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2011年12月25日日曜日

[PC] The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge (2009)

Pros:
- A nicely hand-drawn, odd, humorous and dreamy adventure
- Very nice and fitting music
- Incredibly good, entertaining writing
Cons:
- Puzzles are mostly of the password and recipe types
- Music doesn't loop properly
- A bit too easy to lose the bearings
- No sound effects

2011年12月15日木曜日

2011年11月15日火曜日

[NES] Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom (1988)

Pros:
- Nice, colorful and pleasantly awkward
- A simple adventure with light dungeon crawling and RPG elements
- Finger wars!
Cons:
- Got to double-check and double-talk your way along the game
- Sometimes dialogues repeat even if key events already occurred

[PC] Yeti (2011)

How:
Came up on Adventuregamers.com and other indie websites, receiving enthusiastic reviews.

Pros:
- Short and fun
Cons:
- Too short, ends abruptly

2011年11月8日火曜日

[PC] Don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story (2011)

How:
Having enjoyed Digital: A Love Story quite a bit, I've been watching Christine Love's personal webpage waiting for some new game to come out, and it eventually did.

Pros:
- Long-lived, enticing, well-written
- Beautiful characters and backgrounds
- Nice, fitting music
- Love the messaging system
- Characters change their clothes!
- Ingame choices are important to how things evolve (my impression at least), and are not randomly posed
Cons:
- Music doesn't loop properly
- Event drawings (like the kiss scene) clash with the beautiful art
- Christine Love doesn't answer my messages

2011年11月5日土曜日

[PC] Sinking Island (2007)

How:
Enjoyed Syberia and Syberia 2 by B.Sokal, heard in many places about this and actually only heard negative things. Eventually a friend bought it and I borrowed it.

Pros:
- Great graphics for the most part
- Nice (even though not superb) music
- Pleasant PDA mechanics
- Good plot
Cons:
- Difficulty relies on pixel hunting and speaking everytime with everyone about everything
- Frequent graphic glitches
- Awful dubbing (played the Italian version)
- Unskippable dialogues and random events (eating, phone calls) are a pain in the ass
- Few, uninspired puzzles
- Gameplay is a matter of running around the tower searching for clues and characters
- Ugly animations
- Found it very difficult to relate with the main character

2011年10月29日土曜日

[Browser] Samorost (2003)

How:
Found out when looking for other games from Amanita Design after playing Machinarium.

Pros:
- Nice extravagant graphics
- Cute and fun
Cons:
- Very short

[PC] Dusk ~A Moonlight Romance~ (2011)

Pros:
- Nice drawings and nice graphic style
- Fitting music
- Interesting (if clichéd) plot
Cons:
- Just the first chapter, also smells like the following chapters will never get made
- No choices or gameplay whatsoever

2011年10月28日金曜日

[PC] Space Funeral (2010)

Pros:
- Very nice retro/punk/kitaroesque mood
- Incredibly fitting music
- Very funny dialogues and story (the Dracula part is especially amusing)
- A smart parody of the genre
Cons:
- Too easy, requires very minimal grinding so that one can safely ignore skills, items and weapons to finish the game
- Difficult to understand the map and possible directions of movement

2011年10月25日火曜日

[PC] deIz (2011)

Pros:
- Very nice art
- Nice characters and dialogues
- All the endings are pretty interesting and some are sexy
Cons:
- No music or sounds at all

2011年10月22日土曜日

[PC] Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer (2010)

Pros:
- Nice mood
Cons:
- Feels ripped (dialogues, graphics), pretentious (dialogues, music), finished quickly
- The torture mechanics sound interesting but end up being plain annoying

2011年10月15日土曜日

[PC] Jack Keane (2007)

