[Amiga] Maniac Mansion (1987)

How:
Played as a kid on the Amiga.

Note:
Finished with Razor and Bernard.

Pros:
- Great, clean graphics
- Nice puzzles, some can be solved in multiple ways
- Relaxed mood

Cons:
- Walking dead scenarios
- Many red herrings

[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

[PS4] Catherine: Full Body (2019)

How:
Wanted more after finishing the first Catherine, got it on PSN during sales.
Endings:
- I got the Rin true ending.
- I got to Rapunzel stage 22.
Pros:
- Sympathetic and likable characters
- Cool setting and overall style
- A very good challenge with clever puzzles
- Tons of level variations with high replay value, including the new blocks and Remix mode
Cons:
- A bit too silly in the finale

[TV] Bandersnatch (2018)

How:
Found it on Netflix.
Pros:
- Very good shooting, player choices fit smoothly in
- Cool and authentic overall feel
Cons:
- A big conspiracy theory
- Unlikable actors
- Overall underwhelming

The Bandersnatch game is a first-person blobber!

[PC] Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice (1995)

How:
Read about it on magazines, got on a Black Friday sale at GOG.
Pros:
- Nice tense atmosphere throughout the entire game
- Old school graphics, with pre-rendered 3D animations and drawn backgrounds
- Some nice cutscenes
Cons:
- I skipped a cutscene because I did actions in a different order
- The monsters are laughable
- Very easy puzzles
- Rushed-up unfolding of the story, weak characters

The Necronomicon!

I found the first part of the code via trial and error. This broke some parts of the game.

[PS4] Root Letter (2016)

How:
Found on some youtube game review channel.
Notes:
I got 2 out of 5 endings.
Pros:
- Very nice graphics and compelling story
- The Phoenix Wright-like questioning part is fun
- Relaxing gameplay
Cons:
- Hardly any actual gameplay at all, freedom of movement and action is reduced to zero
- Max-mode is just trial and error
- As is often the case with visual novels, the protagonist is not a very likable person

You get to see 7 actual dishes from the city of Matsue.

[PC] I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1995)

How:
Read about it on videogame magazines at the time, bought it on GOG during a winter sale.
Pros:
- Very cool graphics
- Six different settings with cool story, cool characters, great dialogues, and nice puzzles
- Amazing mood overall
- Different ways to do things
- Very good voice-overs
Cons:
- Some glitches and dead ends. I had to resort to a walkthrough to get the correct sequence of actions to finish Garrister's episode (even though I did the same things on my own, but in a different order).
- Some showstopping bugs
- The MIDI soundtrack is a bit neutral

Cool Alien-ish prehistoric mood

[PS3] Beyond: Two Souls (2013)

How:
Read about it on Adventuregamers.
Pros:
- Stunning graphics and settings (snow, underwater, guerrilla, etc.)
- Engrossing and captivating storyline
- Diversified gameplay throughout the story, mixing different genres
Cons:
- Limited interaction, mostly just a matter of following instructions
- Some annoying timed reaction moments with confusing mechanics
- No puzzles
- 90% sad / depressing mood

[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

[PC] King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (1994)

How:

Got it from GOG during an Activision Quests sale.

Pros:

- Great animations and backgrounds
- Some nice puzzles
- Some nice settings (e.g. Ooga Booga)

Cons:

- Excruciatingly slow gameplay and animations
- No subtitles, with lots of badly recorded / over-the-lines voice acting
- Uninspired music

The goblin enjoying the romantic moment is amusing.

[PC] Papers, please (2013)

How:
Saw the trailer on GOG, got it from a friend in a Humble Bundle.
Pros:
- Great totalitarian / dystopian atmosphere
- Cool fitting music and sound effects
- Cool pixel graphics
- Nice gameplay, a mixture of puzzle gaming and casual time management
- The story is nicely injected
- Includes mini-quests and achievements (in the form of tokens)
Cons:
- Missing details can get quite frustrating
- Starts hard
- Some descriptions and tasks are not clear, had to find out by trial and error
- Easy to misclick

"Aspetta prendi il mio tesserino, prima che..."

[SFC] Clock Tower (1995)

How:
Heard of it after watching the Clock Tower 3 movie.
Endings:
I got 2 on my own, +1 by following a walkthrough.
Pros:
- Great creepy atmosphere and some scary moments
- Excellent graphics
- Fitting music, although quite repetitive
- Cool randomized events and visual scenes
Cons:
- Very few puzzles
- The outcome of puzzles depends on the order in which you do things (even examine things!)
- Some glitches
- The multiple endings are not really a matter of player choices, but sheer chance
- Annoying controls which make Jennifer difficult to maneuver in panic situations
- Some items get no description even though they can be selected

[PC] Fallout (1997)

How:
Got during a Fallout series giveaway (which means FREE!) at GOG.com.
Note:
I got lucky and got the alien blaster by chance quite early in the game.
Pros:
- Great isometric graphics
- Very cool atmoshpere, setting and lore
- Combat can be unforgiving, and detracts the player from pure grinding
- Well balanced economy, you never have too much money
- Nice turn-based combat system
- A limited but cool arsenal and set of items to use (including drugs)
- Cool lore
- Non-linear gameplay and quests
- A nice variety of death animations depending on the weapon used
Cons:
- Sometimes difficult to control in occluded areas
- Can't reach areas that the main character cannot see; this makes moving in towns very tedious
- Some possible walking dead situations
- Music is a bit forgettable
- Few side quests
- There is a lot of content which is never explored because of the unpredictable outcome of choices
- Carry weight is fairly limited
- Very few companions, with almost no control over them
- Some obscure puzzles (connect a radio to a computer in order to control force fields?)

