Here's my impressions from playing it for an hour yesterday's at a friend's (will have full impressions a bit later as now have it pre-ordered and all that):
The game is is a cinematic-styled game like Heavy Rain or Walking Dead, but with more game elements. Least from what I've played.The gamier elements come from exploring the environments and solving puzzles, and stealth elements to avoid ghosts and demons that are hunting you.
The story starts off with our main guy dying from the beginning from a murderer known as the, 'Bell Killer'. The first few moments of the game are mostly cinematic flair, introducing us to our character through a series of 'life flashing before his eyes' scenario, and soon discovering that he is, in fact, dead.
The story has three main elements from what I can tell so far. First, in the 'normal' world there is a murderer on the loose that the old police agency we worked for are hunting down. We follow them as they try to solve the case, and of course have a personal stake here as the guy they're hunting kind of killed us. However, we exist in a plane known as the 'Dusk World', which is where people who have lingering things they need to accomplish come upon their deaths. There are other ghosts around, coming from recent times to the early 1700s, and various relics of the past exist in this realm as well. Also in this realm are ghosts who have taken to consuming other ghosts to gain power in this realm, known as demons. There seems to be something going on in the world of Dusk... And finally, our main man has discovered that death may not be all that bad. His wife passed away, and her death crushed him. However, if he can move on to the world beyond and leave the world of Dusk, he'll be reunited with her again, if he can cross the bridge to the other side... But to do this, as stated, he needs to figure out and solve what he still has to do in our world that keeps him bonded here.
In gameplay, you possess other people, mess with objects, solve puzzles, avoid demons (who randomly stalk around the levels), and that sort of thing. You have both detective and ghostly powers to utilize, and it all feels kind of like one of those 'cinematic' games, just with a bit more fleshing out here. How it all plays out is to be seen.
The game reminded me a good deal of the film, The Frighteners, from the bit I've played.
I expect those who like the sort of 'cinematic gaming', or detective work-game style to be fun. How good it pulls it off was kind of hard to judge early on, but I was interested. A slow-paced game that I don't think will be for everyone at the very least, though.
