Scratches - PC

Firstly, let me emphasize I am a rabid adventure fan- and I'm totally in it for the puzzles.Also, this may be deemed spoilery- I'ma try to keep it not-so, but everyone's definition of spoilery is different, so..The story is interesting at its core. The pacing though.. oof. I confess to being painfully bored most of the time, and taking forever to finish this thing, because I just can't muster the effort to care.The level of pointless clicking and calling does a great deal to make the game tedious.And this is the real problem.I keep seeing praise for the puzzles, and yet, I cannot for the life of me imagine why. Some are decent.. but the majority are utterly idiotic.Not to spoil which puzzle specifically- but at one point you have to click a few things. A few very specific things. There's nothing at all to find there; you just have to click there. And then you call your pal Jerry.There's no reason you should realize you've ticked the games internal tickybox for progress, mind you. You just have to blunder around until you clumsily do what you're supposed to, and do nothing else in the meantime (nonlinear this game is NOT).There's no.. elegance to the approach, I suppose, is my main gripe here. No opportunity to use one's massive brains to streamline the tedium.Others just utterly lack any hint whatsoever- as another viewer cited: too much realism, not enough fun. The first Sunday puzzle is incredibly obnoxious, in that you have no clue you even have this puzzle waiting about, impeding your progress... which, fair enough, fine and well, having to find it and all, except the solution is a complete waste of potentially REAL sleuthery! GAH. Letdown.The navigation is obnoxious, and the door animations (oh, the many.. many, many door animations.. X.x) are not skippable, when there's absolutely no reason they shouldn't be.The soundtrack is amazing; nothing but props there. Cellar of Rats: you guys are amazing. A+.The voice acting.. I've experienced much, much worse in adventure games (Hey Sanitarium! *wave*) but the phrasing, syntax, and honestly, the main character's strange and inexplicably erratic accent hurts immersion considerably. Most of the main actor's'scenes' feel purely masturbatory, in fact; he seems to actually ever say very little, aside from being generally unlikable and an utter arse, and possibly one of the most unrelentingly stupid, and unprepared protagonists..ever. I found myself genuinely astonished this man got dressed without grievously overlooking something. Like pants.Though we never see our protagonist, so perhaps that's unfair.We really have no way of knowing he's actually managed pants./ranttl;dr version: It's a fun little story. It's not that scary (in my opinion anyway, YMMV), but the atmosphere is top-notch, and the music is wonderful. Good way to kill an afternoon, just don't go into it expecting too much, and get ready to bask in those sweet, sweet door animations.

Scrathes is fairly good overall. The immersing first-person effect is like Myst, except the puzzles are not involving weird machines or contraptions! Basically you are staying at an old Victorian house in a remote area that has been abandoned for a long time. You will gradually gather that the house is more towards 'haunted' or 'you're not alone' due to the weird noises and evil presences.The creepy effect is really good. I usually don't like horror but it was thrilling to play this late at night with the lights off. The last couple of nights playing it I had to play with lights on because I had been getting very frightened to go to bed at night. This game is utterly spooky! Most of the game is a feeling of being 'on edge' as you walk around in daylight in this mansion. But there are some very scary times that make you jump, especially the nighttime scenes. Horror effect is A+.The story is well done and thoughtout. You will gather more and more info gradually as to what happened, and what you must do. You are mostly tracking events that happened while the previous owners were still around, and figuring out how that relates to your situation in the house today. Story and background are A+.The puzzles are the worst part of the game. Now some of the puzzles I really liked, and I felt especially good about getting something that was a little tricky. But some puzzles are just unfair. At a certain point, I just used the UHS hints site for everything because I was tired of trying to guess if this was a 'fair' or 'unfair' puzzle. (I am entitled to get help with 'unfair' puzzles.) For example, on Sunday morning you must locate something in the house to progress. There is absolutely no indication that you must go about finding this thing at this time. There is no clue to its existence. I had searched the room it was in 5 times thoroughly, but no! to hard to find! Also the puzzles are notorious for making you do a whole bunch of extra stuff to get your reward. You have to do *a lot* for some puzzles to progress in the game. I think the game designers were trying to make it feel like you were really there and how would you really solve the puzzle, but tediously searching every inch of the house and missing what you needed is not fun, it's torture.Some other reviewers said that some things work only when the game lets them or at a later time but not earlier and that's true. An example is knowing I needed to combine the inventory items, the character says 'That's not useful.' Then at the point where the game let me combine them, I was stuck because I'd already tried that and failed. I didn't know it was suddenly available!My advice is please play Scratches with your favourite hint website, and enjoy the horror and story. Enjoy some of the puzzles, but some are just nasty.

It's the ending that is disappointing. I had lots of fun and chills all the way through until I got to the end. Then, I was left hanging. Many, many unanswered questions. The ending made no real sense. Granted it's only a video game, I'd like a little bit of sense in the end. It's like watching a really low-budget horror movie whose only motive is sensationalism and viewer terror. You walk through this game asking a lot of questions, and making logical assumptions about what the climax will probably be. Then, TA-TA!!!!--screams and horror with no intellectual value. If you like horror films that are simply scary with nothing else to offer, this is the game for you! Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb--TA-TA!!!!

I'm sure some people are patient enough to perhaps enjoy this title, but not me. And I'm an avid old-school adventure gamer..!