[PC] Cruise for a Corpse (1991)

How:
Heard about it since Amiga times.

Pros:
- Great graphics and smooth animations

Cons:
- Important items and characters appear and disappear depending on the time of day (e.g. searching someone's laundry yields a newspaper piece only after talking to the priest)
- Tons of useless and misleading items
- Some annoying pixel hunting
- Illogical puzzles
- Bad storytelling
- Annoying music
- Bad English translation

[PS4] Heavy Rain (2010)

How:
Heard of it on Adventuregamers, got on a PSN sale in a bundle with Detroit: Become Human.
Endings:
Saved the kid, the father, the FBI investigator; also had the FBI investigator die.
Pros:
- Excellent graphics and very immersive mood
- Cool FBI investigation mode
Cons:
- Terrible, awful controls
- Several gameplay and graphics glitches
- Annoying camera movement
- Gameplay is mostly reaction-based movie watching
- Too serious and self-aware tone

[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] Her Story (2015)

How:
Got on GOG during a summer sale.
Note:
I uncovered two knock-code messages (BYDHANNAN and LOVEU), but couldn't use them anywhere.
Pros:
- Nice FMV based gameplay, quite immersive
- Interesting investigation
Cons:
- The actress is not very good
- Very difficult to uncover all the tapes, you end up with trying random words

[PC] Thimbleweed Park (2017)

How:
Got from a friend's Humble Bundle.
Note:
I got the repair kit from the hotel room by exploiting a bug that would leave the door open, without having the ghost zap the electric lock.
Pros:
- Nice graphics
- Several references to classics in the form of puzzles (e.g. the sheet of paper flying away)
- High degree of (at least perceived) non-linearity
- Nice multi-character puzzle design
- Memorable clown character
- Too many red herrings
- Nice puzzles
Cons:
- Music doesn't loop well and is a bit repetitive
- The in-game radio is terribly annoying
- Unskippable dialogues
- Some unresolved threads

The navigator's head makes an appearance!

[PC] Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993)

How:
Got on GOG during a Halloween sale.
Pros:
- Good puzzles, not too easy
- Very nice graphics and animations
- Cool, captivating story
- Very good voice-overs
Cons:
- Music is not very fitting most of the times
- Some frustrating pixel hunting

My final score. I forgot reading the newspaper once.

[PC] Still Life 2 (2009)

How:
Got as a birthday present from my brother, via GOG.com.
Pros:
- Good voice-overs in general
- Fitting music
- Immersive and atmospheric
- Some nice puzzles
Cons:
- Several graphical glitches and game-breaking bugs
- Several audio glitches, such as music/voice imbalance during cut-scenes, broken loops, and broken fade-outs
- Speech can be interrupted only by pressing the space bar
- Camera movements are confusing and make you mess up constantly
- Some frustrating timed sequences
- Very repetitive setting

[PC] Still Life (2005)

How:
Played the demo when the game was out, bought it during Anuman Games sales at GOG.com.
Pros:
- All dialogues are recorded and readable through the in-game log
- Cool music and graphics, perfectly fitting the mood
- Several cinematic cut-scenes
- Nice story, keeps the interest high
- Excellent voice-overs
Cons:
- Dialogue trees are non-existent, you just keep clicking and the main character decides what to say
- Almost trivial puzzles, alternated with very obscure ones (e.g. the lockpicking puzzle)
- Very little items to interact with
- The investigative aspects are limited and concentrated in the initial part. What happened to the photo taking feature?

[PC] Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon (1994)

How:
Had the title in my head since forever, found and got it from GOG.com.
Pros:
- Cool sci-fi / noir atmosphere
- An interesting unfolding story of conspiracy and mystery
- Some nice puzzles, including optional ones
- Amusing dialogue system, where you get to choose a "way" of saying things rather than the specific sentence
Cons:
- The sloggy movements make me feel nauseous after a while
- The game takes a while to kick off (at least the entire Day 1)
- Commands can get frustrating, especially adjusting the motion speed with the mouse
- Basically the first 3 days take place in the same few locations
- A few time-based puzzles

An amusing Alien reference. The little beast here is referred to as a "geigger".

