User Reviews (1 - 11 of 60)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Fine work by Jonathan Boakes

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 75 / 79
Date: March 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

A pleasantly spooky story from the maker of the two Dark Fall games, with some of the same strengths (lovely evocation of an England that no longer exists, some genuinely creepy moments) and weaknesses (erratic plot, bizarre use of English from a native speaker) of those two games.

The atmosphere is the strongest part of this game; the Victorian house is so lovingly recreated you can almost smell the moldy stench of rotting plaster that inhabits these places. The music and sound are a real bonus, with movie-level sound effects and score really amping up the creepiness.

The creepiness can be extreme at times, but it's of the something-unknown-about-to-spring-from-the-dark sort and not the rotting-corpse-shoved-in-your-face sort. If you've been desensitized by over-the-top gore fest movies, you might yawn at this; if you're sophisticated enough to appreciate Hitchcock and Poe, this will suit you down to the ground. Translation: there's no blood, but it could still give your kids nightmares.

As for the less wonderful stuff, well ... Some of the dialogue is downright weird in syntax and word choice. (When you use a shovel to make a hole in the dirt and put something in it, you *dig* the hole and *bury* the item, not the other way around. Shees!) Under other circumstances I'd put this down to translation difficulties, but that doesn't apply here. And there are some strange plot holes and sudden bursts of illogic that leave you scratching your head. The ending in particular is a little anticlimactic -- we didn't so much wrap up the plot as shrug and abandon it. Or is he planning a sequel?

Still, a fun game and an engrossing way to spend a rainy day. Though I wouldn't want to play it in the dark myself.

Couldn't Wait To Play It Every Night

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 60 / 65
Date: April 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I loved this game. I was originally worried whether or not I would like it when the box listed horror and some blood as parts of the game, but I needn't have worried.

Horror? (1) The main character writes horror stories which he barely describes. (2) There is a bit of an overly descriptive diary entry by another character about an African tribe ritual concerning canibalism which he witnessed. Not my style, but easily skipped over. (3)Finally, you see a couple of skeletons. Uh huh. Been there, done that. Not horrific.

Blood? At the end of the game there was a MINOR amount on one skeleton and elsewhere a tiny bit on a table.

As a recent poster said, this game is more the spooky sounds in the night scary rather than anything else. A lot of that has to do with the musical score, which is perfect. There were several times I practically jumped out of my chair...after opening a door...(play scary music here)...about to see...(nope, not telling)...... It was great fun! And not horrific at all.

For the reviewers on several sites who have said this game is boring, there seems to be a common theme among them--they are game aficionados who know all the game authors, their subtle references to other games within the game, etc., etc. I'm not that type of gamer. I love games which let me go where I want to go, which blend in the puzzles with the story and don't bend my brain so much that I think I'm back in math class, and which are not obnoxiously hard yet are not obnoxiously easy. For those type of people, this game is wonderful. You'll thoroughly enjoy playing it, being spooked sometimes, and figuring out where to go and what to do by yourself most of the time. This game let me THINK, and most of the time let me think like a real person would, not like some game developer does. I only had to resort to a walkthrough a couple of times, and usually I need help a lot. I liked that.

So, turn the lights down low, watch out for things that go SCRATCH and bump in the night, and go back to the days when you were young and sat around a campfire telling scary stories to each other before you went to sleep. Scratches is one of those stories, so have fun!

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 29 / 33
Date: March 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is exactly what it promises to be, and then some. It's a true adventure game which requires only the ability to use a mouse and your brain. It's scary, atmospheric and leaves you guessing till the end. The story is slowly revealed as you play but some of the aspects are subtle. At the end, you have to actually think about what happened but if you've paid attention everything is pretty much revealed. The truth is in there...

Great Surprise Ending

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: October 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

"Scratches" is a game about an up-and-coming writer who finds himself living in what appears to be a haunted, old victorian mansion. After learning about the murder that occurred there years before, and hearing the awful scratching noises late each night, he becomes obsessed with findng out the truth - whatever that is...

