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Complete waste of time

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: August 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I want to start by saying that I am avid adventure gamer. I have been playing adventure games all of my life and I was really looking forward to playing this seemingly scary and exciting game. I was horribly mistaken. The game is nothing like what it is advertised to be. Yeah, you hear scratches once, MAYBE twice throughout the entire game. There is no tension and the only reason to keep playing it is in the hopes that something MUST happen eventually. All you end up doing is running around trying to find an object that you must have overlooked because you can't get into ANYTHING and it seems that there is nothing to do. At points, the game really turns into a pixel hunt and becomes increasingly frustrating the more you progress through the game. Despite your aggravation, if you make it to the end, the ridiculous ending if enough to make you scream from the ridiculousness of it. It isn't in any way creative, scary, or even mildly entertaining. I can honestly say that I have not played many games that have disappointed me as much as this one. It truly is a waste of time.

ANNOYING! Repetitive, boring, and the ending made zero sense.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: April 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Just got done with Scratches.

The number one problem with this game is that it doesn't really matter how hard you try to get through it without using a walkthrough, a walkthrough is essential. We spend hours going through the house, gardens, greenhouse, chapel, and crypt. We went over everything multiple times, tried everything in the inventory, retried, and still, no success. If you don't click on the EXACT spot needed on an object it will not work, which makes for having to repeat your actions a thousand times.

Also, every single time you figure out where to go next, and you use a key or solve a puzzle to open something, all you find is a new key that you don't know where to use, or a new puzzle that you have no clue how to solve. This is no fun. There is zero flow to the game, it is one annoying thing after another.

Almost all the time you spend playing is taken up with re-searching areas you have already gone over many times. It's severely repetitive.

The game will show an icon that makes you assume you can do something with an object or area, when you never end up doing anything on the object or area in the entire game! We wasted a huge amount of time on this, thinking if we used everything in the inventory on the dang thing it would work, only to find out the object or area was unusable.

The ending made NO SENSE. You go through a game thinking the ending will wrap things up, and the only thing this one did was confuse you. It had nothing at all to do with the storyline.

Don't waste your time on Scratches, it's nothing but a disappointment.

Tedious

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My daughter and I played this game and if it wasn't for her persistence I would have quit it. We had to look up a walkthrough and had to use it several times. There is no way you could have figured out a few of the "actions" you had to take using your inventory. The game didn't guide you, but left you wandering around alot. We played it through to the end and I wanted to tell you...study the medical clues and the drawings. There is more to the story than the curse and insanity. Look closely at those vials and what they imply. If you want a good game, play "Amber, Journey Beyond." "Scratches" was a disappointment compared to playing this game.

Wonderful!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I found this game to be exceptional but there were a few problems. (mild spoilers here, beware)

First of all, the puzzles get to be almost ridiculously difficult. I had to use a walkthrough to get past a few sticky parts.
However on the flipside, the puzzles are pretty true to life. There are no absurd contraptions to fiddle with (thank god), but the puzzles in the game are more difficult then they should be. For instance(spoiler here), the wall safe is behind a picture and the access point for the safe is rather small and easy to miss. You are never given any indication that there is a safe in the game, which is frustrating, however, real life doesn't exactly drop hints either.
And the other problem is that the game ends raising more questions then it answers....But on the bright side, with the Director's Cut version, you get a final chapter called "The Last Visit" which sucks when taken out of context, but does wrap things up pretty well.
I found the game to be amazing on the whole. There were a few truely terrifying scenes to be had, and I am NOT the type to get unnerved. And what makes the scenes so great is that they are not your ho-hum gore, but are brilliantly created using the fantastic music and perfect timing.
The voice acting was a little contrived, I found Michael (your character) to be way overdramatic, but on the other hand, his voice did help break up the sometimes monotony of the game and add to the suspense...even if it was a bit campy.
So, would I recommend this game? Absolutely!, but not to the general masses. I think it had a pretty narrow target audience, but if you enjoy spooky games then this one really delivers.

awesome game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: April 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

worth every penny .. it's like memento or mullholland drive for the pc gaming genre .. will have you discussing the story and trying to make sense of it for days after you finish!

Boo!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: August 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is great overall. The only problem I have is that you have to constantly click to move somewhere. No keyboarding whatsoever. But it was very scary. I fell out of my chair once or twice 'cause I got so scared. But then agin I get scared easily. I can't play Doom without screaming every 10 seconds and shaking, LOL!!!! Seriously. It's sad!

Just another game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: October 21, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game was ok. I've played better games before. There are only few scary scenes and the rest is only the background sounds which are heard through out the game. The puzzles were really hard to figure out. Some things I did like were the twists in the game.

Suprisingly creepy for low budget mis-adventure

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 9
Date: April 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game displays many reasons people cite for the downfall of adventure games..Dated graphics, frustrating linear gameplay in it's old school myst presentation, and on top of that it is way too short...Despite all of it's flaws, this game manages to shine in it's creepy atmospherics and semi engaging plot, offering a few genuine rare gaming moments of scares..The ending in particular is worth slogging through to..It is unfortunate today that the boundries between vision and execution fall so far apart in adventure games, since this particular genre has often the only games with substance, while their gameplay is completely lacking..Hopefully the bridges will become more secure between presenting an engaging, intellegent story inside of an interactive environment, as I would hate for every game out there to digress into a twitch-based bloodbath of pixels..

boring

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I thought this game was a little boring and repetitive. Some of the small details were ridiculous. There wasn't as much to explore visually as I hoped. The ending was a joke!! The only reason I kept playing is because I thought it would eventually get better. I got bored searching the same old rooms. Some of the challenges were also quite boring. I would have paid $5.00 for this game, not $20.00.

Stunning texture and scenery, but not for everyone

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

While I'm still an amateur player in this genre, I do appreciate a good murder mystery novel and a movie with beautiful cinematography. With that said, people who love the "cut-em-up" horror films and video games of today may think this game is boring. But if you're detail oriented, this may be the game for you.

As the story goes, you play Michael Arthrate, a famous author who's just purchased an old Victorian mansion out in the country. What started out as a weekend trip to help get your creative juices going ends up turning into a murder-mystery/ghost hunt.

While the plot at times is a little thin with a few holes here and there, the scenery and the ambience is breathtaking (think Agatha Christie or other classic murder mystery writers). Navigating your way through the game is another challenge if this is your first game of this genre. There's a brief discussion of how to play in the CD-ROM sleeve, but no in-game tutorial or anything like that (unless you turn hints on). Also, at times, this game could become a pixel-hunt and will truly test your patience.

This is also a 360-degree world where you can swing the camera in many directions with few restrictions, but use with caution if you're prone to getting motion sickness (think a shakey home video). I had to turn the slideshow mode on because I started to get nauseous after a while.

I was a little disappointed at how quickly the game ended though, and if you use a walkthrough, the experience will go by even faster. I actually wanted to go through it a second time just to see it again straight through like a cinematic story.

Overall, I enjoyed it and probably would recommend it to the right person.

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