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Oh so tedious

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: August 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Don't waste your money or your time. All you are doing in this game is walking around the house and the outlying building clicking on everything about a zillion times. Several times, I had the solution to a puzzle (if you can call them that) and was unable to solve it because I wasn't clicking in the exact right location. Or I hadn't read some inane, non-crucial piece of text that I was apparently supposed to read first. Very frustrating and not fun and not at all scary.
The ending is abrupt, but welcome.

This game will freak you out!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: March 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

One brief sentence sums up "Scratches" nicely: Not for the faint of heart.

A computer game -- especially one with relatively simple graphics -- has never scared me so much. It's not necessarily what you see, but what you don't see, that counts. This is in keeping with the way horror movies used to be. "Scratches" employs the psychological effect that leaves the horror mainly to your imagination. This is truly what makes the game work. I am in shock and awe that anyone could play this game without being scared. Maybe if you turn the music and sound effects off, but in a dark room by yourself with the speakers turned up, this game will give you a heart attack! There are several jump scenes that leave your nerves shredded. My palms were sweaty and I was glancing over my shoulder more than once. I mean, crawling around in a dank, dark basement in the dead of night, trying to find the source of an eerie scratching noise? What could be more fright inducing than that?

For fans of the adventure game genre, be aware that "Scratches" doesn't compare very well with other titles like the "Myst" series. This game plays up the horror and suspense aspect in a way your typical point-and-click game does not. "Myst" is mysterious; "Scratches" is a nail-biter horror show.

Despite all the good, there is some bad. First, the game would have been just as good without the profanity and blasphemy sprinkled throughout. That was a needless addition. As some other reviewers have already pointed out, the game also lacks the logic of Myst. I was forced to resort to a walkthrough more than once. The final resolution of the puzzle in question often left me scratching my head and wondering how in the name of all that's holy I was supposed to figure that out on my own. The ending is weak, too, although the lead-up is incredibly. I had a hard time clicking that last time, knowing what lurked in the shadows. If a game can build that much tension, it is definitely a success.

Again, "Scratches" offers many positives with just a few negatives. Definitely not for the faint of heart. I wouldn't let my kids play it unless I was right there with them, especially given the sinister ending. Overall, though, definitely worth checking out if you thrive on suspense.

So Much Potential

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: September 14, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The victorian house which serves as the setting for this game is absolutely stunning. The colors, the textures, and the details are amazing. The layout of the house, unlike some other games with similar settings, is realistic and easy to remember.

The premise of the game and the mystery that reveals itself have the potential to be very interesting: cursed African artifacts, a maid who witnesses what she believes to be the esteemed doctor she works for burying his wife in the garden, forty years later a writer who rents the home in hopes of finishing his novel.

Unfortunately, this game falls short in every other area. I am a lover of games such as this one, and there is no way that I would have had the patience to finish this game if I hadn't looked up a walk through for the game online.

I can appreciate a game that does not spell out for you or make it obvious as to what the next step should be, but this game takes it too far in the opposite direction. I found it annoyingly tedious walking around the sprawling mansion and grounds clicking on every hot spot trying to figure out what I was supposed to do.

The majority of the game involves finding a key that unlocks a place where you find another key and using the telephone to call your real estate agent Jerry to discuss what has happened. The dialogue is strange and redundant and the accents are obviously fake.

But by far the biggest disappointment was the abrupt ending. I don't want to spoil it, but I was incredibly frustrated that after so many hours of gameplay and not knowing what to do, nothing was explained at the end.

In summary, this game had the most beautifully designed setting of any game I have ever played and the most disappointing plot I could have imagined.

Bad Plot...Vague Motivation...Illogical

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 14
Date: April 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The best games of this type immerse us in a world that requires to think in ways other than the usual linear mode we often use. This game doesn't do that. There is seldom any involvement with puzzles other than finding the various items scattered around the game and then combining them with something else that is usually obvious...or annoyingly otherwise.

This game fails most of all at plot. It would have been so much better if it had settled on one batch of gimmicks instead of mixing two together that don't add up -- sometimes you gotta pick is it gonna be African tribal black magic or is it gonna be creepy sociopathic behaviour that drives the story...maybe with considerable skill, you could try to work with both but the builder of this games plot doesn't have what it takes.

In the end, despite the often impressive visuals, it falls apart.

Its impossible not to be reminded of the first Resident Evil game which has set the standard incredibly high for any game that wants to put a lone character in a creepy old mansion and then have ever stranger events unfold around that character. If you're going to play on that field, you had better have brought your big girl pants. Too bad the makers of "Scratches" didn't give us the stuff.

This game will be forgotten quickly I think.

Annoying. Aggravating. Astonishingly Vague

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 27
Date: April 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I had a very hard time trying to keep myself playing this game, but my own mania kept me going. It wasnt fun.

