[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] 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] Toonstruck (1996)

How:
Heard of it since forever, played it on ScummVM.
Pros:
- Great graphics, animations, and many funny cut-scenes
- The game manages to find a balance between cute/cartoony and downright odd/violent
- Excellent voice overs, fitting music and sound effects
- Well-balanced puzzles, many of which follow their own crazy logic but are nevertheless very fair
Cons:
- Dialogues tend to be too long
- The few hotspots per screen make the game easier than necessary
- The game starts abruptly with no apparent reason on why Lloyd is sucked in the cartoony world, and he accepts the fact naturally

The scarecrow scene in its "malevolant" version...

...reminds me of this scene from Emerald City Confidential (2009)

[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 II: Vohaul's Revenge (1987)

How:
Got with the Activion Quests sale at GOG.com.
Puzzles:
As in all Sierra games I played until now, I never cheated by setting game speed to "low" in any occasion.
Pros:
- Genuinely fun to play, with some funny scenes (hopping on the keyboard when miniaturized!) and funny commentary from the game itself
- Amusing ways to die
- Some quite challenging puzzles and red herrings
Cons:
- The parser does not improve much upon the previous episode
- Some illogical puzzles (give the Cubix Rube to the beast?)
- Not much of a plot
- Less climatic ending than in the previous episode (just push a button, enter a pod and sleep)

An amusing Alien reference - if you get kissed, a baby alien will eventually come out of your stomach!

Final score, and Alien ending!

[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.

[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)

[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.

[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.