The Post-Game - Murdered: Soul Suspect

Ronan is a criminal-turned-cop who is killed by the mysterious Bell Killer. Playing as Ronan's ghost, investigate a series of crime scenes (sometimes with the help of teenage medium Joy), searching for the identity of the killer. Many supernatural elements come into play – ghosts, witches, demons – and some flashbacks of the witch trials are pretty gruesome (drowning, burning, hanging).

As the investigation progresses, you'll explore a graveyard, an apartment house, an old mansion, a police station and of course the obligatory asylum level. While the game world is small, it is open, with the ability to just wander around the town of Salem. It's a gloomy place – the game occurs entirely at night – but is well-dotted with NPCs and collectibles. Obtaining collectibles can unlock other stories (usually brief, narrated cut-scenes), and some NPCs will provide side-missions. There's a decent amount of stuff to do, but most collectibles were easily found as I explored the town or level.

Investigations require exploring a a crime scene, finding evidence (“Press E to analyze”) and sorting through the collected evidence (“Press Q to conclude the investigation”). Walking (or later, teleporting) around as a ghost feels fun; Ronan can walk through walls, possess people (mind-reading), and turn on random stuff to mess with the townsfolk (poltergeisting). Especially cool were the impenetrable “ghost walls” from past times that can block Ronan from exploring – or even provide new hazards (watch out for the ghost train!). Oh, and you can possess cats, too. This is actually crucial to progress through several stages of the game.

The demon sections, though, dragged the experience down a bit. Demons will sometimes spawn after completing an investigation. Their existence does have a crucial part to play, and they're easy enough to defeat with a little patience. Given that this is a supernatural tale, it would be rather weird if demons of some kind weren't in the game, and having some stealth sections added some variety to the gameplay. But after a while the demons became annoying distractions from the story.

And the narrative is where Murdered: Soul Suspect stands strongest. There is a lot of backstory to be found about Ronan and his wife (via collectibles). Sometimes collectibles are merely annoying, but they are worth pursuing here. Jason Brooks (as Ronan) and Cassidy Lehrman (as the medium, Joy) provide stand-out vocal performances. The graphics (Unreal 3) are great – murky and dark. Jason Graves' score provides a classic horror-story undertone. Murdered: Soul Suspect is a well-crafted detective game with a few quirks that holds its story aloft as its best attribute. If that sounds good to you, then go ahead and get this one.

The Post-Game: Consortium

Consortium is a short, dialogue-driven indie drama defined by the choices you make. Short, because its length feels like an episode rather than a full game (took me four hours to complete a run-through). You have the ability via some satellite thingy to travel into the future and inhabit the body of someone else in that future. You wake up in a cabin aboard a plane / airship and have to immediately come to grips with your new surroundings. The entire game is spent aboard this plane; you'll look for a traitor among the crew, negotiate with a mercenary, and try to keep the plane repaired and running. The moment gameplay starts, the conversations and choices begin.

Which are two of the primary strengths of Consortium. Choices abound, and result in genuinely different outcomes – NOT the same out come with minor variations. This means that, though short, replayability is high. There are a lot of dialogue options, with staying silent being a valid choice as well. With so much talking, the voice acting needs to be top-notch, and it is. A few characters seem a little flat, but the primary characters are unique and reactive. There are some very funny sci-fi references as well; like when you find someone dead, one of the conversation choices is, “He's wearing a red shirt; why should I care?” (Star Trek fans will know.)

A supporting strength of Consortium is the lore. This is never forced on you – you have to go find it – but there are questions that can be asked, and bulletins to read that explain a lot of the world you find yourself in. Ranks are modeled on chess pieces (you play as a “bishop,” while answering to a “rook,” and primary crew are “pawns”). And gun play is good, though shooting doesn't need to happen much if you don't make certain choices. I did choose the more violent route, and the shoot-out on three decks of a plane / airship, blacked out, with only red emergency lights pulsing on and off, was a creepy yet exhilarating setting for a deadly game of cat and mouse.

The three decks of the plane / airship are fully explorable (including the crawl spaces). Characters are generally well-modeled, though assets are re-used frequently (while every character's face is different, all men have the same body type, as do women). The graphics and environment are fully 3-D, which is an interesting choice since the game could have gotten away with being a 2-D point-and-click (would have lost that feeling of freedom to explore if the devs had done that, though). The graphics quality is plain but utilitarian; it fits the setting.

Usually a game's shortness would count heavily against it, but the high level of replayability counters that. Go into Consortium expecting dialogue-driven drama, and you'll easily get your money's worth. The game ends on a cliffhanger, but with the sequel recently Kickstarted, I hope the next episode comes soon! Value-wise, worth getting on sale for around $5, but if you want to support the developers, consider purchasing at full cost. Highly recommended.

Note about crashes:
I had a few where the game would just lock up and CTD. I set the game to run in Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode, and the crashes disappeared. The load times are long, though, and if you open the Task Manager it will say Consortium is “No Longer Responding”; ignore that and be patient, the game should eventually load.