[PS4] Journey (2012)

How:
Got for free on PSN.
Pros:
- Very relaxing, smooth, not punishing gameplay
- Rewards exploration
- Cool companion system, didn't realize the others were human until the end of the game
Cons:
- A little too much on the poetic side for my tastes

[PC] Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (1986 remake) (1981)

How:
Got it on GOG during a winter sale.
Pros:
- Nice and odd mixture of first-person dungeon crawler, classical fantasy rpg, and space fighting sim
- Easy to get in and strangely addictive
- Big world
- Nice little side quests
Cons:
- Not always clear what must be done in order to proceed with the story
- The world has no memory, you can kill the king and go back and he'll be there again
- No music
- Being a magician is practically useless, and you must purchase a spell for each use
- Monsters (like the skeletons) tend to be goofy
- Experience levels are useless

My final character. I got two red gems simply by repeating a quest twice.
Also, I had 88 INT at some point, but went down to 36 for no reason.

"Wandering eyes" is basically a beholder.

[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