The graphics of this game are quite realistic & there are several neat places to explore (mansion, old chapel, green house, crypt, garage, & garden). However, I found myself having to go to a walkthrough too many times - as there wasn't enough information given to let you know what to do next. This is why I have given "Scratches" 4 stars.

Overall, if you like playing mystery games, I would recommend this game. But, be aware that you may need to find a good walkthrough to help you progress. (I used the walkthrough by UHS hints & found it to be quite useful).

The best of it's kind

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: March 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I went into this game hesitant because a) I usually don't care for "horror" settings and b) games where the main draw is "only three people made it!" tend to be more flawed than they are made out to be by hardcore adventure fans.

This game did everything almost everything right. The atmosphere was amazing, you really start to feel claustrophobic at some times and a sense of dread at others. This is a psychological horror game, similar to movies like Session 9 or The Blair Witch Project. In other words, if you really get into the storytelling like I did, things will get really really scary. If you don't care for the story and skip through the journals, it won't be so scary. For me personally, it worked wonders. I couldn't sleep for days afterwards.

As for the claim of some (like Sharon West below me) that the ending is poor, I completely disagree. If you like your stories spoonfed to you, then you'll hate the ending. If you pay attention to everything you witnessed, there may still be things you'll uncertain about, but for the most part you can figure out what happened. You'll want to work out your theory with others who completed the game, just like a good movie that makes you think. I don't understand these people who want to play an adventure game because they supposedly like puzzles but then hate an ending that they have to think about. Kinda ironic. Personally, after playing games like the recent Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes incarnations I found it a refreshing change to play a mystery game where they actually let YOU solve the mystery.

Puzzles are uncannily well thought out and logical. There isn't a single puzzle where afterwards you'll go "well, how was I supposed to figure that out?" Well, maybe one, but it wasn't that obscure. They are all based on real world functionality.
One other thing: it's been noticed on forums I frequent that even though the game is in a first person perspective, people who usually prefer third person adventure games are more likely to like the puzzles in this game. Interpret that as you will.

My only caveat is that the pacing is a little slow on the first day, mostly because it seems to behave as if you're not an adventure veteran.

If you're not a fan of point-and-clickers, then this game isn't going to change your mind. But if you are, this is easily the best one I've played in years.

Not to be played alone in the dark!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: March 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game has a lot of virtues and is destined to be a classic. The interface is fairly seamless and there are no contrived puzzles for the sake of adding puzzles. The highly detailed and beautiful graphics work perfectly together with an amazing sound track and special effects to set a sinister and forboding mood. The game really shines in this respect, and I must say, I have never experienced better visuals or audio in a game of this genre. The mystery itself is quite original and revealed in bits and pieces. Things start to get scary after a while, and I found myself on edge, afraid to open doors or even turn around, for what I might find. The mystery was so captivating that I wanted to know what happend, but I was also afraid to find out. The only shortcoming, in my opinion, is that not everything you need to do or find, is intuitive. I found myself stuck in a few places, but had no problem finding a walkthrough to help me out. Overall, this is truly one of the most captivating, scary and enjoyable adventure games I have ever played. If you like adventure games and don't mind getting scared out of your wits, this is for you.

great horror for adventure fans

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: March 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you are an obsessive drawer opener and poker around in crooks and crannies and pride yourself in finding a way behind expected routes rather than following them, even if it disrupts linear game play, this adventure game is for you. If not, don't go near it.

However, if you are of this turn of mind, it was, as the other reviewers attest, incredibly immersive and creepy. Having finished it, I have no temptation to go back and play the ending again, or review any of the compulsory midnight explorations or encounter a certain carved wooden object, in any form, ever again. In fact I was happy to uninstall it from my computer the minute I'd finished it, just in case it should try to get up to something on its own in the middle of the night (which for a game as static looking as this is high praise).

