Preview - Murdered: Soul Suspect

So you're a detective in a dodgy city. You've managed to track down a suspect and follow him to an apartment on the top floor of the building. He resists your attempts to arrest him and instead overpowers you and throws you out of the window, before you land three floors below. Dead. Game over. Right?

Wrong. This is only the beginning of Murdered: Soul Suspect, a game that sees you wandering the real world as a ghostly spirit, intent on finding out the identity of your killer so that you can put your mind at rest and move on fully to the afterlife.

Players will be controlling Ronan, a guy who appears to have had quite the reputation at the police department. His body is covered in tattoos, symbols for important events in his life - including the death of his wife - and he appears to love a cigarette or two. And like any good detective, he doesn't ever go far without his trilby hat.

There are plenty of disadvantages to being a ghost detective. The main one being that you can't directly help police in solving a crime, you can only point them in the right direction. But there are some ingenious ways that you can do this, and they're the main pillars that turn Murdered: Soul Suspect into such an interesting game.

Ronan can possess any human body that he sees with the simple tap of a button. Once inside, he can mind read to hear exactly what their thoughts are at that particular time. This could be a useless bit of information, like a father wondering why his daughter hasn't moved out of this unsafe neighbourhood yet, or something more helpful, like a police officer thinking that if his witness could just calm down, she might be able to help.

This links into the second way Ronan can find answers. He can influence people and remind them of a particular clue, jogging their memory and helping them to remember things. In turn they can help out the police and then the case can move forward.

When you're a ghost there are certain rules you have to abide by. For instance, you can't simply walk into any building that you like. You have to go through the front door just like everyone else, and if the door isn't open then tough, you'll just have to wait until a passing human can turn the handle and open it for you.

But once inside a building you can go wherever you please, including walls and through objects such as fridges and wardrobes. This makes for a fun time, and we spent longer than we'd care to admit just running up and down the hallway without a care in the world, making use of our new ghostly powers.

Ronan might not be able to talk to living humans but there's not much chance of him being lonely. That's because the world is actually filled with other ghostly spirits wandering around who haven't moved on yet. You can enter direct conversations with these ghosts, learn their stories, learn their problems, and sometimes you can even help them.

We encountered a young woman in the corner of a maintenance room in a building who just didn't know how she had died. All she wanted to know was the location of her body, so she could move on to the afterlife. Ronan wants to help, naturally, so he wanders off in search of clues. Without providing any spoilers you can use your mind reading to reveal the killer, and it's not who you would expect. These little side missions are completely optional but they are fun to attempt if you want a small break from the main story.

Murdered: Soul Suspect could have been in danger of being too slow, with Ronan casually finding clues and solving cases at his leisure without any sense of urgency. That's where the demons come in. Demons wander hallways, alleyways, you name it, and they want to take the souls away from spirits like Ronan. Taking them on face-to-face would be a mistake as they're so powerful, so the best bet is to either avoid them or attack them from behind. 

"Enemy encounters in the game serve two purposes," senior design producer Eric Struder explained to us. "If all you're doing is going from crime scene to crime scene, fatigue is going to wear in. So we wanted to break up that pacing, we wanted to change the emotional tether of the game occasionally, so the demons serve that purpose when you encounter them.

"But also from a fictional standpoint, it creates a sense of foreboding in the dusk. This isn't a place that Ronan wants to dwell in, he wants to escape from here." 

The key to progression in Murdered: Soul Suspect is finding enough clues to finish off chapters. After finding several clues, you can press a button to attempt to solve this particular case. The clues that you've found will be shown on screen and then you'll have to pick three that you think are the most relevant. If you're successful, the case will be solved and you'll see a nice little cut scene pointing you in the next direction.

We love the idea behind this game. A murder mystery with a twist, as you'll be unravelling events behind your own death. The chance to play as a ghost and walk through walls is fun, but the storyline and narrative - with Ronan revealing clues and finding out key details - is the most intriguing concept. This could be one of the surprise hits of 2014.