I have several other games, such as the much-ballyhood "Oblivion", that were sitting on the shelf while I fulfilled this personal quest, to complete this game. Ive often done things to the end just as sort of a challenge, I may be obsessive compulsive in that manner I guess, but I set a goal that I would finish this game before I moved on to another. Like I said, it wasnt fun. Im glad it's finally over.

The game has probably two scary parts, and the atmosphere at first is quite creepy, you think youre going to see a shadow or reflection in a mirror or something when you least expect it. You dont. As a matter of fact, as time goes on, and you see the same places over and over again and know nothing scary is in store, it becomes quite boring like a chore. Tedious, I believe is the word. Very tedious.
Click over the same things many times, nothing happens, then later something scripted happens when you do, as the previous poster said, your clicking and re-clicking everything. Over and over again, I just wanted to cry at one point when something I had done a zillion times suddenly worked, and I realized suddenly that EVERYTHING must be done a zillion times.

This game wasnt good for my mental health, not so much that it scared me to such a state, but it truly made me want to rip the disc from the machine and throw it out the window. I like difficult games, this was not difficult but deceptive. This game doesnt play fair, and adventure games MUST play fair or one grows to hate them. I hate this game.

Scratches is great!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 12
Date: March 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

A scary adventure game in the style of Blackstone Chronicles, the Dark Fall games and the creepier moments of Amber: Journeys Beyond. A must for fans of the genre.

Moody, atmospheric, but ultimately boring!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 17
Date: March 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The Mystery: C-

The questions to answer are: What happened to the Blackwood family? What led to the mysterious death of Catherine Blackwood? Did her husband do her in, as local legend would have it? Did he go mad?

What begins as a search for the truth while trapped in an aging Victorian mansion for the weekend quickly becomes a tedious way to pass the time.

The ending was ambiguous and, I thought, stupid. The only rule of a mystery is that by the end of the story, you must solve the mystery. This ending only led me to more questions. Yech.

Puzzles: F

There are no puzzles to speak of. This is strictly collecting items and combining them together to make useful things, such as lighting a lamp in order to investigate a dark room. Yawn.

Gameplay: B-

This game is more a fetch-and-carry than a mystery. The mystery tends to get lost while the player spends all his time tramping back and forth through the rooms of the mansion, fiddling with the finicky navigation controls (i.e. you may only go forward by clicking on this very narrow spot, etc.)

Time Changes: When a given set of tasks is completed, the main character, Michael will begin to grumble about needing sleep. Put him to bed and the next event will automatically trigger.

Voice Acting: B

The two most loquatious characters are the narrator, Michael, and his agent/friend, Jerry. A handful of phone calls is all you get of their dialogue, but their voices are very polished and pleasing to hear.

Music: B

Cellar of Rats has developed a soundtrack that will tickle your ear: a combination of scratches, plinky piano music, mournful violins and otherwordly laughs and screeches that will carry you effortlessly through the game.

Graphics/Video: B-

The "3D" rendering is nothing more than a 2D image pasted onto a sphere so that the camera may rotate 360 degrees. This causes the image to warp around the edges as you turn the camera. Really, people, this is 2006. Even if you're working on a shoestring budget, I think it's safe to say that you have to do better than that.

The graphics themselves are otherwise very nice. The textures are clean and sharp. The images are simple, but very effective. The clouds move across the sky, the weather changes from gloomy to sunny to stormy, etc.

Technical: B

My computer has a very new processor and graphics card, and for some reason I found the load times to be ridiculous. It really broke the mood as I had to wait several seconds for a new room to load as I moved through the house. The door would open and the screen would freeze annoyingly while the computer worked to load the next room.

Overall, I think this one is neat and entertaining, a great way to pass a few hours, but it was lacking The Wow Factor for me. I just wasn't dazzled by what I saw like I have been by other games.

Fun if you like opening lots of squeaky doors and drawers

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: September 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game hoping to be creeped out, but maybe I've seen a few too many horror movies. Fans of the "Myst" series will probably enjoy this, but I found it tedious, tiresome, non-intuitive and not creepy at all.

I will admit that I have a short attention span and maybe haven't played enough of these 1st-person adventure puzzle-solvers, but I felt like I wasted a few evenings with this game, and all I did was walk around the house opening doors and drawers, and looking at various photographs and meaningless journal entries and the like.

Once I had explored the house and the grounds, opened every drawer I could find and picked up everything I could lay my hands on, I was at a standstill and eventually had to resort to internet walkthroughs just to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.

As I said, maybe I haven't played enough of these types of games, but the things I learned on the internet walkthroughs I NEVER would have come up with on my own. The game thread is NOT INTUITIVE. There are specific examples I would mention, but don't want to put spoilers up for those who might actually enjoy this snoozer.

