[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

[PC] Fallout Shelter (2015)

How:
Was randomly browsing Microsoft Store free games.
Notes:
I didn't finish all available quests, but I'm basically unbeatable. I got 3 Mr. Handy's, almost all dwellers at max level, all available rooms, multiple dwellers on missions, all recipes.
Pros:
- Can get pretty addictive
- Nice post-apocalyptic setting
- Many customization possibilities for characters and vault
Cons:
- Almost no music at all
- Too much based on waiting
- Gets very repetitive after a while
- Enemies can get very tough if leveling is done the wrong way
- Unclear effect of endurance and level on game difficulty

Got Bottle & Cappy in a limited time quest.

[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] 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] Space Quest V: The Next Mutation (1993)

How:
Got with the Activision Quests sale at GOG.com.
Pros:
- Music and sound effects are much better than the previous episodes, and a pleasure to hear
- Very good graphics and animations
- Gameplay is relaxing and offers some variety. Even just sitting in the spaceship giving orders is fun and rewarding.
- You visit several locations
- Interesting, slowly unfolding story
- Cool comic-style cutscenes
- Nice puzzles
- Fewer dead ends and sudden deaths make the game much more enjoyable
- Cool climatic ending
Cons:
- You spend very limited time in each location

Alien references are my favorite!

[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.

[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, ...)

[FC] Lagrange Point (1991)

How:
Read a convincing review appearing on HG101 in a regular weekly update. Got interested by the space environment and by the introductory cut-scene.
Pros:
- Amazing music from start to end
- Nice playing characters to create a bond with
- Can choose among various human and robot characters for the roster, each having his/her/its peculiarities and role in the story
- Special moves (きめわざ) evolve (at least for the main character) and are fun to watch
- Many monsters
- Nice story and nice narration
- 武器合体!!! With each single weapon boasting its own graphical effect and sound when used
- Status ailments are not aggressive and annoying as usual
- Penalty for death is minimal, characters faint anyway beforehand
- Overall very enjoyable and friendly
Cons:
- Random encounters are way too frequent
- BP are annoying and useless
- An annoying graphical glitch on the border of the screen (which may be due to the emulation after all)
- The game can be beaten basically with just enough grinding without resorting to special moves and special items, which should have been rendered more essential for making progress