Actually I don’t count Tales. 
Maybe because Tales felt like a TV series and not like a “movie”…
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At the time Tales came out, I’d have played it even if it had been a puppet show 
. But yeah, that one aside, I never quite got to terms with the Telltale format either.
I liked Tales better when I played it recently (er, a couple of years ago) than back in… 2009? Probably mainly different expectations.
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I really liked Tales… I played it about a month before Return to Monkey Island came out, so that I had played them all before starting Return.
I think playing it without any expectation or hype helped, I enjoyed it a lot.
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I have no clue about any hype. I just lost interest in it around the trial iirc.
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I finally finished SpaceVenture…
Overall it felt like a series of mini-games and cutscenes, connected with something that was a bit like an adventure game.
By the second half, we pretty much get rid of the adventure game aspects entirely and so it moves purely between mini-games and cutscenes.
Making this a 2D game would have fixed a lot of the frustrating clunkiness of it, but I feel like the mini-game situation would have always been a problem, even if they’d released it on time a decade or so ago.
There’s a recent interview with Chris Pope about the development of it that I found interesting -
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This week, I started and finished Stellar Mess: The Princess Conundrum (aka part 1) and even posted an honest review on Steam.
And I’m (still) playing Brütal Legend.
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Started and finished (in 5 days): a game I’ve had in my library for so many years (10 apparently !) but never got around to even installing, Broken Age.
Beautiful in every aspect (visuals, animation, story, music, puzzles, characters, the voice acting…)
So glad I avoided any spoilers whatsoever for all those years and went into it completely unaware and ready to be surprised. (The only thing I heard was that people were angry with the game being in two parts when it came out or something. Obviously that is no longer an issue now. )
Some puzzles were hard, but never unfair.
Heartwarming and funny in all the right places (and initially shocking at times). I fell in love with this game after just a few minutes and never fell out of it again!
The only thing I did not like was the autosave and the confusing autosave question on manual save slots (I accidentally converted one to autosave but couldn’t find a way to undo that).
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It has been a while that I played the game (10 apparently 
), but AFAIR some of the puzzles later in the second part aren’t “good” or “logical” (though I wouldn’t say unfair).
But overall I liked the game too. The only thing that bugged me was the one-click interface: It made some of the puzzles easier than necessary.
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I really enjoyed Broken Age too, I think more so than Thimbleweed Park… TWP had better puzzles and I preferred the art style, but I found Broken Age funnier and thought it had a more interesting world and locations.
I think a common criticism was that the first part was too easy and the second part was too difficult. If I remember correctly, I think that was also my experience, but it didn’t spoil the game for me.
I think another criticism was that they reused too many locations from the first part in the second part.
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Yeah, if there was one thing that bugged me, then probably that. Other than that, it was one of the last boxed games I bought, and it had the Linux version on the DVD! What more could you want?
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(re)started and finished in about 50 minutes: No Rest For The Wicked (by @Guga)
I apparently had this installed last year in June and came across it cleaning up my hard drive, thinking: Did I ever finish this? (I now have the same for some of his other games: Where Wolf? and Nebraska Smith - I assume I finished them, as I seem to play them in chronological order, but can’t remember how they ended. For sure I haven’t played The Death of Fo-Gu yet)
Yeah, I think some were a bit too logical, which made them less fun. I spent a lot of time knowing what I wanted to do, but not how (especially with the robot wiring). On the other hand, I solved one of those on my first try (not by chance, but because I noticed the faint colors on the burn marks)
That didn’t bother me as much as it did in Return to Monkey Island. I think it helped to keep things fresh that you are playing another character and rediscover the same (but evolved) locations and interact with the characters from a totally different perspective .
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Last month I played Nier: Automata. It’s quite a good game, even if it has some weird Japanese game mechanics. Concretely, you finish the game and basically everything in it at level 50-60, but most of the post-game content is unattainable until probably at least level 80 if not straight up level 99. Luckily when you put it in easy you can tell if to auto-play fights, so I just let it run for a while all by itself in an area where enemies are always spawning.
