Originally Posted By shadow9d9 (17 JUL 2006 5:07pm)

Originally Posted By Lady Kestrel (17 JUL 2006 4:45pm)
Shadow9d9,
You can put your spoilers in a spoiler box, like this:
Spoiler AlertHidden message here.
Just click the question mark above the reply box and type between the words.  To view it, just highlight the text.

Ah, never knew how to do that.  Thanks.

Originally Posted By Bazza (18 JUL 2006 6:46am)

Originally Posted By shadow9d9 (17 JUL 2006 5:07pm)

Originally Posted By Lady Kestrel (17 JUL 2006 4:45pm)
Shadow9d9,
You can put your spoilers in a spoiler box, like this:
Spoiler AlertHidden message here.
Just click the question mark above the reply box and type between the words.  To view it, just highlight the text.

Ah, never knew how to do that.  Thanks.

I didn't know at first either.. I worked it out for myself though based on logic.. Maybe thats why some people think finding the sander was a complete pixel hunting nightmare and others didn't.  Like me for instance!

Originally Posted By SirDave (18 JUL 2006 7:22pm)
Before I make any further comments, I want to make it perfectly clear that I have always had a lot of respect for the Scratches game- there were so many things that were done right. I'm just hoping that with future games some of the rough edges are smoothed over.

That said, the main broad problem I had with Scratches was the logic issue. The way I look at it, a game needs to keep the trust of the player. That is, that the player needs to have reasonable assurance that the logic of the common man/woman will be at play so that for instance, in the case of Scratches, searching of the house initially and the results of it are largely what a reasonable person doing certain things would expect. Things started off so nicely for me in the game and then, bang-bang-bang, I was hit by illogical results or lack thereof for my efforts such that I didn't feel that reasonable logic was at play, at least for me. Perhaps, it's partly my problem; I don't know for sure, but it seems that others felt the same way.

So, when I was led to believe that I should go to town for the candles only to find that the car was dead and then was told I should search the house (for the third time in my case) for them only to find they were never there to begin with and then I was told I couldn't go to bed until I found the source of the scratching, but when I did find it was downstairs, presumably in the basement, but for some inexplicable reason I couldn't now go down there, but could go back to bed, I got real frustrated, enough to give the challenge up indefinitely.

Originally Posted By Bazza (18 JUL 2006 6:46am)

Originally Posted By shadow9d9 (17 JUL 2006 5:07pm)

Originally Posted By Lady Kestrel (17 JUL 2006 4:45pm)
Shadow9d9,
You can put your spoilers in a spoiler box, like this:
Spoiler AlertHidden message here.
Just click the question mark above the reply box and type between the words.  To view it, just highlight the text.

Ah, never knew how to do that.  Thanks.

I didn't know at first either.. I worked it out for myself though based on logic.. Maybe thats why some people think finding the sander was a complete pixel hunting nightmare and others didn't.  Like me for instance!

Originally Posted By Susan (18 JUL 2006 10:03pm)
I guess I'm not seeing it.  I tried to see it and have read this thread over and over and over and over and delayed commenting until I had something to comment, but I'm still not seeing it.  I even thought this game was more logical than ones I had played in the past.  I only really got stuck on day 3 and many times found I had done something ahead of, or in a different order than, what the Nucleosys team "thought" players would do.  Playing the Nancy Drew games and making much use of Nancy's telephone I guess played into this game, as I got used to calling up Jerry a 2nd or 3rd time to make sure everything had been said.  You can click on all items in inventory with the magnifying glass to get a description of them, which provides an idea of what does what and can be used in other areas.


The flaws that were supposedly ommitted from reviews didn't appear as flaws to me when I was playing the game, so to me I see why they were ommitted, because to some people they didn't exist.  

Originally Posted By nytimesguy (18 JUL 2006 8:40pm)

Did you base it on logic, or on observation and experimentation, which is different.  Logic would be if you looked at the list of icons and said to yourself, logically the proper icon to indicate spoilers would be that question mark.  On the other hand, if you moused over each icon to see what they did, that was just observation and experimentation.  The latter is what is required in pixel hunting, which does not require much in the way of logic, for the most part (unless you pixel hunt in a specific area because logically you know something must be right there)..

Spoiler Alertwith spoiler content

Originally Posted By Terry Penrod (18 JUL 2006 11:51pm)
. Measuring the relative degree of difficulty however really is not all that subjective. It is done all the time by educators and testers at every level. So it should not be too hard to apply the same basic principles to interactive games for knowlegable people who understand the various levels of challenge presented in the genres they review and who have a realistic grasp of the average intelligence, aptitude and experience of the people that play those games.

Originally Posted By Ugur (19 JUL 2006 12:30am)
Regarding the night where you searched for the source of the noise... I remember eventually finding it and understanding I couldn't go to the basement. Sure, I'll definitely agree that it wasn't clear exactly what you had to do. But what are the options? It's the middle of the night, it's too dark to go into the basement, I have no other source of light. I can barely find my way around the house. The car is broken, I cannot leave. What's left to do? Go back to the room, try to go back to sleep and pray whatever is in the basement doesn't find a way out. It was ultimately the only thing that made sense to me.

Originally Posted By Bazza (19 JUL 2006 12:21am)

Originally Posted By Terry Penrod (18 JUL 2006 11:51pm)
.
Measuring the relative degree of difficulty however really is not all that subjective. It is done all the time by educators and testers at every level. So it should not be too hard to apply the same basic principles to interactive games for knowlegable people who understand the various levels of challenge presented in the genres they review and who have a realistic grasp of the average intelligence, aptitude and experience of the people that play those games.

