Scratches

 PC
User Score
7.8

Generally favorable reviews- based on 64 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 41 out of 64
  2. Mixed: 14 out of 64
  3. Negative: 9 out of 64
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  1. Joe9999
    Aug 8, 2020
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. In this review, I won't go over gameplay except to explain that gameplay is broken up into discrete "game days" which must be completed in order to move the game forward. I also won't discuss the underlying story since there are many excellent reviews all over the Web that already do this.

    My focus here will be on why I feel Scratches is a highly overrated game and you should save your money.

    Scratches could have been a truly great and classic game, but it's a terrible game because of its gameplay.

    First the good. The story is pretty good. The graphics are well done. No it's not the photo realistic movie-quality we see today in 2020, but they were very good in 2006 for an adventure game. Also the audio is very good. The voice acting is decent too. The atmosphere and mood in the game is excellent. Very creepy feeling where the player feels alone and isolated. Finally the game offers multiple options for controls including standard slide-show (a.k.a. Myst and Riven style) or full 360 degree 3D panning at fixed nodes (a.k.a. Myst III style). Finally it has save anywhere which is always nice in a game.

    Based on these criteria alone I would rate Scratches a 4-star game for 2006. If the story was a little stronger or more epic I would rate it 5-stars.

    But unfortunately there's the bad gameplay...

    Scratches biggest fault is that inventory items and hot-spots behave differently depending upon arbitrary factors such as which "game day" it is or whether the player has done a close-up on some item at another location. Some examples are provided in the next paragraph.

    WARNING - SPOILERS IN NEXT PARAGRAPH.

    For example early on the player acquires matches and discovers logs in the fireplace in the Living Room, but the matches cannot be used on the logs until the start of Game Day 3 when the game designers decide it's "cold outside" and you can light the fireplace. If the player attempts to use the matches on the logs during Game Day 1 or 2, you get a message saying "I'm not a pyromaniac". Also there's a furnace in the basement. You need matches, lantern and oil in order to climb into the furnace and discover an important hidden passage. Although you acquire matches, a lantern and oil early in the game, the game designers do not allow you to use the lantern to enter the hidden passage in the furnace until the night between Day 2 and Day 3. I could give additional examples, but these make my point.

    END SPOILERS

    Well-done adventure games like Myst, Riven, Dark Fall and others ensured that hot-spots behaved the same throughout the game, and they allowed the player to use items on hot-spots as soon as the items entered the player's inventory. They did not arbitrarily disable hot-spots or inventory items based on artificial boundaries such as the "game day" or whether the player had done a close-up on something in another room.

    Scratches gameplay mechanics forced me to use a brute force approach to complete the game. Throughout the game I repeatedly had revisit each and every location many, many, many times to see if a new hot-spot appeared or to see if I could suddenly use an inventory item that hadn't worked before.

    Needless to say this was incredibly tedious and sucked all the fun out of playing Scratches.

    Save your money. Don't buy this game.    … Expand
  2. spydercanopus
    Apr 29, 2011
    3
    It's impossible without a walkthrough. Linear storyline in an open "world" means lots of wasted time looking stuff over and over. The story, voice acting, and especially the music are good, but this is just a terrible "game". It would be quite entertaining to watch it unfold as some veteran played through it. But the puzzles are too hard. You have to know what to do. I have two dozenIt's impossible without a walkthrough. Linear storyline in an open "world" means lots of wasted time looking stuff over and over. The story, voice acting, and especially the music are good, but this is just a terrible "game". It would be quite entertaining to watch it unfold as some veteran played through it. But the puzzles are too hard. You have to know what to do. I have two dozen items and a hundred interactive points. Mostly the puzzles don't make sense. But the music and sound effects are phenomenal. They are they only redeeming factors to give it two points. And story. That is three.… Expand
  3. kuehnau
    Aug 5, 2015
    0
    I've heard people rant and rave about this "horror game". It took me a long time to track down a physical copy of this stupid game and by the time I did get one... It didn't work. The game is old enough to have compatibility issues with new versions of windows, there's also a bug that I ran into the causes the game to crash every time.

    Technical issues withstanding, this game is not    I've heard people rant and rave about this "horror game". It took me a long time to track down a physical copy of this stupid game and by the time I did get one... It didn't work. The game is old enough to have compatibility issues with new versions of windows, there's also a bug that I ran into the causes the game to crash every time.

    Technical issues withstanding, this game is not only slowly paced, but completely uneventful. I am a huge horror fan, but I came into this expecting some sort of actual horror game, instead it's really just a writer walking around being freaked out.

    In the end, the game writers left it up to you to draw your own conclusion if there was actually anything paranormal or if it was all just in your character's head, which frankly, is lazy writing no matter how you try to defend it.

    Contrived, slow, stupid, poor writing, bad pacing, outdated. This game isn't worth any sort of time investment.    … Expand
  4. [Anonymous]
    Jun 4, 2006
    4
    Story was good, but the game itself put me to sleep. Endless clicking with little reward. If you're going to make me click 300 times to accomplish a goal, at least give me some cool cutscene. There were only 2 of those by the way...intro and ending. This should have been a book rather than a game.
  5. ChrisArnone
    Mar 5, 2007
    3
    The problems start right up front with poor production values. The supposedly 'huge' Victorian mansion really isn't so huge, and the graphics are sub-par, especially for computer games. All the voice actors sound like Californians pretending to be British or Brits too concerned with using real British colloquialisms on Americans. The mood of the game is good and dark,The problems start right up front with poor production values. The supposedly 'huge' Victorian mansion really isn't so huge, and the graphics are sub-par, especially for computer games. All the voice actors sound like Californians pretending to be British or Brits too concerned with using real British colloquialisms on Americans. The mood of the game is good and dark, though not really creepy, not nearly so as Fatal Frame 2, for instance. There is very little reward for solving puzzles and half the time you spend wandering aimlessly or talking on the phone just to advance the story. The ending is anticlimactic. Go after the Shivers series if you want a good, creepy 1st person puzzle game.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

59
#59 Most Discussed PC Game of 2006
62
#62 Most Shared PC Game of 2006

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
67

Mixed or average reviews - based on 18 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 18
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 18
  3. Negative: 3 out of 18
  1. GameZone
    74
    It's the standard point-and-click adventure/horror/mystery game that has been around for years. The ability to look around to several different areas of the same area is a welcomed feature but results in some problems in moving to different areas in the game.
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  2. IGN
    77
    If you're an adventure gaming veteran, especially if you like the horror / creepy / gothic-type atmosphere, then Scratches is for you. It's a solid game although a bit on the short side as you may be able to get through it in less than a day.
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  3. Gamer 2.0
    54
    It's got some nice touches, but in the end, it's too buggy, too cliched, and too uninteresting to come to the head of its class.
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