I played it years ago before part 2 came out, which has led to me not having played part 2 yet. But I’m not angry about that.
I do recall some people being upset that it was a Double Fine adventure, which is what it was advertised as so I’m not sure why really.
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Then you should definitely play the entire game again. Both parts are fine, really. Must be why they called it Double Fine Adventure in the first place?
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Restarted (after years) and finished: Zak McKracken: Between Time and Space
I really wanted to like this game, but I did not enjoy it at all for the 20+ hours I struggled through and I would recommend any other Zak fan to not play it.
Why? Because it does everything wrong that the original “and the Alien Mindbenders” did right. (Yes even considering mazes and dead ends)
Story and writing : this is a fan sequel in the same universe so I was not expecting something equally original, but the worst part is that Zak felt completely out of character. Most of the time it felt I was playing Larry or a malicious Guybrush. Like the ending where you need to find a pink condom to have sex with Annie after having killed her husband?!
Sometimes Zak would use a person’s name before even having talked to them when looking at an object close by.
Some puzzles were spoiled because you can trigger a comment to the action you haven’t done yet.
Puzzles: I think I started it in “normal” mode years ago until I got to Paris, now I started in Hard mode. Maybe that enables a backwards puzzle setting for every puzzle, where a comment after a seemingly random action or combination of items explains why that has made you progress in the game in the least satisfying way. Most puzzles involve an item that is on the other side of the world, while there are perfectly fine (and more logical) alternatives close by - either in the non-interactive background or in with an item the game refuses you to use. The four or five puzzles where something clicks and you know what to do are too few and far between. Worse even, they are just not fun.
People who think the “what is” verb in Alien Mindbenders is pixel hunting have not played this game yet. Even though there is a hotspot highlighting (press Space) it is full of bugs showing things you cannot interact with, and vice versa. The darts and the cable are notoriously bad examples. In some other scenes there are things you can interact with that due to a bug (or crappy programming) do not even show on screen until you interact with them. Because what is even more fun than pixel hunting is blind pixel hunting, right?
In Alien Mindbenders, you can interact with items in different optional ways and about 20% of the puzzles have alternative solutions. In this game, I counted one puzzle with an alternative, that even impacts the ending! Unfortunately the game drops hints only for the solution that leads to the bad ending. And seeing that puzzle is in the first half of the game, I don’t want to replay from there again.
Interface: why would you go for an interface that adapts the available actions per object if most (or all) of the actions lead to some generic “I can’t do that?” (But usually longer so you have more text and speech to skip)?
Voice acting: some voices are fine, fortunately including the one of Zak, and the King with his Elvis impersonation and most of the female voices done by Leslie Edwards. But most voices were just annoyingly bad with over the top accents (and not in a funny way) that are transcribed with poor spelling. I get that the first version of the game did not have voice acting, so they had to sneak in some stereotypical pronunciation, but why zat ‘ad to stay in ze talkieeee versioon (as the French waiter would say) is just lazy.
It is telling if the cameo by Matthew Kane, David and Annie Fox is among the better acting.
Music: OK, I guess. But why would you recycle the crypt tune from Monkey Island 2 if you have much better suited Zak tunes to choose from?
Graphics: the stylistic break between 2D and 3D cutscenes is a bit jarring, but passable for a fan game.
Bugs: I had to load from an older savegame at one point because I could not solve one puzzle due to a bug. Characters disappearing until you talk with them again. This game feels like it was not play-tested nearly enough or they didn’t have the time and resources to fix the bugs.
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I played it when it came out back then, but I felt exactly the same! To me it looks like that they have tried to make a long game with a complex story and then struggled over the massive work.
I’m really curious about their Oak Island game - if it will be released eventually …
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Then you’re going to love this:
(Warning : spoilers ahead)
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Is this just a mockup or is it possible to play it?
It’s an animation demake, not playable
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