I've played the Darkfall games with a mixture of excitement and frustration, and this game outcreeps them both. I'm not sure I liked it, and I know that I couldn't play through some of the sequences with the sound effects on, but it was a triumph of its genre, even for a wuss like me. Have fun with it.

A Decent First Effort, but...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 17
Date: April 11, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The year is 1976. Michael Arthate, an up-and-coming horror novelist, needs a quiet and inspirational place to finish his new novel. His real estate agent finds him Blackwood Manor, a Victorian pile in an isolated area somewhere in Northumbria. But Blackood Manor conceals a mystery, and (of course) instead of working on his book Michael sets out to solve it.

_Scratches_, the first game from Nucleosys, is a first person horror adventure in the mode of the Dark Fall games: the gameplay revolves around exploring the setting and figuring out the story behind it. One of the most highly anticipated adventure games in years, it offers lovely graphics, smooth gameplay and a significant creep factor. In the end, however, it does not quite live up to its hype.

The story unfolds over the course of three days and two nights. The first day offers the kind of tasks you might expect from this kind of game: you arrive at your destination, start exploring it, find some things that make you think maybe this wasn't such a great idea, and then discover you can't leave. This was probably the most emjoyable part of the game for me. The house is quite large; the graphics are detailed and there's a lot to look at. Well...maybe too much to look at: in the tradition of the Dark Fall games, there were quite a few gratuitous hotspots (but sometimes clicking rewarded you with a funny in-joke). But all in all, the suspense builds quite well, climaxing in a really scary event. It's on your second day that things begin to get, well, tedious and some of the flaws of the game really start to stand out.

First of all, except for one or two, the puzzles in this game are strictly of the "apply inventory" variety--not my favourite kind of puzzle in any case. And some of the ways that inventory is applied are illogical, and many of the situations that make the puzzles necessary are really contrived. Second of all, the player character begins to look more and more like a royal idiot. I found it completely unbelievable that any adult would stand for being stranded in a run-down place with no food, water, power, and few comforts at all, simply because of a mildly engaging mystery. It just didn't work for me.

The game is quite linear and often your progress depends on performing a repetetive action an unspecified number of times before you trigger the next thing. For example, at one point you must try every light switch in the house and search through every drawer. And yout reward is often to find you must do the same thing again. This becomes especially frustrating on the second "day" of the game. After having a big scare, I would have expected the tension to keep building, but the tasks of that day just bored me. Also, the area you can explore is limited, so you're relegated to going back and forth over the house again and again. I understand that games often restrict access and make you solve certain areas before you can move on. However, the restriction in this case again seemed contrived. When game literature boasts "many locations to explore!" I expect to spend some significant time and find significant actions in each location. This was not the case here.

There was some unfair use of hotspots. When you try something in a game 20 times, only to hear your character say, "There's nothing of interest there," you hardly expect that he'll suddenly do anything different on the 100th try. However, this happened at least twice in this game, meaning that you really DO have to go back to EVERY SINGLE hotspot every time you feel stuck, whether it makes sense to you or not.

You uncover a number of documents in this game. Unfortunately, you can't take any of them with you, so every time you want to refer to one you have to slog back to where you left it. Also, the writing in all of them was far too small. Even on my 17-inch monitor I had to squint to read it.

The ending of the game is obscure at best, and has generated more Internet discussion than any game in years. Personally, I found it dissatisfying. I may like solving puzzles, but when I finish a game I like to have a clear idea what exactly happened; I don't want to wonder anymore. I also did not like the fact that the ending just happened to you; you didn't really do anything to affect or alter it (unlike the Dark Fall games, where you do have a specific role).

_Scratches_ is a decent first effort, but repetetive gameplay, choppy plot progression and thinly-spread puzzles detract from what could have been a stellar nightmare. If Nucleosys can address these issues in their next game, they'll have a real winner.

