Just a few more comments ;)

Sadly, I too know some people that snore really loudly ;) But only 2 of them are so extreme cases that could have any chance to cancel out a noise of an electric saw (please remember that the game is set in 1984 and tools were extremely noisy back then). My point is that we can somehow justify this whole sequence but there is no way anyone could have hatched such a plan. "Oh my, what to do, what to do... this saw is too loud! Wait! I know! I'll give a book to this guy. It'll clearly put him into sleep, no doubt about it! And just look at him, just look! I bet he snores like hell! That's exactly what I need!"

I wasn't concerned about the priest's IQ but this other guy who can run a complicated smuggling operations but cannot recognize that somebody else is hearing his confessions. I mean, please, the whole idea of confession is to hear each other so there is no way he wouldn't recognize Ord.

I think you don't remember the passport issue correctly - it was a fake passport so Ord didn't know this name at all! It was only Anna that told him it's Peter after seeing the photo. The only justification Ord gave was "it was the only Swedish passport". That's still far-fetched to me.

And yeah, Blackwell was sometimes too much point & clicky too. Especially with those clichés like coin as a screwdriver or getting a key from the other side of a door.

I'm not trying to find plot holes when I'm playing a game because that ruins my fun. But in some cases (sadly a lot of them in The Samaritan Paradox) I can't miss them even if I wanted. Maybe it's not about additional RAM but because my mind is and always was very analytic. And my scientific career makes it only worse ;) My job as a physicist is to analyze samples and find new information about them that are not obvious from the very first look on them so it's becoming a second nature to me ;)

Clearly, you are suffering from a case of déformation professionnelle! I'm certain that you are very good at your job but it seems the constant spotting of deviations in lab samples is affecting the way you review games, focusing a teeny bit too much on the seemingly out of place or negative things. You didn't even mention the excellent soundtrack the game has, it's one of its strongest selling points. When the game switched to Freya's perspective, the music immediately helps to create a very different mood from dreary cold Sweden. Did you listen to the bonus tracks? This soundtrack is one of the few I downloaded and listen to from time to time.

I agree with you that many of the puzzles were not serious but I think you're trying to see this too much as a 100% serious game. Keep in mind that this is a Swedish game and the Swedes often mix dark elements with humor in their stories, even if it seems oddly out of place to another culture's sensitivities. One of my favorite example is that one scene in "As Good as it Gets" where the protagonist watches a beautiful rabbit hopping through the snow and that sight lifts his depressed mood. And then, bam! Someone shoots the rabbit dead, just like that. It's darkly comical and what I believe to be typical Swedish humor.
So to come back to The Samaritan Paradox, just because the story has mostly serious elements and some rather dark ones too doesn't mean there can't be any classic p & c wackiness to balance things out. I enjoyed the goat milk puzzle very much, just as an example. But even in the non-fantasy world with Ord I didn't think of any puzzles being too out of place, and the power saw puzzle made me smile. It's not any more wacky than Indy extracting information from a parrot in Fate of Atlantis. Since you replayed that game recently, you'll surely remember quite a few puzzles in there that are just as point & clicky and not entirely serious either, despite the fact that the story contains Nazis and other serious stuff. If Fate of Atlantis can mix serious and wacky, why not let an indie (not Indy) game do so, too?

Well, I'm not musicophil so a soundtrack rarely gets my attention. I don't think I ever talk about music in my reviews.

So now we will discuss what's serious and what's not? ;) IMHO Indiana Jones is not serious. It's just set in serious times (Nazi) but it doesn't address those serious problems. The main scope of the game is a fictional vision of Atlantis not Nazi rising in power. So for me it's a fictional wacky game. But even so I was still surprised (in a bad way that is) that an archaeologist doesn't know the name of Lost Dialogue of Plato and has to ask a parrot about it. That was too silly even for a wacky game.

For the Samaritan Paradox I don't see a reason why should treat it as a wacky game? I didn't assume that it would be 100% serious game, heck I didn't assume anything because I didn't even read what's the game all about before playing it so I had no idea what to expect. But the game was discussing a lot of serious problems. Sure it got more lighthearted during "chapter parts" and I have nothing against it! I really enjoyed puzzles there even if they were slightly silly.

When we studied Plato in philosophy class, I had to laugh because I was remembering this exact scene but when the teacher asked me what was so funny, I didn't bother explaining that I had already learned everything from a parrot... I don't think anyone would have gotten the reference. First of all, no one played games to begin with and half of everyone was asleep during that class so there went a perfectly decent opportunity for an inside joke. In the class next door that would have worked because the guy I borrowed Fate of Atlantis from sat in there. He was the same age as me but had fallen back a year, possibly due to playing more games than studying. Interesting how everything ties together in this Universe.