Pros:
- A lengthy, fun adventure which is pleasant to the eye
- Beautiful scenery
- Nice music
- Nice, lighthearted mood overall with fun dialogues, likable characters and lots of humor
- Good voiceovers
- Nice puzzles with some red herrings
- You get to visit many places, and use two different characters
- Unexpectedly fun situations, e.g. you move Jack around on the ceiling completely naked covering his private parts and sneaking behind the bad guys with Amanda distracting them
- Climb up! Up! And up!
Cons:
- Even if simple enough, mouse control is unclear and glitchy
- Ugly inventory
- Some pixel (vertex?) hunting
- Animations have up's and down's
- It can be difficult to understand what locations are explorable, and instructing the character around with the camera moving can be a REAL pain
- Some movement glitches (e.g. when walking on stairs)
- Some buggy dialogues and inventory combinations, not taking into account past events, or preceding future ones
- Amanda somewhat lacks character, and that long coat doesn't fit her much 

2011年10月10日月曜日

[Browser] The Play (2011)


Pros:
- Fun and very well written, choices sound natural and link seamlessly with the story
- Nice IF system
Cons:
- Would have loved if it had some illustrations, as in a book

2011年10月9日日曜日

[PC] Technobabylon - Episodes 1-3 (2010-2011)


Pros:
- Very nice, consistent and colored graphics
- Interesting, logical puzzles
- Engaging plot and setting
- Different ways of going through dialogues make for different reactions
- The 2nd episode features some gore scenes
- Nice mini-games in the 3rd episode
- The 3rd episode introduces some interesting interactive movie-like scenes
- Very good quality in general
- Episodes length is just right
Cons:
- Would be perfect with more animations
- Music and sound effects are nice but too heterogeneous
- Some (few) times graphics quality worsens (e.g. the Trance zone in the 1st episode, the "beast" in the 2nd ep.)
- It would be the perfect series with just a couple of touches more

2011年10月7日金曜日

[NES] Uninvited (1989)


Pros:
- Nice music, consistent graphics
- Nice, creepy setting
- Atmosphere builds well
- Puzzles are not too difficult but there are many red herrings (many inventory items you never use, including one magic spell)
- A pleasant game overall
Cons:
- Maybe too easy, at least easier than Shadowgate, and shorter
- Moving the cursor with the directional pad is very impractical
- A couple of puzzles are a little bit illogical (a spider for the spirit?), even though they're not essential to complete the game
- There is a constant fear of being stuck at an unwinnable state (even though actually there is none that I'm aware of)

2011年10月6日木曜日

[FC] Final Fantasy II (1988)


Pros:
- The game opens right into the action!

- An emotional story shyly appears, we start to create bonds with characters
- Very nice music
- Nice graphics, animations improve on FF a little bit
- Many mysterious items, weapons, magic spells, armors
- A huge world, completely explorable since the beginning
- Many characters and monster types
- There is a dungeon in the belly of a Leviathan
Cons:
- The skill/leveling system is so much wrong, annoying, frustrating, deteriorating, and so much wrong
- The chocobo makes its appearance but is not much usable in practice (too distant, runs away after every ride)
- Quests are of the "chase the wild goose" type
- Random encounters are way too frequent
- The leveling system is so wrong
- Can't get rid of key inventory items once you've used them
- Too many trap doors
- Did I mention how wrong is the leveling system?

2011年9月25日日曜日

[PC] Arden's Vale (2011)


Pros:
- Beautiful sprites, backgrounds, animations
- Beautiful music
- Very good puzzles, additionally the game can be completed in two different ways (play them both!)
- Fun as only Monkey Island managed to be
- Every single interaction gives something!
Cons:
- Medium length is not enough!
- A foreground/background bug when opening the door to the castle

2011年9月24日土曜日

[PC] Barrier (2011)


Pros:
- Short, crazy and smart (e.g. give the flower to her)
- Actions change their meaning halfway
- The wacky dialogues, perhaps unintentionally, add fun to the fun
Cons:
- None that I can think of

[Browser] Rizzoli and Isles - The Masterpiece Murders (2011)


Pros:
- Nice backgrounds and graphics
- Taking blood samples and fingerprints has always been fun
- Direct and varied play mechanics
- Would make for a nice episodic series
Cons:
- A little too hurried in the end, would have made for a nice short game with just two times the playtime

2011年9月22日木曜日

[Browser] Symon (2011)


Pros:
- Nice, moody piano music
- Simple and pleasant
Cons:
- Four inventory puzzles and that's it

[PC] Tex Murphy: Mean Streets (1989)


