[Browser] Radio Silence: Survivors (2014)

How:
Part of the Point and Click Jam (read about it on Gnome's Lair).
URL:
GameJolt link
Pros:
- Cool retro graphics and nice setting
Cons:
- Very short and inconclusive

[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] Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers (CD-ROM version) (1992)

How:
Got with the Activision Quests sale at GOG.com.
Pros:
- Very nice graphics and animations, the best of the series so far (as much as I love EGA)
- Amusing idea of time-traveling across the previous and future episodes of the game
Cons:
- The high-pitched music can get quite annoying
- Cannot have voice and subtitles at the same time, had to play with no voiceover
- Two out of five possible actions have no use whatsoever
- Several frustrating trial-and-error arcade sequences
- Not many puzzles and not many locations to visit, the story just drives along on its own

You can visit SQIII if you input the correct code - which I did on my first random code trial!

My final score. This time I didn't play the Astro Chicken game in the arcade.

[PC] Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon (1989)

How:
Got with the Activision Quests sale at GOG.com.
Pros:
- Very nice, consistent graphics and smooth animations
- Nice, rewarding puzzles as usual
- Less dead ends than previous installments
- Nice mood and some tense moments (e.g. fighting with the killer robot)
- Amusing close-ups and cut-scenes
Cons:
- Very abrupt ending, passed from a score of 308 to 598 in a matter of minutes
- Many unused inventory items
- I finished the game without playing Astro Chicken and thus without deciphering the help message within the game. This means I solved puzzles blindly without any clue regarding the plot (except for what I gathered from the manual).

My final score. This time I had absolutely no idea what I missed before reading a walkthrough.

The mini-game you get to play at the burger place...

...looks strangely similar to Joe Galaxy (Italian comic).

[PC] Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter (1986)

How:
Never played the game before, got during the Activision Quests sale at GOG.com.
Puzzles:
I only had to look up one puzzle, namely how to get the shard of glass from the crashed pod. I did have the idea of taking glass from there, but couldn't find any. It turns out that it only works if you examine the pod from behind (not from the side).
Pros:
- The command-line based interface is a favorite of mine
- Red herrings and moderately challenging puzzles make the game very satisfying to beat
- Amusing ways to die and optional puzzles (e.g. buying the wrong spaceship)
- The unfolding story remains fascinating, as simple as it is
- Likable main character
- Nice, tense escape moments
Cons:
- Some random, unpredictable deaths
- Parser is not so smart

Getting the maximum possible amount of buckazoids at the slot matchine.

My final score. Will I ever finish a Sierra game with the maximum score?
Basically I didn't talk to and kiss the Sarien guard this time around.

[PC88] Cosmic Soldier (1985)

How:
Found about this game after reading of Psychic War on the レトロゲームの塔 blog.
Pros:
- Nice setting
- The character leveling system is mildly interesting
- You can recruit allies among the enemies
- Generally well balanced, requires some strategy
- Nice variety of monsters
- The accompanying android idea is not bad
Cons:
- No music at all
- The few sound effects are unpleasant
- Requires a considerable amount of grinding
- Junk shops are totally useless
- Limited variety of weapons and armors, and no special attacks whatsoever
- Very limited and repetitive gameplay mechanics
- Only one save slot per party
- Very high encounter rate
- Ugly interface, the game could have looked much better with a bigger first-person view

My winning party. This must have been my fourth or fifth party overall.

The End. All playing characters and enemy sprites are seen dancing with pom-poms as if nothing ever happened.

