[PC] Fallout 2 (1998)

How:
Got during a Fallout series giveaway at GOG.com.

Pros:
- Limited items and money make resource management useful
- Well written and darkly fun dialogues
- Great graphics, fitting dark ambient / industrial music
- Lots of nonlinearity and side quests

Cons:
- Cumbersome and annoying inventory management
- Using items can be confusing, the "use" functionality is not always the correct way
- Brutal difficulty encourages save scumming
- NPCs keep getting in the way
- Several glitches and bugs

[PC] Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within (1995)

How:
Heard of it since Amiga times, got on GOG during a Halloween sale.
Pros:
- Relaxing gameplay, nice mysterious atmosphere
- Good acting with authentic German speakers
- Some nice puzzles
Cons:
- Many puzzles are just a matter of going back and forth talking to people
- Overly slow cutscenes
- Extremely tedious arcade sequences
- No subtitles
- Some aggravating pixel hunting
- Handwritten letters have keyboard-specific typos, completely ruins immersion

Ending scene, with my tiny 679/679 score in the top-right.

[PS3] Life is Strange (2015)

How:
Found by randomly browsing PSN, bought the season pass on a sale.
Pros:
- Very good graphics contribute to setting the mood
- Very fitting, moving soundtrack
- Great storyline and characters
- Several choices make for a very nonlinear game
Cons:
- Gives a misleading sense of urgency that doesn't allow to calmly explore
- Impossible to backtrack and visit locations as desired
- Camera handling can be a bit tedious
- Some distracting graphical glitches
- Gameplay is often just limited to watching the story unfold

[PC] Harvester (1996)

How:
Got in on GOG during a winter sale.
Pros:
- Multiple ways to do things, and optional paths
- Captivating story, cool endings
- Nice in-game videos
- Some nice puzzles
Cons:
- While you can type questions in dialogue, each NPC only understand specific keywords (e.g. you can not ask your brother about "dad"). Then it is useless, just keep all the keywords in the list.
- Lots of game glitches
- Uninspired, repetitive music
- Tedious action sequences that just consist in button smashing
- Some annoying pixel hunting

Might as well be taken from a Lynch movie

[PS2] Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga (2004)

How:
Just exploring the megaten series.
Pros:
- Cool idea of having fixed monsters as playing characters, removes much of the mess from having to invite and fuse enemy monsters
- Cool karma-branching evolution and downloading system
- Lots of different demons with unique animations
- Fights are never trivial and very dynamic, have to apply the right strategy depending on the strengths and weaknesses of the party and the enemy
- Lots of magic attacks, status ailments, items
- Nice story and cool, diversified environments
Cons:
- Very linear gameplay
- Horrible song
- Ugly English translation (especially Cielo, who speaks Jamaican slang)
- Some very tedious enemy-heavy maze parts especially towards the end
- Bad metal rock music
- Still quite grinding-heavy

The coolest demon in the game: ライジュウ, a wolf made of electricity.

Coolest boss: Vasuki.

The game ends with a blatant Matrix reference. I found it a bit annoying.

[PC] Fahrenheit (2005)

How:
Heard about it on Adventuregamers.com, and got at a Holiday sale on GOG.com.
Pros:
- Excellent voice acting and dialogues
- Well worth playing just for the story and the cinematic presentation; keeps you in front of the screen to see how the story unfolds
- Excellent animations
- Great original score by Angelo Badalamenti
- Cool multiple character interaction
- Some truly memorable sequences (e.g. the hypnotization sequence with Agatha)
- Some nice, dynamic, and well animated sequences (e.g. basketball one-on-one match, fighting on a ring, bugs attack)
Cons:
- Frustratingly irritating controls and camera movements
- Some very annoying arcade sequences
- Almost no puzzles at all
- One reaction sequence actually requires you to NOT do it correctly (interrogation scene in the office), but I only found out by reading a walkthrough after finishing the game
- Timed dialogue system is just annoying and gives you no time to ponder about choices; a true pity one cannot explore the whole dialogue tree
- Cannot explore all dialogue options, and some of them are ambiguous; picking the right or most informative answer is mostly chance

[Amiga][PC] Nippon Safes Inc. (1993)

How:
Played it on the Amiga several times as a kid, but never managed to finish it.
Pros:
- Excellent graphics and nice animations
- Overall a pleasant and relaxing adventure
- The Amiga version, although with no music, has simple sound effects which somehow help to establish the right adventurous mood
- The "Parallaction" system is actually nice: you play a parallel sequence of events from three different perspectives, with the characters interacting with each other
- Some nice puzzles
Cons:
- Pixel hunting needed in several occasions
- Few hot spots, and repetitive locations
- In-game jokes about the programmers and the game itself completely break the mood
- Not clear which places can be explored (e.g. in front of the prison at the beginning you can go left or right, but it all looks the same), can leap places by accident (this happens frequently)
- Not very intuitive interface, especially for combining objects
- Actions cannot be interrupted, plus path-finding is sometimes annoying
- Some graphical glitches and bugs
- Japanese language is used incorrectly
- Items have no description
- Some obtuse puzzles
- The PC version has some very annoying and distracting music, and no sound effects

The "Kinza" ticket is in fact a ticket for Ueno (上野).

Not surprisingly, this Italian game also features political references.
A statue of Andreotti is also appearing in the museum.

And this is where the title of the game comes from.

[Android] Layton Brothers: Mystery Room (2012)

How:
Heard about it on Adventuregamers.com. Found the demo on the Play Store and bought the game after playing the first two episodes.
Pros:
- Great, colorful graphics
- The 3D sections are simple yet very consistent and well integrated with the rest of the game
- Quirky characters
- Fun and addictive gameplay
- Nice background story
- Cool turn of events near the end
Cons:
- Apparently there is no penalty for making mistakes
- One long episode is suddenly interrupted specifically by the end of the second (purchased) episode package
- Pop-up messages are there until the very last episode
- Puzzles are often given away by excessive talk and hints
- Correct answers given at the wrong time are considered wrong
- Title is completely misleading

[PC] Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh (1996)

How:
Had as a Christmas gift by my brother from my GoG wishlist.
Pros:
- Cool music fitting the b-movie atmosphere
- The final part (the alien planet) is nice and more adventure-like
- Some cool cut-scenes, especially at the end (meeting the alien, etc.)
- Decent special effects
Cons:
- Dull story even for a b-movie
- Very unlikable characters, the main character in particular
- Boring and very repetitive gameplay, consisting on clicking on everything everywhere
- Very few puzzles
- Only 5 places to visit on the map

[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

[PC] Stupid Invaders (2000)

Pro:
- Grafica e colonna sonora brillanti (incluse animazioni e effetti sonori)
- Divertente e a tratti anche imbarazzante (in maniera spiritosa)
- Enigmi abbastanza semplici ma che danno soddisfazioni
- Si guidano quattro personaggi
- Ottimo doppiaggio
Contro:
- Pochi oggetti con cui interagire