Airtight games had created quite a buzz with their game Murdered: Soul Suspect at the last E3, but the launch of the game didn’t turn out to be quite expected. The game has attracted tepid reactions and that’s not being harsh on the game. There isn’t anything special in it; the game has a noir feel to it with an obvious supernatural element to it and the gameplay focused almost wholly on the narrative with almost no combat system whatsoever.
Getting straight to the visuals of the game, the game’s multi platform approach is blamed for its not so appealing visuals. But even taking that fact into account, the visuals of the game do not meet the standards of a game coming from a developer of this calibre.
" The game as such lacks a good depth of field, even on the new generation of consoles but in a way gels in with the sombre theme of the game. But it still looks like an attempt towards saving resources and work time. The game has good shadow rendering with decent anti-aliasing on both the consoles and screen tearing issues are minimal."
Starting with the new generation of consoles, the game fares decent on both the Sony and Microsoft platform. The game runs at on 1080p on both the consoles effortlessly, with the PS4 at 60 and Xbox One at 30fps. But some differences are quite evident. The overall look of Murdered: Soul Suspect is a little languished on the Xbox One in the face of the PS4; not with regard to performance, but with reference to gamma correction and colour contrast.
The PS4 seems to deliver crisper images with seemingly higher resolution textures that lend the game a more ‘defined’ and solid look. The difference is not appalling, but it’s there nevertheless. The game as such lacks a good depth of field, even on the new generation of consoles but in a way gels in with the sombre theme of the game. But it still looks like an attempt towards saving resources and work time.
The game has good shadow rendering with decent anti-aliasing on both the consoles and screen tearing issues are minimal. The PS4 promises a slightly better ambient occlusion that the Xbox One. If you draw your eyes to door edges and contours and stair corners, the feel of depth is better on the PS4 with the obfuscated parts in the environment being amply dark where they need to be. This is not to say that ambient occlusion is bad on the Xbox One.
" The older generation of the consoles are more even in the competition. The Xbox 360 and the PS3 run the game nicely on 30fps although there have been certain cases of screen tearing on both the consoles which can be rather frustrating. "
The game carries out the ghostly aspect of the world nicely with faded out colours that give the game a gelid ambience. This greatly adds to the experience of playing the game. The older generation of the consoles are more even in the competition. The Xbox 360 and the PS3 run the game nicely on 30fps although there have been certain cases of screen tearing on both the consoles which can be rather frustrating.
The game seems to have a predilection for not utilising anti-aliasing. Jagged edges are conspicuous throughout the game and the shadows are droll at times. Ambient occlusion is wholly missing from the game on both the older consoles but the textures remain identical on both the consoles and so do all other visual aspects of the game.
Murdered: Soul Suspect isn’t anything special to look forward to on the PC either. It’s launch was plagued with crashes and bugs including key bindings, corrupt files, sound issues et al. Thankfully, a lot of workarounds and patches have been issued but it doesn’t bode well to have a game’s launch be hindered so harshly by lack of optimisation.
" The textures are definitely better on the PC than on the new generation of consoles; the game with the option of Vsync to look the frame rate at 30fps is a bit of a let down because it doesn’t call out levels to be running the game at such low a frame rate even on powerful PCs."
The PS4 almost matches the graphic quality if the PC version of the game but we’ll soon have the modding community to thank for making the game look much better than it does now; hopefully very soon. The textures are definitely better on the PC than on the new generation of consoles; the game with the option of Vsync to look the frame rate at 30fps is a bit of a let down because it doesn’t call out levels to be running the game at such low a frame rate even on powerful PCs.
The game does have modest system requirements though; a dual core processor running at 2.5+Ghz clock speed would suffice in addition to a low end card like the GTS 250 or a Radeon 4830 with 4 Gigabytes of system RAM.
Needless to say the game would run on the lowest settings with not quite satisfactory frame rates, but run all the same for those of you wanting to play the game somehow and anyhow. The overall look and feel of the game could have been much better. The game’s textures are manageable by the game industry’s new standards.
Whilst there are times when you would appreciate the clever use of lighting and the clearly limned out bricks and planks of woods on buildings, more often you’d find yourself giving a sigh of disappointment when you come across flat panels on buildings that have lines drawn on the flat surfaces to mimic bricks.
Character clothing doesn’t respond to the elements in the game. It’s not only detective Ronan whose mysterious tie always sticks to his shirt, no matter all the stooping or jogging or running or bumping into stuff.
" The explanation for not being able to run through some walls is given as the town having wards placed in the days of the yore to protect them against witchcraft. Apparently some wagons have survived quite a long time after the protective spells were placed on them. "
The explanation for not being able to run through some walls is given as the town having wards placed in the days of the yore to protect them against witchcraft. Apparently some wagons have survived quite a long time after the protective spells were placed on them. There are a few glitches in the game too, with several objects in the game randomly vibrating. Nothing of the outside is visible from inside the buildings even though you may have NPCs looking out of the windows and commenting on the situation.
It makes one think that wherefore did the developers not put in more time in making the game better. The game established a good concept for the game but could not capitalise on it properly.
But even with its drawbacks, the game puts forward a decent narrative based gameplay with a certain enigma to it. If you’re one of those who likes to read and figure out events in games and do a lot of guesswork you may very well like the game.
Of course the game doesn’t even come close to the brilliance of L.A. Noire, but it’s still something. But don’t expect the game to astound you with its gameplay, artwork, aesthetics or visual performance.
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