Pros:
- A nice investigation game where taking notes is more than critical (and red herrings dominate!)
- A pleasantly clichéd cyberpunk dystopia that succeeds in capturing the player with its tangled plot
- Nice atmosphere overall with believable characters and a constant and dark (yet fitting) sense of humor
- Looking for clues, especially during interrogation, is fun and rewarding
- Alarms in the adventure parts (in the more classical sense) add a nice tension element to gameplay
Cons:
- Too much of the same, again and again
- The fighting scenes are totally useless and annoying
- No music
- Flight simulation totally out of place, or could have made for some memorable parts if better exploited
- While acceptable for the most part, graphics quality is very unbalanced and could be much better
- An incredibly frustrating arcade part in the end (running out of a door with the main character walking)
- Must talk with everybody about everything to get some particular clues
- Cannot save during the adventure parts, which contain unpredictable deaths and easily missable objects
- Many objects are never used and the verb "taste" is there just for fun
- Too much trial & error (e.g. bribe or threaten, pay Lee or wait for clues, push button or ignore it, etc.)
- Some implications are never revealed

2011年9月19日月曜日

[PC] The Unicated (2011)


Pros:
- Simple yet nice graphics
- Slightly innovative control system (the two mouse buttons control the two brothers separately)
- Very interesting control idea in the end part (the 2-buttons collaborative thing)
Cons:
- Very short

2011年9月8日木曜日

[NES] Shadowgate (1989)


Pros:
- Immersive scenario, faithful to its theme
- A decent variety of music
- Not so easy
Cons:
- The light torch thing is so much annoying and useless, it makes the game play like a pain
- Too much trial & error
- The "Leave" and "Close" actions are of no use
- Slow movements and actions due to the control via cursor
- Some illogical puzzles (e.g. cannot kill the wolf with a sword, must use the arrow)

2011年9月7日水曜日

[Amiga] Heimdall 2 (1994)


Pros:
- Beautiful graphics and animations
- Memorable plot and setting
- Difficult puzzles
- Many colorful places to visit
- It is an incredible pleasure to play this game
- The rune system is functional and fun
- Fights are difficult at the beginning but soon become part of the fun
- You can choose at any time among two characters
- Very good balance between adventure, RPG and arcade
- Hard and long-lived
Cons:
- Not much music
- Some dead-ends (e.g. by letting the wrong people die)

2011年8月31日水曜日

[Browser] No Place Like Home (2011)


Pros:
- Nice graphics
- Great mood
- Puzzles are not so easy
Cons:
- Not very responsive interface

2011年8月30日火曜日

2011年8月28日日曜日

[Browser] Bathos (2011)


Pros:
- Clever
- Nice pixel art
Cons:
- Just one puzzle
- You're gonna spend a lot of time on this

2011年8月10日水曜日

[PC] Heartland (Deluxe) (2009)


Pros:
- Neat graphics
- Dark mood
Cons:
- Extremely short. Make a full-length game like this and you're winner

[PC] [text] - A Summer Story (2009)


Pros:
- Nice backgrounds
- Very fluent
- Makes you want to explore the alternative endings
Cons:
- No background music
- Finding all the endings is very hard (with no reason)
- The idea of a mystery boy on the other side of the phone is very nice, but thrown away. Why not make a longer, better game with it?
- Very short

2011年7月31日日曜日

[PC] Chance of the Dead (2011)


Pros:
- Simple and fun
- Great presentation and great music, art and animations
Cons:
- Some objects in the inventory are never used

2011年7月27日水曜日

[PC] Dracula: Love Kills (2011)


Pro:
- Divertente spin-off ibrida adventure/hog del gioco originale, con alcuni riferimenti interessanti (es. il puzzle con gli angeli e i demoni che si incastrano)
- Ottime sia grafica che musica
- Ottimo doppiaggio (tranne Igor che è un po' ridicolo)
- Le parti di hog si incastrano abbastanza bene con il tutto
- Buon bilanciamento di puzzle (alcuni abbastanza difficili)
- Bella scelta di ambientazioni (Venezia, Lousiana, Londra, ...)
Contro:
- I puzzle alla fine sono quelli classici
- Un po' troppo guidato
- Non si capisce cosa cambia a mordere o no le ragazze

