Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

The game that officially made me stop thinking "graphics don't matter" and admit to myself that I'm a sucker for good looks. I had heard about it a few times, but never bothered to check it out until I was watching the Game Awards 2015. Ori came up in the best art direction category, and they had that little video showing snippets of gameplay of the nominated games, the few seconds I saw of this were so beautiful, I was sold.

It was my first indie metroidvania, actually I think it was my first non-Metroid metroidvania. I didn't know what to expect, but if I made a list of things to expect, I'm pretty sure "sobbing within 10 minutes" wouldn't be one of them. This game instantly captured my heart, through virtue of its incredible art direction and soundtrack, and eventually it captured my mind too because the game itself is also great. It actually debuted at #10 on my list, that's how much I loved it, but over the years I've realized how little I enjoy replaying this game, in part because of just how memorable it is (it's kinda boring if I always remember everything!). That said, regardless of how much fun I have when going back to it, it doesn't change how special that first time was.

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Today's game I feel is more recognizable by its ambience than its soundtrack, though in this clip you get a glimpse of the music too.

One of the oldest gaming series that exists, is the adventure series Zork. This series started 1977 on a PDP and was 1980 transformed into the Zork series by the company founded for this purpose, Infocom. The games back then were text adventures, meaning everything was text, you typed in your command and on the screen was shown text that described the result. Zork was for the time an incredibly successful game (for the time) and Infocom was among the greatest gaming companies. But the failure of a Lotus Notes clone (which itself was overtaken by Excel later) and the introduction of graphical adventures by different companies led to financial trouble for Infocom, and it was taken over by Activision. Activision tried to make money of their Zork-franchise they've gotten through this aquisition and as a result developed Return to Zork.

Return to Zork was the first graphical adventure in the Zork series, but it was also very unique in it's way. For starters the game used real actors and integrated these videos instead of animated sprites. This was used by other games at the time, but Activision actually took care that these scenes meshed well with the painted backgrounds, so that the video captures don't stick out. They also had a very interesting point-and-click interface. They didn't follow the standard set by LucasArts (Indiana Jones/Monkey Island) and Sierra (Kings/Space quest/Larry) games, but instead opened a graphical menu if you clicked on any interactive element in the graphic. You also could 'hold' an item in your inventory and then click, and the menu offered a lot of ways to use the item on the interactive element. This way the game retained some of the depth of the text adventures (which allowed for a lot of interactive possibilities). This and humorous flashbacks to the older games in the series (like in the image above) was made to draw in old fans.

In difference to more puzzle oriented adventures, Return to Zork has a good cast of characters which you can interact with. There are a lot of communication options, including asking about photographs you've taken from different locations or characters, audiologs or places on the map. Additionally you have a magical orb and the wizard communicating through it has a lot of comments to different situations.

This game shows a lot of possibilities for developing an adventure, which I seldomly saw used in other games. It also has an interesting story, a variety of characters and brain-teasing puzzles. In this game you can die or make choices that lead to make the game unwinnable, but the game always instantly tells you that, so that you can go back to the last safe situation.

If you wanna play the game today, you can purchase it from GOG, play it in the browser at archive.org or reuse your old copy with DosBox. A fan of point-and-click adventures should possibly give it a try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx5F8zra5zs

Lol, but I'm not sure I know of a game with one of the Tolkien dwarf's names though.

Let me think, if Gandalf had a quest with a dwarf it must be either a protagonist named Gimli (from the quest in LotR itself), or Thorin, Balin, Gloin, Dwalin and all those others from the quest in The Hobbit instead. Wild stab; something like Warcraft has LotR inspired names, so maybe World of Warcraft?

Good guess! It is Ori and the Will of the Wisps  

#21

YoY: -1     My Rating: 9.3/10

The best game in the Trails of Cold Steel series (though not the best The Legend of Heroes game), the second installment was one of the few games I've ever rushed to buy the moment I finished the previous game in a series. I remember quite vividly watching the end credits to the first game, and immediately afterwards ordering the second game online. Can't say I regret that decision. This was the perfect follow-up to the first game, with a wonderful sense of escalation in the story, raising the stakes and eventually wrapping up many of the main plot threads from the first game while also setting up the next two games in the series.

I like the increased variety in the gameplay, especially when it comes to the battles as in addition to the normal combat, the game properly introduces mech combat as a significant element going forward, something the later games would further expand on. I've already talked about the rest of the Cold Steel games, so I'm starting to run out of things to say here. To put it simply, there's exactly two series of games I like more than Trails, and neither of those has as many games in my top 50 as it does. It's an excellent series of RPGs, and I'm already looking forward to playing the next entry.

Facepalm. The funny thing is, even though I never played that game I probably would have realized that would be it, had I written down some more dwarf names, but oh well.

#26 Resident Evil 2 Remake
- There’s more toilets this time round…
- …and a lot less variation when playing from the alternative perspective.
- The stalker is now more attentive and persistent…
- ...although he loses the element of surprise by making so much damn noise.
- And I’m not sure I can take him seriously with that little hat of his.
- You’ll take him seriously if you happen to be fighting him at the game’s end though

#23
- You can trust those little simians in the opening level, but after that they’re going to start attacking you.
- You visit five different locations in this game. The first and last are preset - you get to choose which order you visit the middle three in.
- The console version was less forgiving due to a different save system, and being unable to adjust the brightness of the visuals.
- Introduces new moves such as running and crawling.
- The fanbase tends to split the console games in this series into three distinct groupings. This is the third of six entries in one of these particular groupings.

#22 Resident Evil 4
- Wow, those birds are well armed and have serious bank.
- Don’t go shooting that large body of water - you’ll regret it.
- Marked a change in tone and gameplay mechanics for this particular series.

#21
- Not sure how all those birds have survived so long, seeing as water damages them.
- If you beat 7 lots of 7, you’ll experience heavy flooding.
- Finding and keeping track of one of the collectibles can be quite a task.

#19 (incorrect guesses - Final Fantasy XV, Final Fantasy IX)
- Initially started development as a spin off, before being changed into a main entry in the series.

- Like previous games, there’s more than one playable character, but you don’t get to pick who you play as here - you’ll have to control both in every play through.

My list so far

No new takers for these yet, time for some more.

20 - Some Magic Potion here, some Magic Potion there.
Hint 2: And then the AI adds some legions here, and some legions there.
Hint 3: It won't stop you from getting from your small village of indomitable people that still holds out against the invaders, all the way to the Alps though.
Hint 4: As you conquer region by region on your way there, be sure to conquer the seven regions that feature mini-games, because those are required for victory. Guessed by Darashiva - Astérix (Asterix: The Gallic War)

19 - This game features a couple recorders that are originally from another game.
Hint 2: It even features the same tune and the same effect when you use one.
Hint 3: The game calls them "Recorder", both in my game as in the original it comes from, but that's a translation error really which was common back then. It doesn't record anything, it's a flute, really.

17 - This game is technically a first person shooter, but because from one point on you'll only want to use a certain weapon and it gets to be more of a hack-and-slash instead.
Hint 2: This weapon is blue and glowing. It's very awesome. Guessed by drbunnig - Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

16 - Seem like a fairly big game, especially for its time, but really it only needs to take up to 60 minutes.
Hint 2: The Super Nintendo version though, doubled the limit to 120 minutes. Guessed by drbunnig - Prince of Persia

15 - The news ticker for some reason often talks about broccoli related stuff.