[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

[PC] Sam & Max Hit the Road (1993)

How:
Played the Amiga version but stopped due to loading times, played again the talkie CD version on ScummVM.
Pros:
- Excellent graphics and fluid animations
- Nice puzzles, moderately challenging
- Nice cut scenes
- Excellent voice-overs and dialogues
- A truly unique adventure with unforgettable characters and witty humor
- Some funny mini-games
Cons:
- The animated cut scenes are very sparse (I think only two in total)
- Some places are hard to see (e.g. the kitchen in the back of the bigfoot convention center)
- The crazy place with small doors and inverse gravity is an example of gratuitous madness, which I don't like (similar to the Isle of Wonder in King's Quest VI)

[Android] Detective Grimoire: Secret of the Swamp (2014)

How:
Found on Adventuregamers.com after looking for some nice Android games. Bought from the Play Store.
Pros:
- Outstanding voice acting and soundtrack
- Amazing artwork with fluid, cartoonish animations and high quality cut-scenes that are just a pleasure to look at
- Very likable characters with funny, smart dialogues
- Nice spooky setting
- A lot of attention to detail (e.g. different voice recordings for the same sentences, animated buttons, each character has some small peculiarity)
- Different puzzle mechanisms (e.g. construct deductions from sentence fragments) bring some change to the usual inventory-based puzzles
Cons:
- Too many interface gimmicks that do not get used in the end (e.g. count of suspicious facts for each character, notes, etc.)
- Rather short
- Very easy
- The liquid mini-game has always the same solution (i.e. green)

[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] Teenagent (1995)

How:
Got for free automatically in my GOG account when signing up.
Pros:
- Nice and moderately challenging puzzles
- Some good red herrings
- Very nice animations and pleasant graphics
- Very good sense of humor
- Fun setting and immediate gameplay
Cons:
- A couple of illogical puzzles (e.g. using a pinecone to create a dart, using a ribbon to straighten up fork prongs)
- The inventory tends to clutter up

[Amiga] Arazok's Tomb (1987)

How:
Found while randomly browsing my Gamebase Amiga collection.
Pros:
- Very good graphics
- Moderately challenging puzzles with lots of red herrings and limited inventory
- Cool fantasy/sci-fi hybrid setting
Cons:
- Rather short
- Many showstopping bugs (crashes, glitches)
- Many typos
- No dialogue
- The few speaking characters can be heard only via the optional synthesized speech, otherwise what they say is not reported on screen
- Confusing descriptions
- Weak parser
- Some annoying time-based puzzles (eating, drinking, fighting)
- Very weak and abrupt ending

[PC] Dark Parables: Rise of the Snow Queen (2011)

How:
Played the demo from BigFishGames after reading about it somewhere (possibly just browsing through the website after playing some Mystery Case Files episode).
Pros:
- Very nice in-game animations
- Voice acting
- Abundance of cut-scenes
- Generally better graphic quality with respect to previous episodes
- Story is somewhat interesting and connecting to previous episodes
Cons:
- Quality of cut-scenes is very inconsistent and generally mediocre
- Very similar to previous episodes of the series, with the usual arbitrary collection of medallions, shields and goblets to collect, statues to activate, and doors to open
- Graphics quality feels heterogeneous (e.g. some items are evidently re-painted photos, some characters are cartoony while others are more realistic)
- The children sound way too mature for their age (having a little child scream "Help, detective!" is quite unnatural)
- Very little variety in puzzles
- Voice-overs,  although abundant, are generally mediocre

[PC] Dark Parables: The Exiled Prince (2011)

How:
Tried the demo and liked it, bought it right away on BigFishGames.com, together with other two episodes.
Pros:
- Neat graphics
- Good pace and well integrated cutscenes
Cons:
- Heavy on the HOG side
- Overabundance of inventory items and collectables (jars, tiaras, potions, etc)
- A lot of backtracking
- Boring and repetitive music

[DS] Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (2005)

How:
Heard about it on adventuresplanet.it, got it for my girlfriend as soon as she got the console. Then, she heartily recommended it.
Pros:
- Awesome gameplay mixing visual novel storytelling and puzzle solving (especially the "extra" chapter, where you get to examine objects and use Luminol and fingerprint powder)
- Compelling, awesomely written story
- Great FM music
- Amazing characters with very strong features and dialogues
- Puzzles themselves are not difficult, but solving them feels highly rewarding
Cons:
- Too much white flashing during trials
- Must show evidence exactly when the game expects it, cannot forward-think too much
- Some unresponsiveness when doing things quickly
- Typos in the Italian translation
- Some awkward moments (Wright is constantly mocked by anybody for no evident reason, trials often lose focus and some arguments are very shaky) 

[PC] Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum (1991)

How:
Bought in a bundle together with the first one.
Pros:
- Moody sci-fi/noir setting
- Very nice atmosphere and presentation combining 2D graphics and FMV
- Gameplay improvements of the point and click sessions over the previous installment
- Investigation is always fun
- Addition of music is welcome
- Almost all characters have voiceover
Cons:
- Interrogating people involves repeatedly going through dialogue trees until you get the answer that doesn't piss them off
- Music is nice but very low quality
- Many possible dead ends
- The yellow descriptions over location backgrounds are hardly readable
- Some annoying arcade and trial&error parts (kill the snake, pass through the quicksands, ...)