2011年7月23日土曜日

[PC] Dracula: Origin (2008)


Pro:
- Buon bilanciamento tra enigmi e puzzle
- Musica adatta e ben fatta
- Bel doppiaggio
- Un take classico di una storia classica, ma comunque gradevole
- Ambientazioni piuttosto riuscite anche grazie alla grafica molto curata
- Decenti sequenze video
- Abbastanza oscuro
Contro:
- Qualche glitch
- Qualche enigma un po' stupido (es. la sequenza di tubi per svuotare la botte di vino)
- Non si capiscono bene gli hotspot e dove è possibile spostare il personaggio
- Le animazioni dei personaggi sono quasi del tutto mancanti
- Un po' troppo facile e diretta

2011年7月19日火曜日

[PC] <3 (2011)


Pros:
- An interesting one-room adventure
- Excellent graphics as expected
Cons:
- Subpar animations
- Written text is difficult to read

2011年7月18日月曜日

[PC] Last Tuesday (2011)


Pros:
- If played in the right conditions, the atmosphere gets you
- Nice consistent graphics
Cons:
- There is no mystery to solve whatsoever
- The path to follow in order to get the different endings seems completely arbitrary

2011年7月12日火曜日

[PC] My Magical Cosplay Cafe (2011)


How:
Found on SakeVisual website after playing Ripples.

Pros:
- Nice drawings
- One very catchy song
- Nice for some light, easy-going gaming
- Nine different endings
Cons:
- Just a few scenes with heterogeneous graphics
- Way too much self-referential and smartass
- Starts well but ends up being silly, as if the developers quickly fed up

2011年6月27日月曜日

[Browser] Treadsylvania (2011)


Pros:
- Immediate and fast paced
Cons:
- Very simplistic, plays like an interactive ad

2011年5月27日金曜日

[PC] Ripples (2008)


Pros:
- Nice art and colors
- Fitting music
- A very pleasant short story
Cons:
- Some audio glitches
- Not a game

2011年4月11日月曜日

[Browser] Zee and the Alien Machine (2011)


Pros:
- Nice drawings and animations
- Not so easy
- Different endings
Cons:
- Control should be quick and handy, but it's easy to misclick

2011年4月10日日曜日

[PC] AlternativA (2010)


Pros:
- Neat graphics
- An interesting, moody dystopia
Cons:
- Ugly cutscenes
- The main character looks handicapped
- Dubbing is below average
- The humor present at parts doesn't fit at all with the general mood
- Puzzles are too immediate
- Death is very annoying and totally useless
- Art is sometimes ruined by a bad framing choice
- The plot is not totally clear and not fully explained in the end
- Some bugs

2011年4月6日水曜日

[PC] Digital: A Love Story (2010)


Pros:
- Very innovative
- Incredibly immersive
- The story runs smoothly and manages to surprise despite the (intentionally so) obsolete interface
Cons:
- Messages are received only upon (any) user action
- Full-screen mode would have been nice for a total immersion

2011年4月4日月曜日

[PC] Mystery Case Files: 13th Skull (2010)


Pros:
- Puzzles are well integrated and of average difficulty, making for a pretty casual long game (around 10-11 hours)
- Many human characters to interact with
- Excellent art and production (as always), with human actors well integrated into the environment
- Engaging mystery
Cons:
- The game tells you what needs to be done
- A handful of hints and objects are useless as they refer to the Collector's Edition
- Acting skills are sometimes dubious
- Dialogues are one-shot and there is not much of a choice
- A couple of ill-posed puzzles
- Many silly puzzles, e.g. dispose rubbish, make gumbo and look out for brushes and dusters for the housekeeper
- At times, the diary reveals facts that are still to be discovered

2011年4月1日金曜日

[PC] Death on Stage (2011)


Pros:
- Nice, consistent pixel art and animations
- Even if repetitive, the music fits well and is never boring
- Puzzles are simple yet fun
- A very good way to spend an hour
Cons:
- To stretch it a bit, some object interactions are missing
- It would have been nice to attend the final show

