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Adventure Game Scene of the Day - Wednesday 22 July

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Murdered: Soul Suspect is certainly NOT a game without flaws .. unfortunately!

1) At least one severe bug that will never get fixed Meh

2) 3D pixel hunting, where you often have stand at a precise spot and tilt the camera at a certain angle before the hotspot will appear, even when the actual object is about the size of a large male African elephant (not the small Indian ones)

3) QTE - though only two button press and not of the “mash buttons until you sprain your finger, and your keyboard dies” kind of QTE Sick Sick Sick
4) Consolitis in the 2nd degree
5) And .. I have saved the worst for last .. NO BLOODY SAVE SYSTEM!
Because as we all know, players just love to replay the last 45 minutes if they are clumsy enough to die, and who it their right mind would want to exit a game, when they have only found 16 of the 17 clues required to trigger a checkpoint!!!!

Basically everything I hate, loathe and despise packed into one single game - yet despite all of that, I still very much enjoyed playing this game .. well most of the time anyway.

It has a strong dark serial killer - ghost - witch story, with threads going all the way back to the witch processes in Salem, excellent HD graphics and general high production values, and .. most importantly, and the reason I selected it for this weeks “Midweek Puzzle” .. it is bursting with excellent ideas and gameplay, some of which I have been longing for and advocated in years:

1) A (relative) large (relative) open 3D world Thumbs Up Thumbs Up Thumbs Up

2) Optional sidequests and plenty of small side stories that have no connection to the main story, except for .. well you know, ghosts! In fact if you want to unlock all of those side stories, it will probably take you longer than the main story Thumbs Up Thumbs Up Thumbs Up

3) Excellent executed stealth sequences or puzzles. Perhaps not everybody’s taste, but I like them Thumbs Up Thumbs Up Thumbs Up

On top of that, we also get to play as a ghost that is investigating his own murder (and several other murders). As a ghost we are imposed a lot of restrictions, like we can’t pick up items, so no inventory or inventory puzzles, and we can’t talk to the living, except if they are a medium of course, like our sidekick Joy (1st screenshot). But we also have some advantages, like seeing and talking to other ghost, running right through walls (with some restrictions), 3D reconstruction of events simply by touching the spiritual residue (kind of similar to both Ethan Carter and Cognition).

But my favourite ghost-skill is our ability to possess both people and animals.
In all fairness, most of the time all we can do when we possess them, is to eavesdrop on some of their thoughts or have them carry us over objects we can’t cross ourself, or in the case of cats, into spaces too small for humans (like ventilations shafts) or perform acrobatic climbing and jumping puzzles.

On some occasions we however also get to manipulate or “influence” their actions, like in the puzzle screenshot were we have possessed our own sidekick, something she would not normally condone or allow. The object here is quite simple, trigger the correct memory and they will perform whatever action it is you want them to Tongue in this case, to stop the antagonist.

The puzzle is actually very simply with a very obvious solution, in fact all the puzzles in this game are on the easy side, but that is also fine, not all puzzles and not all games have to be difficult, and the 3D pixel hunting and the stealth sequences still ensures that there is enough challenge to keep a player like me occupied.

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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I’m sure the Pandora Directive will appear some random Wednesday in the future, so I don’t want to spoil anything. But, re: your #2 criticism, TPD had it’s fair share of those as well. Maybe not the pixel hunting, but certainly the precise positioning requirement. E.g. you can’t look into the drawer you just opened unless you are standing “just so.”

     

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I loved this game as well, despite its very obvious flaws. But then, games are frequently more and less than the catalog of their virtues and defects. I did use a trainer to get by the stealth sequences because they were seriously detracting from the atmosphere.

     
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I grabbed this one from the Steam summer sale even knowing all the criticism, it just interests me enough to try it despite all the hate.

And I figured this was the other game you were playing as a cat.

     

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It has it’s flaws, I think it gets repetitive but it’s worth a play, has some good ideas but the story and presentation are good.
Too bad the developers closed around the time the game was released.

     
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rtrooney - 22 July 2015 12:29 PM

I’m sure the Pandora Directive will appear some random Wednesday in the future, so I don’t want to spoil anything. But, re: your #2 criticism, TPD had it’s fair share of those as well. Maybe not the pixel hunting, but certainly the precise positioning requirement. E.g. you can’t look into the drawer you just opened unless you are standing “just so.”

It is a bit different in TPD, because there you at least know that you have to change position before you can look into the drawer, and you know what the correct position is. In MSS the object itself will quite often be perfectly visible, but in is only the hotspot that won’t pop up, probably not how the developers intended it, but more of a hotspot bug thing.

furgotten - 22 July 2015 12:29 PM

I loved this game as well, despite its very obvious flaws. But then, games are frequently more and less than the catalog of their virtues and defects.

True, I still think the virtues outweighs the flaws in this game, but it is my overall enjoyment that matter most in the end.

millenia - 22 July 2015 03:25 PM

I grabbed this one from the Steam summer sale even knowing all the criticism, it just interests me enough to try it despite all the hate.

And I figured this was the other game you were playing as a cat.

That it was Wink

I actually also picked it up during the summer sale myself, and I didn’t really have any big expatiations for it, it was more out of curiosity I bought it, and I haven’t regretted doing so.

wilco - 22 July 2015 04:18 PM

Too bad the developers closed around the time the game was released.

Yeah it is a real pity, I would personally have loved to see more from them.
I just hope that there are others that will pick up on the same ideas, and that we get to see similar games in the future, there really aren’t enough games of this type!

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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I bought this on the PS4 when it first came out, but it is still sitting in my pile of “To Play” games. I remember seeing some gameplay footage of it at the prior E3 and getting excited, but then the reviews came out and it was dominantly negative, which turned me off playing the game.

     

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