[PC] Gemini Rue (2011)

How:
Got with the Bundle-in-a-Box Adventure bundle.
Pros:
- Excellent graphics and music, reminiscent of Beneath a Steel Sky and Blade Runner
- Rather lengthy (took me about one day from start to end)
- Very nice puzzles, including terminal-based investigation
- Memorable setting and writing
- Addictive gameplay, amazing story and turn of events
- Very likable characters
- A lot of cool scripted cutscenes
Cons:
- A few interface glitches
- The action sequences can be frustrating (very akin to the first Tex Murphy games)

Comparisons:

Tex Murphy: Mean Streets (1989)

Gemini Rue (2011)

[PC] Quantumnauts (2010)

How:
Bought both Quantumnauts games from the official website after playing Oz Orwell.
Note:
Played the Italian version.
Pros:
- Nice puzzles
- Nice story and setting
- Cut-scenes have good quality
- I have a weak spot for this graphical style
- Some cool situations (e.g. the talking statues near the end)
- Gameplay never gets boring or monotonous
- Some red herrings
- The game actually manages to get funny once the player realizes it is meant to be a comedy
Cons:
- Many typos and grammatical errors even in the original language (Italian)
- Text is too small and difficult to read
- The main character often stands in front of interactive objects, must move him away all the time
- Animations are not smooth at all
- No sound effects
- Some annoying pixel hunting (e.g. the crack in the cave)
- Very slow navigation
- Missing descriptions with most actions
- Humor is sometimes out of place

[PC] The Rail (2012)

How:
Got with the AGS Bake Sale.
Pros:
- Excellent graphics and animations
- Nice setting
- Good puzzles
Cons:
- Music and sound effects are barely audible
- A couple of graphical glitches
- Too bad it's so short

[PC] Spaceman in Space (2012)

How:
Got to know about it by following Francisco Gonzales on Twitter, downloaded it when he announced the release.
Pros:
- Amusing little comedy with moderately challenging puzzles
- Very nice graphics and animations
- Humorous sound effects (all made by voice, for example when the spaceman walks he says "left-right-left-right...")

[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] 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, ...)

[Browser] Wentworth (2012)

How:
Came up in Adventuregamers.com monthly free adventures feature. Was convinced in playing it since it's from the same people behind the Reemus series of adventures.

Pros:
- Nice light adventure in a funny setting
- Fun puzzles, mostly based on using the right magic spell on the right object, which feels good
- Greatly animated
- Neat and fitting music
Cons:
- A somewhat confusing premise

[PC] Egress - The test of STS-417 (2011)

Pros:
- Very nice graphics and music
- Very smart final revelation, putting the player under judgement
- Compelling from start till end
Cons:
- Very short
- A little mistake in the final dialogue tree will lead you to restart
- Just a few puzzles, which are also a bit annoying
- Events (such as walking) are too slow

[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

[Browser] Samorost (2003)

How:
Found out when looking for other games from Amanita Design after playing Machinarium.

Pros:
- Nice extravagant graphics
- Cute and fun
Cons:
- Very short

[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

[PC] Machinarium (2009)

Pro:
- Grafica, animazioni e musica stupende
- Enigmi e mini-game divertenti e non troppo semplici
- Storia semplice e simpatica
- Incredibile attenzione al dettaglio
Contro:
- Troppo corto
- A volte l'interfaccia è poco responsiva

[PC] Putt-Putt goes to the Moon (1993)

Pro:
- Grafica e animazioni ottime
- Simpatico e innocente
- Contiene tanti mini-giochi da provare anche solo per le animazioni e i colori
Contro:
- Solo per bambini

[Amiga][PC] Universe (1994)

Pro:
- Belli scenari e in generale ottima grafica
- Musica d'ambiente molto curata
- Storia con un gran potenziale
Contro:
- Sistema delle azioni ridondante e confusionario
- Impossibile simpatizzare con i personaggi che si incontrano visto che non ci sono mai
- Gli enigmi, di per sè interessanti, diventano difficili a causa del sistema di controllo mal ragionato
- Troppe parti arcade, semplicemente frustranti
- Dialoghi bacati e senza una scelta effettiva
- E' difficile spostare il personaggio nello scenario, spesso si blocca o prende la strada sbagliata
- Un paio di bug possono rendere impossibile il proseguimento