"Let me tell you about the worst adventure game I've ever played!"

Horrible - dreadful - boring - terrible interface - bad voice acting - dead graphics . . . do I need to go on?

No, I don't - but I will because it might make me feel better.

I bought this game with hope of a good scary game, as advertised on the box. I promptly loaded it up and started the game. You are greeted with the front of a Victorian manor with some clouds rolling by overhead. Get a good look, because it is one of the last real animations you will see besides the opening of doors. Everything else is still photos - now, to its credit, they are very nicely created and rendered. But still, they are very lifeless.

But, being used to games with still graphics (from FIVE years ago) I plodded ahead. I explored all the grounds to find three locked areas before entering the house. I went inside and explored every room I could, read the books and journals available. And then went to my bedroom and unpacked.

Now what!? Yes, that is when I realized that NOTHING was happening! Then I remembered something the instruction manual had said: "Call your friend Jerry OFTEN!" So I did, on the rotary phone in the entry. And that's when I realized what I was playing. See, SCRATCHES is all about EVENT TRIGGERING! That means, certain objects were unattainable until my friend Jerry told me about them - or until I found a photograph of them - or until I read a journal about them. What follows is a series of returning to the same places OVER AND OVER again hoping that THIS time the object you need will be there because you just triggered the EVENT that brings it into existence.

For example, early on I glanced inside a vase to find nothing. But after finding a photo a key hanging above that vase, I went back, and LO AND BEHOLD there was suddenly a key in there!

The WHOLE game is based on this concept. Even replaying it, you can't just go straight to the hidden key beneath the rug that you know is there, because your character doesn't know its there - so for all intents and purposes, it ISN'T there until you read the letter about it!

This has the effect of ruining the gameplay. It is no longer, as the manual suggests, trying to think logically and acting out what you might do in real life. Rather, it is an interactive movie and you get to click on certain objects between reading about them, and seeing a movie in which they are used!

Your character himself is a real moron. At first, he must call his friend at every turn - the lights don't work, call Jerry and he tells you to find a candle - so, search the house and don't find a candle, call Jerry to complain and he tells you to drive to town - the car won't start, call Jerry . . . you get the idea. Your character apparently cannot think for himself!

At one point, I found a key to a door and yet I could not use it because there was a key in the keyhole on the other side. I then went and found a BORING TOOL, yet I couldn't use it to poke the key out, because the game designers wanted me to put a newspaper under the door to try to catch the key, EVEN THOUGH I ALREADY HAD ANOTHER COPY OF IT THAT WOULD WORK FINE! See, this is the problem with a game that requires you to do EXACTLY what the programmers guessed you MIGHT do . . . if they were you!

The game had but one saving grace, a fairly spooky atmosphere. The music and story set this up nicely, and the two midnight nightmare sequences truly make your skin crawl (including two of the best "jump" scenes I've had in any horror game to date). But sadly, these good moments are seperated by a vast amount of boring pixel hunting and event triggering!

About thirty minutes into playing, I finally just printed out a walkthrough from the net and LITERALLY followed it step by step just to bring the game to a close. With this method, I finished it in about three hours. Not the most exciting game in the world, to be sure. But, I enjoyed the "story," . . . at least until the incomprehensible and cheap ending.

Well, they can't all be winners! Skip this turkey . . .

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 10/16/06