February 2017 Playthrough - Murdered: Soul Suspect

[Duke.Togo]

I finished the game tonight. I don't see checkpoints up so I won't comment on anything yet.

[GrayGhost81]

I finished the game tonight. I don't see checkpoints up so I won't comment on anything yet.

Nice!

So far the biggest talking point regarding this game is how you can bust through it in just a few sittings.

Is this a good or bad thing? For me it was fine. The game kept me coming back to push the story forward but I only did a little bit of side stuff.

I'm going to make an executive decision and say we can discuss the first investigation sequence. What did you think of it? As an introduction to the mechanic it really let's you know what you're in for, and many players found it lacking. As shallow as this game can be, it hooked me.

[singlebanana]

Checkpoints are up!  Big thanks to Duke.Togo for the suggestions.

[Pam]

I'm going to go ahead and post all my thoughts - nothing is really story specific.

This is the third time I've played through Murdered. I originally played it on PS4, then I replayed to get all the collectibles. This time around I played it on XBox One since it was just free with gold.

Overall, I enjoy the game. It's fun, fairly chill, and it can be beaten in around 6 hours which is a perfect length for me. I appreciate shorter games more and more as time goes by.

Some things I particularly like:
- The look of it. I really liked how the ghosts appear, Ronan's character design and how the buildings are done, with some walls allowing you to pass through them, while the "consecrated ones" won't let you pass.
- The story overall is interesting.
- I love that the collectibles actually mean something. They don't feel like a meaningless way to pad the game length, each one is part of a story that I want to reveal.
- I like the side quests that have you solving another ghost's problem.

Some things I'm not a fan of:
- Why in god's name does this game not have a map? This was my third time through and I still have no concept of the overall layout of the town. While it's easy enough to get to the next story area, I find trying to go back to previous areas for collectibles extremely frustrating and disorienting. My sense of direction isn't the best, but this game was worse than most.
- The clue puzzles aren't intuitive for me at all. They're almost too simple? Maybe I just overcomplicate them.
As an example, one of the very first things you do is peek at a cop's notepad. It lists 3 clues and you have to choose which is the most important. I chose that there was a mising person in the apartment you had fallen from. Wrong. The correct answer was that only Ronan's guns were found at the scene. But we already knew this. We saw the killer pick up Ronan's gun and Ronan even said "shot with my own gun". So that clue on the notepad didn't tell us anything we didn't already know.
Another example is when trying to influence someone to think about a certain topic. "What would make this person think about her mother?" and the answer is... "her mother". Why is that even a puzzle?
- The demons don't really add anything to the game

[Duke.Togo]

First off, I want to mention that this isn't really the kind of game I prefer to play. I don't want to spend time talking about the parts I didn't like due to my personal tastes, because it's probably not fair. Everything that I will discuss will be around what the game tries to do.

The length is fine for what it is. I feel like if it was any longer I would have lost interest. Ronan's character felt bland to me and I didn't really care for his plight, but I did like solving some of the ghost problems that I found along the way. They were usually pretty quick to accomplish, and were a nice distraction. That really weird thing to me was, that after I helped them and they ascended to the light, sometimes they would be there again the next time I came through. If I tried to push the button to help, nothing happened, so I figured it was a glitch.

I agree with Pam that there REALLY needed to be a map, especially since you can walk through some walls and not others. It was disorienting, and I like the idea of what it tried to do. If they had provided a map, I think it would have been much easier. The town of Salem wasn't that big really, but everything had a similar look and it could be tricky.

I spent time looking for the collectibles, and more often than not I couldn't find them all, even though I really checked all the nooks and crannies. For the ones I found, I was glad that they explained some story rather than just checked some boxes.

I didn't see the point of the investigation portions, as there is no way to fail. If there are no consequences, then just move the story along and don't make me click on extra stuff. It was also odd how you could complete them without all the clues if you happened to find the right ones.

The demon fights were no fun. It did create some tension, but there were times that I was holding the execute button down and it just suddenly wouldn't work and I'd have to hide. The demon things on the floor did make more sense though, and they used that for some nice puzzles.

The locations in the town were well done in theme. I'll be curious to hear what others thought of some of them as things move along.

[Pam]

Oh, I forgot the best part of the game - turning into a cat.

[GrayGhost81]

Oh, I forgot the best part of the game - turning into a cat.

I loved these segments too. Even though the contextual jumps seemed a little too "on rails," I think it's better that they were there lest you have to figure out where to jump in buldings full of countertops and furniture.

[singlebanana]

[img width=700 height=393]http://i1029.photobucket.com/albums/y359/necrom99/RFGen%20Blog/IMG_20170214_162447687_zpsv2dhkgd2.jpg[/img]

Well, thanks to a nasty virus that kept me out of work for a few days, I managed to sit down and play Murdered from start to finish.

I have to agree with most of what was said above. There were times when I got frustrated with trying to get to new locations because there was no map and some of the consecrated areas seemed difficult to get around.

I was actually fine with the length of the game. It probably took me somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-8 hours to finish.  I had some trouble with the demons....especially in the Asylum.  The length seemed appropriate to the flow of the game and dragging out the game anymore would have made it quite boring and intolerable.

Since I mentioned the demons....yeah, I really hated those guys. However, I did think they added something really cool to the game and they were absolutely terrifying in appearance and in the sounds they made (especially the shrieks!).  My issue was more with the controls in dispatching them.  Sometimes I could really never seem to lock onto them when I needed to in order to begin the execution. I think this goes for a few things in the game. The kind of field of vision/recognition isn't the greatest and I felt that I missed a few of the clues due to this or it took me longer to find them than it should have.  In summary, liked the demons, would have enjoyed a better means of execution to dispatch them.

I liked the idea of the cat. I didn't really like the control mechanics. How about simply adding a jump button? Seems logical enough. And yeah, maybe it might have something to do with me being a dog person. Ha ha!

I have to agree that most of the time, sorting through the clues and picking the right ones made no sense.  I didn't mind the "word choice" problems so much as those were very easy to assess based on the memory.  I understand the need for putting clues together in a "detective" game, but it should have been more logical.

I too am a fan of the collectables in this game.  My favorites were the notes and memories of Julia because they added to the history of the main character.  At the beginning, I unlocked a few of the stories regarding the investigation collectables, but for the most part, they didn't seem to fit with the overall narrative. I don't know, maybe someone else who did the latter ones can shed some light on this issue for me.  Anyway, I never saw the collectables as intrusive or mostly without meaning, so I approve.

I enjoyed the narrative a lot and thought it was the strongest part.  Until I played the game, I didn't realize it was set in Salem, Massachusetts.  At first, I kind of rolled my eyes at this discovery, but as the setting became part of the game and narrative, it started to make more sense and seemed much more appropriate.  Surprisingly, it really works!

Anyway, just a few thoughts on my enjoyable experience with this game.

[douglie007]

I can't get into this game I am finally at the church

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

[singlebanana]

Pretty funny. No worries, no spoilers.