An absolutely astonishing point & click horror game that will probably scare the living hell out of you.
The story starts as any typical haunted house horror, you play as an horror author called Michael, which bought an abandoned house (Called Blackwood State) in search for inspiration for his next book. It starts with obvious cliches but the story suddenly becomes gripping and tense as soon as you find out the horrible events that occurred in the house and also when you start experiencing strange events. It's definetely interesting and there are many twists along the 10-20 hour experience so you never know what's causing the paranormal events around the house.
The gameplay is similar to Myst IV: Revelations, instead of clicking on still pictures you explore spheres (That are still static) allowing you to have a full 360° view of the environment. The puzzles aren't that hard but they are still fairly challenging. The inventory system is incredibly easy to use and there's little to no pixel hunting. However, due to the slow movement speed and long door animations the game's pacing can slow down to a crawl so it's for patient gamers only.
As for the audiovisual department it's truly top notch stuff. The soundtrack is haunting and it haves this touch of melancholy that makes it both scary and sad, the voice acting is fantastic and the sound effects are incredible to the point I was looking behind me all the time (Those scratches...). The lighting is fantastic, the spheres are full of detail and everything is extremely photorealistic. It's also worth mentioning that the game supports HD resolutions (Up to 720p).
Overall, if you like adventure games or horror in general this is a required purchase, it's super cheap nowadays and the atmosphere is incredible so give it a shot, it's too bad that Gamespot didn't like the game.