GameSpot lies to you.
Scratches casts you as the sucessful horror writer Michael Arthrate, who has just bought an old Victorian mansion with the money from his debut novel. Hes is suprised to find the house in varying levels of disrepair throughout. The electricity doesn't work, the third floor of the house still seems to be under construction, and a thick layer of dust covers everything. You proceed to wander the house, reading diaries, letters, etc., and pretty much invading the privacy of the previous inhabitants of the house in true adventure-game fashion. Of course, since the plot is the most important part of any adventure game, I can't say too much more about the story, but this game can get pretty creepy in places, and has a great story, even if it does take a couple of play-throughs to understand.
Scratches does nothing new in the interface department. The Myst-style 360 degree panorama is used here, and the inventory is reached with a right click, but the graphics are very well done. The whole mansion realy FEELS old, like it's been uninhabited for years, yet there are a few odd signs of life in the house that make you feel a little wierd, like someone else is there besides you. A grandfather clock, still wound up and ticking after many years alone, an umbrella in the vase beside it. It's little touches like these that keep you on your toes.
That's not to say that Scratches is a masterpiece. While it's a GOOD game, it's not GREAT. Notable problems are the near-complete lack of logic-based puzzles, and almost no non-inventory puzzles. The puzzles are very easy, and the game can be completed in just a few sittings. For those of us with slower computers, there is a noticable load time between every screen. While it's not enough to kill the game, it does get a bit annoying. The games biggest problem is the very hard to understand story. It will take you several times through the game to understand what's going on. On my first time through the game, I thought something completely different from what was really going on was happening. The notes may as well be written in code, with the characters talking about "their sins" or "secrets" but never, through the entire game, revealing what thoose "sins" or "secrets" are. Once again, tyhis does not kill the game, but it means that there is a lot of guesswork involved in figuring out the story
All in all Scratches is a good first outing from Nucleosys. I look forward to seeing more out of them.