Murdered: Soul Suspect

R.I.P.D. is given the Silent Hill treatment in one thoroughly chilly detective yarn

Most games start by empowering players: super abilities, weapons, a quest to save humanity. In Murdered: Soul Suspect, you get thrown out of second-storey window by a shadowy assailant, who then proceeds to empty a semi-automatic into you to finish the job. You’re dead before you even begin.

Yet it’s now up to you to solve your own murder in the somewhat hammily picked city of Salem. As a ghost, you can wander through walls, skin-ride other characters – essentially taking over both their bodies and minds – and even engage in the odd bit of classic Poltergeist- style item-tossing tomfoolery. As you try to get to the bottom of your untimely demise, you’ll also meet other murder victims whose cases you can opt to take on, side-mission style, helping them cross over to the other side. Why not help out? You have an eternity of purgatory to fill.

Like Silent Hill by way of R.I.P.D., Murdered: Soul Suspect is a welcome anomaly: a horror adventure that puts a premium on puzzle solving rather than action, enveloping the player in its own web of intrigue. Don’t fear the reaper. From $69.95, murdered.com, out now on PC, PS4,X1, PS3,X360