[PC] The Vacuum (2008)


Pros:
- Different endings which depend on both dialogue and action choices
- Reminds of 7 Days a Skeptic
- Very suggestive setting
- Control is quick and immediate
- Immersive
Cons:
- Foul-mouthed with no reason, irony is out of place
- Key animations are missing, even just a hint at an animation would have probably sufficed
- No music whatsoever
- Just a few puzzles, you just move back and forth following events
- Some glitches in the character movements
- Feels hurried. A much longer and deeper adventure could have been possible with just those locations and characters

2011年3月30日水曜日

[PC] Tales of Monkey Island - Episodes 1-5 (2009)


Pros:
- Very funny and likable
- Excellent dubbing
- Adventurous, intriguing story
- Excellent animations, facial expressions do their damn work
- Beautifully described characters
- Excellent music (as always)
- Excellent graphics and landscapes (as always)
- A plot full of twists, always keeps you wanting for more
Cons:
- Puzzles are very simple, although not trivial nor silly
- The movement system is incredibly unpractical and frustrating
- Some glitches, requires a good amount of computational resources to run fluently
- Too many recipe-like and map-like puzzles, too much arcade in the final segment

2011年2月21日月曜日

[PC] King's Quest 1: Quest for the Crown (SCI remake) (1990)


Pros:
- Average difficulty puzzles with different solutions
- Smart puzzles in a pleasantly clichéd fantasy setting
- Keeps the interest high nonetheless
Cons:
- Certain objects are never used
- Deaths and dead-ends are frequent
- It's very easy to die by misstepping over narrow paths

2011年2月18日金曜日

[PC] Jolly Rover (2010)


Pro:
- Spiritoso, smart, divertente e originale
- Avventura dinamica e rocambolesca
- Personaggi ben caratterizzati
- Gli elementi di casual gaming contribuiscono alla longevità
- Simpatica trovata del voodoo
- Enigmi ben calibrati
- Interessante sistema di hint in-game
- Bei disegni e animazioni
- Belle musiche
- Buon doppiaggio
Contro:
- Qualche volta la grafica degli sfondi cala un po' di qualità
- Trae ispirazione parecchio da Monkey Island

2011年1月27日木曜日

[FC] デジタル・デビル物語 女神転生 (1987)


Pro:
- La meccanica di gioco principale prevede di prendere alcuni mostri come alleati, ognuno con i suoi punti di forza e le sue magie
- I mostri si possono fondere tra di loro per crearne di nuovi
- Una volta capito il meccanismo e superate le prime difficoltà diventa divertente e strategico
- I mostri sono tanti e disegnati bene
- La possibilità di combattere in AUTO permette di sbrigare rapidamente la maggior parte degli scontri
- La morte non è permanente
- Le musiche non sono male, soprattutto quelle a fine gioco
Contro:
- Troppo difficile, senza soluzione (mappe, magie, oggetti, etc.) ci vorrebbe una vita per fare progressi
- Troppo lungo e ripetitivo
- I dungeon sono praticamente tutti uguali e poco interessanti
- La storia è raccontata per modo di dire, e a mozzichi

2011年1月24日月曜日

[Browser] Earl Grey and This Rupert Guy (2010)


Pro:
- Grafica carina e calzante
- Passatempo simpatico anche con un replay value dovuto a 8 semplici achievement
- Simpatica l'idea degli occhiali
Contro:
- Musica ripetitiva
- Pieno di bug
- Animazioni pessime che non rendono giustizia ai disegni

2011年1月23日日曜日

[PC] The Infinity String (2007)


Pro:
- Ottima grafica e musica (anche se la musica è presa in prestito da vari film)
- Belle ambientazioni e storia interessante
- Molto longevo
- Buoni enigmi
- Nel complesso non ha nulla da invidiare a molti giochi commerciali
Contro:
- Qualche bug
- Forse la storia è narrata un po' di fretta
- Si ispira un po' troppo ai grandi classici tipo The Dig

[PC] Which (2010)


Pros:
- Original visual effects
- Gorey
Cons:
- Slow, nauseating movements
- General lack of inspiration
- Could have been a much better game with a little more effort