Huge thanks to the Xbox team for giving us a chnace to review this game. The game starts with a brutal murder, the murder of an ex-criminal turned cop called Ronan. There's a quick prologue explaining Ronan's criminal past and the fact that his wife (Julia) was also murdered several years ago. After the prologue the game gets started. You (Ronan) are a ghost standing over your dead body. Stranded between life and death, you can't move on to spend eternity with your late wife until you discover the identity of your murderer. You know nothing about the suspect except it was probably the local serial killer called “The Bell Killer”. The local law enforcement is struggling to find any leads with the recent murders and the residents in the town are terrified. You don’t know anything about The Bell Killer but that is all about to change.
Now that you are dead you are able to possess people, read their thoughts, and influence them to help you. Using these abilities together with your detective knowledge, you inspect scenes (starting with your murder) to gather and piece together evidence. Each scene leads to another scene, forming a gripping, and spooky storyline.
The storyline in this game is well thought out and suspenseful, which encourages you to keep playing to discover the next part of the story. It's a welcome bonus because the game-play is quite dull. After 30 minutes of playing the game I realised this is more of a story than a game. The only time you really “play” the game is when you run between locations and search the crime scenes for clues, which are quite easily found with their ghostly bright-white outline. You do have a rare occasion when you stumble across demons. You can either avoid these or sneak up behind them and press RT to execute them, both of which are relatively easy. When you are running between locations you get to meet other ghosts, giving you the chance to play side missions. These are smaller crimes/stories and usually solved within 5 to 10 minutes and do have some interesting plots.
Each scene comes with a question relating to the main plot.
To answer the question you need to search the area to discover and combine clues. There's usually between 5 and 10 clues at each scene. Depending on the question, you need to select two or three of the pieces of evidence to get the answer, an example is shown in the image above. If you select the correct pieces of evidence on your first attempt, you get a 3 shield rating. If you get it right on your second attempt you get a two shield rating, if you get it correct on your third attempt or more then you receive the lowest one shield rating.
The graphics are average for current Xbox 360 games but that doesn't stop the game from spooking you a few times. You will find that when you are deep in concentration while your ghostly spirit is quietly searching around the dark scenes of a mental asylum or graveyard, a screaming demon can make you jump a few inches off your chair.
This was a very short game to play. I managed to get through the main story with a lot of the side missions in around 6 hours. This would probably be a game you would only play once. It was the gripping and suspenseful story that kept me interested in the game, not the game play. After going through the story I don't feel the need to play it again.
