you clues if you are at a scene, either by directly reading their thoughts, or by viewing objects more closely through their eyes. You cannot control a human's movements, but there's a few places where you can take possession of, and control, a cat.
Once you arrive at a scene, you walk around the area finding the hotspots to observe the evidence. These can be physical pieces of evidence, or ghostly forms of past events. You are told how many pieces of evidence there are in total, so you know when to stop. Once you have found them, you can conclude the case by selecting the most salient pieces of evidence which progresses the story.
The task questions are a bit vague, and sometimes a bit pointless. You find a ghostly image of the girl and priest together and are asked to choose a piece of previous evidence for 'cross referencing', so you choose an image of a 'church'. In these moments you end up choosing the wrong one because you think it would be silly for it to be that obvious. For some reason, Ronan can see flashbacks of events which he didn't witness, so solving this clue reveals that the girl you are searching for is in the attic. The other type of task is where you have to select a few descriptive words from the list. So you will see a girl with her back to the wall, peering around the corner, so you select "scared", "hiding". This can be insultingly easy.
When you have a choice to select pieces of evidence, there seems to be no consequence for failure, so you basically have unlimited guesses. You do get a ranking but it has no meaning or effect on the game.
The other aspect to the game is the stealth sections. Demons follow simple patrol routes and will kill you quickly if they spot you. You can eradicate them by sneaking behind them and holding the Right Trigger on your controller, then quickly enter the correct combination that appears on screen which involves a direction and a button. Ronan can enter ghostly residue to hide from the Demons and startle crows which distracts them. The Demons seem to merely exist to pad out the game and add a bit of variety.
On your way between locations, you may come across ghosts who are also stranded in purgatory. These are mini cases where you find a couple of clues to resolve their troubles. There's not many of these cases which is a shame since they are a nice distraction.
There's also plenty of collectibles which give you a couple of sentences describing the location, past murders or your relationship with your wife, Julia.
The overall aesthetics and sound create a creepy atmosphere. It's a pretty 'dark' game but isn't too scary since it's more of a crime game than a horror. Since it is set in Salem, it is no surprise the story is centered around the town's historical link to witches.
It seems that each aspect to this game is basic and feels like wasted potential. The detective parts don't require enough thought, the world is too restrictive to be enjoyable to explore, the collectibles aren't fun enough/take enough effort to find, and finally, stealth is too basic to be interesting. I really enjoyed the premise of the game and the aesthetics/atmosphere, but the actual game is a huge disappointment.