So a single reviewer, not blessed with generations of research is supposed to grasp how other individuals think...

I've been on these boards for years and years and years and I still can't understand how some people think or what some people will find illogical or logical or easy or nightmarish or any other variant of difficulty you'd like to name.

Originally Posted By shadow9d9 (18 JUL 2006 10:27pm)
Well, anyone could review a game and claim the flaws never existed because they are so experienced, it didn't bother the... but if someone is reviewing on a site for other gamers to read and base their buying decisions upon, it would be prudent to point out these issues-such as the Runaway review here...

If the Scratches creators ignore the lack of direction/feedback, they will be down quite a few customers by next game... Not every potential buyer of the game will have as much experience as you in adventure games.. they, like us, will be turned off by such gameplay...

When review sites like this ignore mentioning these issues, they risk turning off potential newcomers to the genre... it only takes one bad game to sour people sometimes... example:  After being introduced to her first 1st person game-Riven, she was and remains completely turned off to all 1st person adventures... though she very much likes 3rd person adventures... you do the whole genre a disfavor just because you personally are experienced enough not to be bothered by a lack of feedback/etcetc...

Originally Posted By Bazza (19 JUL 2006 12:21am)

Originally Posted By Terry Penrod (18 JUL 2006 11:51pm)
. Measuring the relative degree of difficulty however really is not all that subjective. It is done all the time by educators and testers at every level. So it should not be too hard to apply the same basic principles to interactive games for knowlegable people who understand the various levels of challenge presented in the genres they review and who have a realistic grasp of the average intelligence, aptitude and experience of the people that play those games.

So a single reviewer, not blessed with generations of research is supposed to grasp how other individuals think...

I've been on these boards for years and years and years and I still can't understand how some people think or what some people will find illogical or logical or easy or nightmarish or any other variant of difficulty you'd like to name.

A review is just that; an opinion.  To declare that someone from Southeast Michigan; someone from Texas; and someone from Europe all had some secret, vested, interest in saving Adventure Gaming by writing a positive review for a game from England developed by an gentleman I don't even know is, at best, a bit of a reach.

Originally Posted By shed22 (22 JUL 2006 3:16am)
I guess I'll toss my two cents in here.  I've written a dozen or so reviews, and have played Scratches at least thrice so far.  I loved the game and would have reviewed as an 'A+' (I didn't review the game because Inferno's review was so brilliant that I didn't think I could improve upon it or even equal it.) In all my reviews, I state my opinion and then attempt to explain why I feel what I feel by using examples and some reasoning.  Most of the problems mentioned above were at least part of the game (Although not to the extremes that some have suggested.) but I didn't care.  I played the game; took notes for a review; played it again; and realized the few and very minor difficulties were simply not important.  The game's story, mood, atmoshere, graphics, playabilty, and the ending were of such quality that any little problems had no effect on the worth or enjoyability of the game. That would have been my opinion.  I probably would not have mentioned the minor glitches at all.

A review is just that; an opinion.  To declare that someone from Southeast Michigan; someone from Texas; and someone from Europe all had some secret, vested, interest in saving Adventure Gaming by writing a positive review for a game from England developed by an gentleman I don't even know is, at best, a bit of a reach.

Originally Posted By nytimesguy (22 JUL 2006 3:56pm)

One thing to note is that people who specialize in reviewing a specific genre are often extremely good at those games.  I play all sorts of games, and I don't play any of them as well as reviewers.  A reviewer will say, "this FPS was of moderate difficulty and I finished it in 10 hours" and I will die over and over and take 20 hours to finish.  A reviewer will say, "this strategy game lacks the necessary depth and can be easily beaten with a few basic techniques" and I won't be able to win a single battle.  A reviewer will say, "the puzzles in this adventure game are brain-dead simple" and I'll need a walkthrough for the entire thing.

So usually, in my experience, most reviewers have less trouble with games than I do.  So I take everything with a grain of salt.

But even though reviewers breeze through things I can't get by, I have also on occassions had no problem with something that a critic ranted about.  We all have particular skills, particular approaches and particular ways of looking at the world that will work with some challenges and not with others.

In terms of adventure games, some things I think should always be mentioned, like pixel hunting, because one can say objectively if a game has a lot of pixel hunting, even if people disagree about whether that's a bad thing.  Whether puzzles are logical is trickier, because some puzzles that strike me as illogical make perfect sense to other people.  Saying how difficult a game is is utterly impossible.  As for the theory that puzzle difficulty can be quantified, I would say, not if it's a good game.  If it's a bad game full of unoriginal puzzles then yes, you could give it a difficulty rating, but if the game asks you to think outside of the box, well, how do you measure the difficulty of thinking outside of the box?  I don't think acamedicians have "think outside the box" tests.  Even if they did, my box is not your box.

As for all critics seeming to overlook obvious flaws in a game, that's criticism.  I've seen dreadful movies I thought were terribly written and directed that received universally glowing reviews.  It's annoying, but it's just a part of life, like death, taxes and pixel hunting, that you have to learn to deal with.

Originally Posted By nytimesguy (22 JUL 2006 3:56pm)

 As for the theory that puzzle difficulty can be quantified, I would say, not if it's a good game.  If it's a bad game full of unoriginal puzzles then yes, you could give it a difficulty rating, but if the game asks you to think outside of the box, well, how do you measure the difficulty of thinking outside of the box?  I don't think acamedicians have "think outside the box" tests.  Even if they did, my box is not your box.