I don't know the game writer's intention but I think it was intentional to have most of the game as a more or less classic point & click game - that makes the ending much more bizarre and dramatic in contrast, it certainly weirded me out as I expected nothing of the sort.

EDIT: I don't see it as a wacky game, just not entirely serious. Same as pretty much every serious but not entirely serious p&c from the 90s

Finished Arkham asylum's story mode, as well as the riddles.

Finished up Project Diva 2nd. Passed all but one song on extreme, and that one I had a hard time passing on normal and hard. Tried it on extreme and just had to laugh at the impossibility of it. Lives up to the difficulty at least.

Anyway, Project Diva 2nd is a big improvement over the first in every way. More interesting gameplay, better song selection, more costumes, better method of unlocking said costumes, and more.

I might keep playing for a bit longer to unlock all the costumes and get better scores, but I think its more likely I'll move on to the next game.

As far as the grinding, that's pretty much how this genre goes. Level up, get gear, repeat. That said, I wasn't terribly impressed with Torchlight either. Diablo 1 & 2 were amazing, I personally loved Sacred 1 & 2, Path of Exile has its issues but is solid. But Torchlight just felt boring and soulless to me.

I grew up with Diablo 1, bought Diablo 2 on release and enjoyed a lot of Titan Quest, so I know this genre, but all those games gave me a fun time while Torchlight was just meh. Nox is one of my favourites.
The blood doesn't make the graphics less childish, the story is forgettable, the graphical effects are massive distractions and cause slowdowns, etc... The only good thing about this game is the excellent soundtrack. Torchlight's music is the most Diablo1-like soundtrack I've ever encountered.

Yep, boring and soulless overall.
Sacred may be weird in some aspects but at least it has personality.

A funny German youtube girl called Torchlight "Diablo's cute little sister and somehow like Diablo but less epic" and somehow that's fitting.
She tries so hard to be like her big brother, that she's just like an absurd version of it and should be something entirely different, because it's not really her.

Dear Esther (WinXP) (...since I still don't have an nvidia card and ATI drivers for Linux are crap)

Now I know why so many people say it's no game.
It's not really a first person visual novel either, but closer to that for sure.

It's... sad... but very beautiful.
I enjoyed the experience though I had to play twice through 3/4 of it because nowhere is a clue, that you can actually save and load the "game" with F6 and F7.
I'd recommend it.

Full list:
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2014/post695

You guys are not alone. I hated Torchlight and really have a hard time understanding why anyone likes it. (And I played it to completion too.)

It has a lot of game systems, but they all amount to the dullest game I've ever played.

When GOG gave the game away, I refused to nab it, because I don't want that stinker on my shelf.

I just finished Spycraft: The Great Game. It really was. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it as I'm not the biggest adventure game fan. Superficially it's like a point-and-click adventure, but the shear amount of content and system designs forced me to concentrate, to role-play as a spy to complete it. There's a lot of information to sift through, and I wrote down a lot of notes. There were some quirks with the user interface in trying to get to a particular article or file, which is important since more than 60% of the time you're playing someone using a computer. I had to resort to a guide for the photo doctoring sequence, although it only partly helped as I did some things differently from the author and it worked anyway. Also surprising was the end of the credits which said Thorn will return in Spycraft II. Reminded me of the end of Shogo promising that the Shogo chronicles will continue. Anyhoo, I highly recommend it.

Ha! Glad to see I'm not alone, although in all fairness there are worse games out there, for example Space Hack which manages to be even duller than Torchlight. I played Torchlight almost to the very end but I had to quit Space Hack after one hour, it was that bad.
I keep buying action RPGs to appease Diablo cravings but there isn't really anything that does the trick for me.
Playing Titan Quest right now and it's definitely a much better experience than Torchlight but I'm still completely unimpressed by it, not sure if I even want to finish it.

I didn't start loving torchlight until I started playing Hardcore/Ironman. Otherwise it's like playing Dungeons of Dredmor without permadeath - quite dull with no sense of danger.

We are at least five, then! ;)
Torchlight is one of the few GOG purchases I regretted. Yes, you read it well: I am actually one of the few who bought it! XD
The game in indeed extremely dull, lacking any kind of variation, art style charm and sense of purpose. In one word: "flat".
I had to put it down after a first, rushed playthrough. Following the death of the last boss, I immediately uninstalled it and never even thought to replay it.
I seriously could not suffer it any more!

You know there is also The Chest after the Cathedral and something after that in Rebirth i guess.