Scratches Directors Cut zomg tedious

I suck at adventure games. The second I am stumped by a puzzle I quickly lose interest and give up. As a result, I tend to avoid them. But every so often I like to go to the store and browse the adventure section. I like the shiny boxes (oooh), the intriguing descriptions, and the pretty screenshots. It always captures my imagination. So when I saw Scratches, it seemed like an interesting enough game. Some writer dude named Michael Arthate moves into an old Victorian manor named the Blackwood manor, and begins to hear strange scratching noises at night. Seemed like a great haunted house story. Plus the reviews were fairly positive. I waited about a year for the price to drop to 5$ and finally snagged it in the bargain section, which is where I knew it'd quickly end up. lol

I failed miserably at the game. I'm sure people who grew up on point and click adventure games would love it. The last point and click adventure game that I beat were the Hugo games from the 90s (Hugos house of horrors, Wuhodunit, Jungle of Doom). So I was badly outclassed and out of practice. The game dumps you in the middle of the house with little to no guidance on what to do. The biggest puzzle often times is just figuring out what to do next. I quickly gave up and just used various online walkthroughs.

The interface is a little difficult, as you have to click to move around a room. That's fine, but sometimes just trying to reach the door is a struggle, because it often takes multiple clicks. The game is strict when it comes to movement: you have to click on a precise spot on the screen to move your character around. Simply clicking somewhere in the general vicinity of where you want to move is not allowed. In fact, it took me an embarassingly long time to figure out how to even enter the house. The game starts you off at the gates to the manor, and I intuitively clicked on the house up front, but it wouldn't move me forward. At first I thought that I had to use some other means to move myself in the game, so I tried to find a manual (the 5$ version had none, and I couldn't find one online either). After giving up and beating all the campaigns in Heroes 3 of might and magic: Armageddon's Blade expansion pack instead, I eventually realized that I needed to click on the side of the screen, which took me to the fountain, and only then could I click on the house, which brought me to the door, which I then needed to click as well, in order to be rewarded with an annoying door opening animation. There is no way to skip the door animation as far as I can tell. The game has a lot of doors. This equals a lot of clicking and animating. It got tedious. Fast.

The puzzles as I said are hard, because like all adventure games, it is incredibly nonlinear and open. Some hints would have been nice. The UI makes it even more difficult. The game changes cursors when you can and cannot interact with an object. Due to the fact that you can NOT interact with most of the items in the game, its easy to miss things. I didn't even realize you could open drawers until I read the walkthrough. Even after I managed to open the drawers, I still missed key items inside certain ones. The game essentially forces you to go through every room with a fine tooth comb to make sure you didn't miss anything important. I guess this is standard fare in adventure games, but in Season 1 of Sam and Max, it didn't feel nearly as tedious and it was much more obvious what I could and could not interact with.

Even after picking up every item, you still have no clue where the hell to go. The game is divided up into "days", and you cannot advance to the next day until you have completed all the specific tasks for that day. I had hints turned on, and I still got zero guidance on what to do next. Every time I entered a new area in the game, I had no idea as to whether or not I was "done" there. Granted I suck at adventure games, but it feels like the game should have had a more logical flow to it. For example, after chatting on the phone with one of the other characters, he tells you its time to leave the house, but you insist on staying. At this point, you are supposed to exit the house through the front door to trigger a scene that progresses the game. But there is no real logical reason to exit the house, because you just spent the last few minutes arguing on the phone about wanting to stay inside and solve the mystery! One could easily have spent the entire time wandering around inside the house trying to figure out what to do next.

The story and atmosphere is the game's strongest plus. After I resorted to using the walkthrough, I still enjoyed playing through the game. It became like watching a movie at this point, since I realized it'd take forever to figure the damn thing out on my own. Sadly, the game was not as scary as I was hoping. Compared to Doom 3, or Clive Barker's Undying, or Call of Cthulhu, this game didn't really get my heart pumping. It does manage to set a chilling mood through its music and dreary atmosphere.



And there are plenty of Lovecraft references, from a copy of the Necronomicon in the study, the De Vermis Mysteriis in the chapel, and a painting of Cthulhu on the second floor, and any game that pays homage to my favorite horror author is good in my book. But the "boo" moments that are intended to scare the player seemed kind of cheesy to me: The game quickly switches to a cutscene and then a "bad guy" will pop out from nowhere. But the awkward switch to cutscene gives it away. This, combined with the grainy quality of the cutscenes and the cheezy accompanying music tend to cheapen the experience. Furthermore, not a whole lot actually happens during your stay. Its relatively uneventful, at least compared with other horror games. However, the story is what made this game worth it for me. And despite the Lovecraft references, this game is not a part of the Cthulhu mythos. It manages to mantain its own uniqueness. It is the tale about a man, James Blackwood, the original owner of the manor, who comes home from a trip to Africa and ends up suddenly murdering his wife of many years. Unravelling the mystery was a treat, and without giving away too much, suffice to say it is both tragic and chilling at the same time.

So all in all, this is a game that the averange adventure gamer will love. Most of the rest of the population, afflicted as it already is with ADD, will not. I bought the "Directors Cut" version, which added a new game, "The Last Visit", which takes place years later, and is told from the point of view of a reporter trying to figure out what happened. Its quite short , and features roughly two total puzzles (which of course I still needed the help of a walkthrough with). It doesn't really add much to the original storyline so I didn't really get much out of it. However, at 5 dollars, the game is worth it. Even if you just use a walkthrough, it is like reading a well written short story.