[PC] Edna & Harvey: The Breakout (2008)

How:
Got during a Daedalic Adventures sale at GOG.com.
Pros:
- Incredible amount of interaction, the developers thought of everything and provided unique responses
- Very good voice-overs
- Nice humour
- Good puzzles
- Some nice cut-scenes (although too few)
- Nice game mechanics (tempomorphing and skills)
Cons:
- Some minor path finding glitches
- Some game breaking bugs in the English version
- Underwhelming finale

[PC] The Cat Lady (2012)

How:
Read about it on Adventuregamers.com, got with a Flash Deal discount at GOG.com
Pros:
- Excellent voice-overs
- Simple controls and immediate gameplay
- Captivating story with a deep meaning
- Simple but nice puzzles
- Very good dialogues
- Weird etherogeneous graphical / animation style, which surprisingly works
- Some jumpy moments
- Immersive mood
Cons:
- The rock songs kill the mood

[PC] The Whispered World (Special Edition) (2010)

How:
Read about it on Adventuregamers.com, got during a Daedalic sale at GOG.com.
Pros:
- Awesome background drawings and in-game animations
- Puzzles are quite clever in general
- Very nice music, although a bit monotonous
- Nice, relaxing mood for the most part
- Quite lengthy and adventurous
- Nice unconvential puzzles to be solved using Spot's transformed versions
Cons:
- No wide screen, a real pity
- Stuttering animations, usually at the beginning of each scene or location
- Glitchy sound in the dialogues
- A couple of annoying puzzles (e.g. move around rooms in the Asgil's city)
- The main character is unlikable, unhearable, and depressing for the most part of the game
- Some puzzles can be solved by accident, destroying continuity
- The clock puzzle in the oracle's hut was automatically solved for me without me asking for it
- Lots of pixel hunting
- Some game-breaking bugs (e.g. character stuck in the background, door does not open, etc.)
- The cinematic parts among chapters do not live up to the rest of the game

[PC] Primordia (2012)

How:
Heard about it on WadjetEye website, got during a Flash Deal at GOG.com.
Pros:
- Excellent voice overs, dialogues and writing
- Nice graphics
- Likable characters and humor
- Very good puzzles, some of which can be quite challenging
- Multiple puzzle solutions
- Fitting music (although very derivative of Blade Runner and the like)
- Cool atmosphere and deep in-game history
- An awesome audio scene in which you communicate via a radio transmitter with a voiceless robot named Gimbal
- A very engaging plot
- Some nice (although sparse) cut-scenes
Cons:
- Mediocre character animations
- Characters retain high resolution when they decrease in size, spoiling the old-school look & feel
- Awful final song (as usual with WadjetEye)

On our way to Metropol. Cut-scenes are nice, but short and rare.

[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] Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992)

How:
Played the PC (CD) version but never finished it, finally got to play it again with ScummVM amazing support for Amiga files.
Endings:
Out of the three possible paths, I finished the game in the "collaboration" mode (with Sophia), both bad and good ending.
Pros:
- Multiple ways to solve puzzles and multiple game modes increase the game's longevity noticeably
- Excellent graphics, animations, and fitting music
- Marvelous, immersive sense of adventure
- Just the right amount of comedy one would expect from an Indy movie
- Likable, well outlined characters with custom animations
- Nice, well-balanced puzzles
Cons:
- No sound effects in the Amiga version

In an attempt to make Sophia run away from the cage, I managed to trap a crab inside with her.

My final score after finishing it the first time on Team mode.

[PC] Deus Ex (2000)

How:
Played the demo when it came out after finishing Half-Life. Didn't like the game, expecting it to be a shooter, came back to it out of curiosity with a Steam sale.
Ending:
I played through all three endings.
Pros:
- Very cool graphics, just the kind I like
- Amazing music
- Very fine dystopic sci-fi story with surprising turns of events and cool characters
- Excellent voice-overs and acting for the most part
- Exploration is rewarded
- Game difficulty and length depend on the way it is played (stealth vs shooter)
- Taken in small doses, the game offers a unique, fun and rewarding experience
- Plenty of optional content and highly non-linear
- The game offers several possible ways to reach objectives and do things. For example, I couldn't enter an area due to a game-crashing bug, but I took an alternative (more difficult) path and still made it.
Cons:
- Several graphic (collisions) and sound (music / sound efx balance) glitches
- The game is extremely dark 90% of the time
- Ending cut-scenes are underwhelming
- Some conversations are not logged
- If you attack or otherwise damage a character and do not kill him, everyone instantly knows where you are
- Not many cut-scenes
- The game is excessively long, more like a game and its sequel
- Some showstopping bugs (I couldn't enter Canal Road in HK without losing all inventory and crashing the game - had to take the difficult path)
- Enemies do not give the alarm if they see a door opening, a dead fellow, or other suspicious events
- The game misjudges your behavior with no good reason. Some NPCs (Carter, Navarre) described me as a naturally born assassin even though I didn't kill anyone, but Navarre did as a consequence of me being spotted by the enemy.

One of the three endings. Here I merge with Helios AI.

My final skill set.

My final set of augmentations. I mostly used the subdermal radar transparency, silent running, and the spy drone. Auto-healing also helped in the final chapters.