Dunno, Scratches apparently has a reputation for being confusingly linear. Like, a key won't appear in a flower pot until you answer a phone call linear.

In my experience adventure games are the most awkward genre ever, especially when progress is determined by as weird and obscure factors as in Scratches (where your character won't do the obvious important thing as long as you haven't done something meaningless and unrelated first).

Also, lots of players (including me) seem to appreciate Thief's open level structure and frankly I haven't ever had any serious problems navigating them.

A walkthrough can help you find what to do in a point n click, very linear and straight forward.

In Thief, i go into a room, exit, go to another room. Hang on, i've just been there. Ok, lets try the other area. Hmm, nothing of interest there. Actually, here's a lever, but it does nothing. I jump to a higher level but there are no doors to open, it's just a balcony. Nothing i do, no matter how much i steal, or kill the guards, it just stays in the same level because i cannot find the main item in the level.

So frustrating to me.
Like Gazionks said, to each their own. But as Jefequeso wanted peoples honest opinion, i felt i needed to give mine. I saw Thief mentioned, and well, not good gaming memories from my own experience.

You wish. Answering a phone call is at least something obvious that attracts your attention. The sick stuff is that it becomes obvious for very early where look for the key but your character is too stupid to figure that out until he has seen like ten photographs that tell the key's whole biography since its birth up to the moment it fell into the pot. I hate the latter approach (and don't think it's necessarily realistic), not because of the backtracking but because it results in situations where it's not about figuring how to solve the riddle but what thing you need to do to make your dimwitted hero understand what he has to do (it's like trying to teach a complete moron: depressing). It's basically impossible to maintain some sort of consistency in how to "teach" your hero and usually you have to do things seemingly unrelated to the riddle.

Scratches is a nice, atmospheric, "abandoned house" horror adventure. The graphics still look decent today (if a bit outdated and, necessarily, static), the voice acting is adequate, and there are a few (not many) scares that are well executed. I found the story interesting and engaging, especially when you take the time to actually read the background material (journals and notes that can be found in the house).

What's not so good is the puzzle design. Some puzzles amount to extreme pixel hunting, some aren't very logical, and (as mentioned already) the game insists on playing through a sequence of events exactly in the order envisioned by the developer, which creates situations where an object simply isn't obtainable until you've done something else (even if you look at the place where it will appear later), or where an required action is futile until you've done some unrelated other action first.

That said, I'd still recommend it for the atmosphere and the writing. There are walkthroughs available that can get you through the more annoying parts of the puzzle design. Personally I've used a UHS help file, which worked very well.

I can't say anything about Thief though, still haven't played it.

I haven't played (much) of Thief, but I did play Scratches, and... honestly, it's not all that good. It's not bad, exactly, but I've played more horror-adventure games than I can count, and by comparison it was just mediocre in every respect. If you have any experience playing horror-adventure games you'll figure out the entire plot in about five minutes, at which point you're just going through the motions of solving sub-par puzzles and listening to snicker-worthy overdramatic voice acting.

You could do worse with a lazy afternoon, I suppose, but there are also much better games out there, even within the same genre.

Yeah, I don't really like the latter either, but it is "realistic" in a way that people usually don't pick up thrash they don't think they need :P

To be honest, you only need to see _one_ photograph to make the key appear, but it's admittedly a ridiculously well hidden photo, and that puzzle in particular seems to assume that players will spend dozens of hours hunting for obscure hotspots in dozens of screens. It's the puzzle that made me look for a walkthrough.

Hmm... that sounds rather frustrating. So often you're thinking in terms of how to trigger the correct sequence of scripted events rather than how to solve the puzzles?

Can I ask:

Is Alone in the Dark a New Nightmare good? I have the 1+2+3 pack and I am impressed with the vids I have seen so far and well you know my fixed camara survival horror fetish.

More like looking everywhere every time you do something and then checking if you can write some book or sleep.

But I am enjoying the atmosphere tremendously. I think I need to resort to some kind of walkthrough as well, though.

I know. I was exaggerating. But also after that puzzle I had the feeling that the whole game is badly designed (which is sad because the visuals and audio are amazing). I also don't like that you have to visit the same locations all the time and look for small details that have changed.

The whole "I don't need that" thing has always bothered me because of the conditionalness of it. It's like, okay you've stuck a ten foot pole, a rubber chicken, thirteen pounds of butter, and a shoe down your pants but you can't possibly conceive of why you'd need thumbtacks?

Indeed. It is still creepy, but not this intense creepiness that is Amnesia. In many ways it feels like reading a good horror story in terms of style of creepiness.