Prepare for your adventure: making laps around some run down old house for days

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: April 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The game was nice looking and sounding at first, but it soon grew quite tiresome. Aside the monotonous "adventure" of running around clicking every square centimeter of the place, the game has some technical issues, namely crashing to desktop several times a session. Sometimes before I'd saved significant progress, or irritatingly enough, in mid-save. The scary ambience is timed out to hit you with some spooky moments and music, but they are few and far between. I started feeling like I was just making laps around some old, dirty, run-down house in the dark, clicking away on everything, over and over again. Find a new item? Ok good, now it's time to run around and tap on every surface in the entire house with it, just in case it can be "used" in one of these absolutely byzantine, nonsensical, and literally not feasible puzzles.

It has some rather annoying puzzle methods which arent really puzzles in the traditional sense, being more the result of luck or as I said, just running around clicking every centimeter of the place, trying to trigger the next scripted event that is anything but satisfying or suprising, when it is seen coming a mile away and is the result of much annoyance. It's absolutely tedious, and gave me several horrible headaches.

Leave your logic at the door, just run around and click on everything, with everything in your inventory, over and over again, and youll eventuallly get through this "adventure". Well, not exactly, for there are "solved" objectives of which you are not informed, come to find out you were supposed to go sleep to move the story along. Meanwhile, making laps around the entire house, over and over again, looking for the one miniscule pixel I didnt click. So remember to also run back up to your room and attempt to rest every ten minutes or so, just in case you trigger the end of that particular "puzzle".

I was happy at first when the outdoor environs were opened up to me, but this was soon turned to dismay when I realized the joke was on me, as I now had double or triple the area I had to run around and click every square millimeter of! It's absolutely maddening at times I tell you, and just not worth the time or effort in my opinion. One starts to feel that after the solving of a "puzzle", you have to just basically search the entire house and grounds again, as I said earlier, clicking on anything and everything with everything in your inventory.
The detection cursor is woefully inadequate and small, and with the spots of detection the size of a penny, found myself resorting unfortunately to reading a walkthrough. Suprisingly, I find out more times than none that I had already searched that very spot several times! Again, this is canvassing the entire house over and over, clicking away like a madman, headache growing more instense as my "adventure" continues.

The commentary I've seen online seems to suggest that one should perhaps "read a walkthrough as you play the game". I'm sorry, I do not read walkthroughs as I play a game, that's part of the experience is solving the thing myself, yet I find this to be nearly impossible, when the solutions are so utterly obscure, do not make sense, or you are not given vital information pertaining to such.

The scary noises (which basically consist of some shuffling noise or other) are very infrequent, and they actually become quite annoying more than naything when they do actually occur. And a bigger suprise is the ambiguous ending, leaving very much up in the air and unexplained. This just stupefied me, it's as if they are getting one final dig at you, and getting a big kick out of it. Ive played quite a few adventure games, and if you truly would like an "adventure game" worthy of the title, i would suggest the Syberia series for example, not this doldrum, repetitive affair that in the end feels like Martha Stewart's ultimate "tacky, dirty old house nightmare", not mine.

Tedious is the correct name for this game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: September 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I have to agree with many of the other reviewers that the one word that describes this game is "tedious." Also, it is about as frightening as a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Have you ever read a book where you keep thinking, "this has got to get better," but is never does and the ending leaves you thinking, "huh, what was that all about?" That, in essence, is this game.

To be fair, some may enjoy this game and to give you perspective, games that I liked are: Black Mirror, Syberia I & II, and The Longest Journey; games I disliked are: Dark Fall and The Omega Stone.

One final word of warning, if you have a computer using a Pentium 4 with Hyper-Threading technology, you will need to install a patch from the Nucleosys website. Failure to do this will cause the game to lock-up when you least want it to. Install this patch BEFORE you play the game. There is a small warning in the description of the patch download that says, "please note that any current savegames are not supported." This means that if you install the patch after you have saved any of your game plays, you will lose all of them and have to start the game over (more tedium)!

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next 

Actions