4. Murdered: Soul Suspect
Murdered: Soul Suspect only came onto people's radars right before E3. A trailer hit essentially explaining the central conceit of the game. You play as detective Ronan OConnor, a dirty cop who is about to meet his death. The game starts with him being thrown from a window by a mysterious hooded assailant who also shoots him a few times for good measure. Once Ronan finally realises he is a ghost, he does the only thing that would give him purpose. Solve the mystery of his murder. It is a nifty little hook and one that seems to be relised in an interesting way. There are two main components to the gameplay that I saw. The first is that the game does seem to actually focus on the detective part pretty heavily. There are too many examples in popular media of detectives finding answers by shooting their way to the conclusion. Murdered: Soul Suspect actually lets you explore a crime scene, use your ghostly powers to figure out what is going on and then lets you order the clues to then recreate the crime. For example, you can 'posses' people standing around a crime scene and listen in to their conversations, thoughts and look through their eyes. None of it is anything revolutionary, but it is fresh to see a game actually have the detective mode be the central gameplay. However, there is another aspect to the game play. As a ghost you can walk through any wall or object (although, you can only enter buildings that have open doors). This will lead you to navigate through buildings bumping into other ghosts, taking on side quests and helping them find their peace. However, on top of that, you will find that demons inhabit this world too, who are intent on eating your soul. However, again Murdered takes a different method to dealing with them then the guns blazing approach you may have expected. At least from the section I was shown, you had to rely on hiding from the demons until you could sneak up and tear them apart. It makes for a tenser and slower gameplay, complimenting your navigation through the world. There are of course worries that the game could abandon this appraoch as the game goes on, advancing your abillities to allow you to fight back with weapons but I hope it doesn't. The game has surprised me so far by not doing what I might have expected. If the game can stay fresh and against the grain of the norm throughout, then Square Enix could have a winner on their hands. I am certainly intrigued to be shown more and the game is fully deserving of a high place on the best games list.