Bruce, thanks for the review! I was lukewarm on this game, too, and wondered how others felts. Actually, I was looking forward to a big scare, and was delighted to be startled a few times. There were some areas of the house that frightened me when I had to explore them. But it is not a "monster" game in the same sense as Alien vs. Predator, and folks should not expect to be terrified by it.
Like you, I was put off by the linearity of play. I would investigate something, could not execute it (later learned because of the time issue), and then dismiss it as a possible branch of exploration. It took me a while to realize that I had to go BACK to things that had not worked before, in order to do these things when "it was time." I got bored with checking the phone just to see if it was time for more info to come from that source, and I got bored with going outside and walking all around the place to see if "it was time" to get into the other buildings or pick up some mail. Way too much senseless wandering around.
There were some pretty obscure things/actions to figure out. For instance, scratching on a small patch of wallpaper with a knife -- there are LOTS of walls to scratch on, how are you supposed to know you need to scratch it and where? This is a game where I had to resort to a WT several times in order to get unstuck, something that kind of spoils a game for me. Makes me feel like I cheated.
I enjoyed "Scratches" overall, though. It was clever, different, complex, and well done -- and it did NOT rely on any of the old game chiches such as 1) Mummies, 2) Druids, 3) Nazis, 4) Atlantis, 5) Aliens, 6) Secret Agents, 7) Robots, etc...... Definitely worth the price, given some of the less-than-stellar Adventure games out these days.
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