The isolation makes the imagination running wild, incredible atmosphere, you don't know what to expect.
In other games usually something disturbing is happening through all the game, something comes up once in a while to hit up the atmosphere and it's a good thing, but this game doesn't follow this idea. In Scratches nothing really happens for a very long time. You discover the plot, the story of the previous family which is interesting and mysterious but that's all. And then there comes the night and the noise, and you completely don't know what to expect. The other thing is that it's a 'point & click' game so you start to wonder what scary can happen in this kind of game. The funny thing is that something that would never move me in any other game (I'm a hard fan of survival horror games so I've been through a lot of things in my gaming life) here scared the hell out of me making me hide my face in my hands. I felt once again like a five year old girl secretly watching horror movie, a feeling I almost forgot burst out once again and just for that I give this game 3 additional score points.
That was the emotional part, but lets have a look at some technical aspects of the game.
The graphic is really nice, surrounding is realistic. You can go everywhere, spin around to check every corner, open almost all the drawers, have a closer look at all the painting in the house (some of them are really creepy, esp the one with two kids and lots of hands touching the window behind them). I cannot say a bad word about the way the game looks but if I didn't know the release date I would thought it's a game from few years ago. It's a bit old looking but we all know you don't judge the book by its cover (note that I don't have the Director's Cut version).
As for the sounds I was happy they weren't creepier. The worst sound in the game was no sound at all. During the first day you can hear some nice piece of music in the whole house but then you go to the basement and ...silence. After the second night it becomes more and more disturbing and in the peak moments I was regretting not turning it off. Still, I admit, it lacked diversity but what was there was good, not awesome, but at steady level.
Controls were ok but I didn't really like the spinning around form of exploring. I've tried to change it into steady screens but it seemed worse so I got used to the first option.
The story was really good, actually there were two kinds of stories alternating with each other. On the one hand you have the African worship, ancient gods and curses but on the other hand you have unstable sanity of the previous owner of the house. Till the last seconds of the game I was wondering whether the ending will have rational explanation or will it involve some supernatural powers, or should I say I was really hoping for something logical in the end. Through all the game the plot was constantly changing its overtone keeping my mood swinging from ungrounded anxiety to rational thinking. The ending was really good, but left me with too many questions cannot solve by myself.
Many people say it's boring, well it's probably one of those games you just love or hate. Personally I loved it, good story and good atmosphere, very creepy at times with very good ending, a bit too short but after some time I got so much into this game that I wanted to get out of this house right away so I'm kinda happy it's over but I absolutely don't regret the money and time I've spent on it.
Edit [06.02.2009]: It's been some time since I've been playing this game and I still cannot stop thinking about it, that's why I'm adding one more point to the score.