Others might enjoy unlocking the "dark secrets" of this adventure game, but I just couldn't get into it.

take time to smell the Black Oricids of Death

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 26
Date: March 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Cats got nothing to do with it. This is the best game I've played since Highschool. A graphic adventure set in some obscure English Village in particular a rickety old mansion and it's surrounding estate(in totallity huge). By day, the dismel grey sky of peace yet forboding all the same. The music very Myst-like violins in the house; but by night a macebre of horror and inscensent scratching. You are a british storywriter of a famous book and want to go full time as author yet have no inspiration in town so you move to an obscure little(as in huge) Mansion on a Hill in a dark estate. If you play it alone(and your appartment is bigger than eye's veiw) you'll be as jumpy as your cat by the end of this game. By no measn are "cats" involved, dispite the title. You'll have a good idea of that and what it "might just" mean come nightfall... By the end of the game, you'll know...

Make Sure You Have Updated Drivers for Your Video Card!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: June 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

FIRST THE TECHNICAL PROBLEMS:

My husband and I just finished playing this game on HIS computer. I capitalize that because he has a very low end cpu, Windows 98, but seems to have a better graphics card than I do. On my newer computer I installed the game but ended up having very serious problems trying to play it. I went to the Nucleosys website where there is quite alot of support. Their is a "Technical Support" forum that you can go to and lo and behold I couldn't believe the number of people who were saying "they couldn't play the game because the graphics were not keeping up with the sound, mouse was sluggish, game was freezing, etc." It seemed the main remedy that the developers of this game (yes, the developers will answer your questions and even e-mail you, they are very helpful, especially Agustin) was to make sure you have updated drivers for your video card. No problem, I said so I went to my card's manufacturer and found out they were no longer supporting my card and the driver I had was the last and only one they were offering. OK, so now I have to go buy a new graphics card to play a game I payed $19.99 for. Not too crazy about doing that since I am not a real big PC gamer. Also, the developers suggested going into the program file and changing the sys.config files' parameters. I did this but no help - needed that new graphics card. Out of sheer desperation we installed it on my husband's older computer and after making a few alterations to the sys.config file it worked wonderfully. The only problems we had were the old Windows' 98 "This program has performed an illegal operation" problem and we'd have to hurriedly save the game and then close the program out and reboot. But that was minor compared to the problems I had on my computer.

THE GAME ITSELF:

This could have been a really great game. The graphics are wonderful and very realistic. I'm a point and clicker so I do like the linear type of game. You can click on alot of things and will get either a description or just a closer view of the object. You will do alot of this type of clicking with no end result as there are so many things at the house and on the grounds that you will not need - just alot of filler info. Just about every picture in this game will give you a close up look and there are some really neat pictures. I will give you one spoiler and a very vague one at that: do not assume that all the pictures you look at are just for show - there is one picture that you will need to pay extra attention to in order to progress in the game - nuff said - you figure it out! This house is very big and has lots of rooms. At first you'll get turned around because you do not have a map but believe me you'll know the house by heart by the time you get halfway into the game - alot of exploring to do!

WHERE WAS ALL THE SCRATCHING NOISE I HAD HEARD SO MUCH ABOUT?!!? The sound effects are excellent and the music score also but the game itself made a big deal of the "scratching". You'll only hear the scratching at certain points in the game and I guess this is good because it would have gotten on your nerves, just like the Grandfather clock got on my nerves everytime we went into the main hall. Tick,tock,tick,tock,tick,tock - better pay attention to the time!!!

The puzzles were mediocre to extremely frustrating at times and are mostly inventory based. One thing I did not like was the fact that after using something in your inventory that you'll never need to use after that, the object did not disappear from the inventory but stayed there so you'll find yourself using all these objects over and over and over trying to solve a puzzle. After I use it and there's no more use for it let's get rid of it! The "hints" that you can optionally turn on or off are not all that much help really and I must confess there were a few times we had to resort to going to our "hint/walkthrough" website that we use. This is a game that you have to do certain things before you can progress so if you're wandering around clicking on every object, trying to call "Jerry" and just getting a busy signal, then you've not done something and good luck to you finding out what that something is - lol!! This is a relatively short game but my husband and I managed to drag it out over 4-5 days out of sheer frustration.

SPOOKY? Well, I'll let you decide for yourself. I get spooked pretty easily and there were a couple of times I grabbed my husband's arm. I must confess I had heard so much about the ending being scary that when we finally got there I shut my eyes the first time! My husband watched it and re-watched it because he didn't understand what had happened. Yep, it's a little confusing alright. You'll get the whole basis of the story by doing alot of reading during your exploration of the house but somehow the developers didn't pull it all together at the end. It just kind of leaves you with a "what the #**!!@ was that all about" feeling.

The game is well worth playing for the sheer enjoyment of staying in a creepy old house with no lights, no water and no one around for miles. The graphics are beautiful, the sounds are superb and you will derive quite a bit of fun from it. Maybe they'll do a sequel and that's why the ending has alot of loose ends. If they do, I'll be sure to have that new graphics card by then!

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