Simple but unique and intuitive mechanics, a story that remains constantly interesting and entertaining, and features vivid locations, expressive personality filled animations, and two of the best pets in the medium.

A puzzle mystery game where you wake up with no memories after having recently been killed only to witness an assassin threatening a woman near your body and discovering that you have developed special powers. These "ghost tricks" allow you jump between and manipulate objects, travel through phone lines to other locations, and to travel back in time four minutes after a person has died to change their fate which also allows you to speak with them in the past and once they are safe in the present. In one night you attempt to keep your potential friends and allies safe from a group of assassins, discover the truth about your powers and others who have gained similar abilities, and learn of a decade old event that ties together your former life, the police, and foreign spies.

Each stage has you using your ghost tricks to manipulate objects in a way that will effect the environment or people in the environment in a way that leads to you completing your goals. This can have you moving and manipulating objects to increase your reach allow you to jump into new things, manipulating lights or sounds to attract or distract people, leading a character through a dark room while avoiding assailants, or timing multiple interactions to create a particular sequence of events that will aid you. There are some new mechanics added over time but little gameplay wise changes over the course of the adventure. This can normally be a bad thing but each area is designed in a way where they are interesting and amusing to explore, the story that remains the highlight is allowed to progress quickly, and none of the events ever become overly cluttered, confusing, or tedious to deal with in a way that would detract from the enjoyment of the game and its strongest elements. The narrative over time explaining why certain thing can't or couldn't be done in a way that fits for the setting and often in ways that make more sense as more elements of the story reveal themselves.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1782596763070976441

A few years after the events of Mean Streets, Tex Murphy is hired by one of the wealthiest men in the world, the founder of the TerraForm Corporation, to track down his missing daughter as well as an item that he doesn't want anyone knowing about. The case takes Tex to locations in San Francisco, the jungles of South America, and to Mars.

Martian Memorandum removes the stranger aspects of the previous game, the side scrolling shooter segments and spending the majority of your time sitting in your speeder as it moves you to a destination, and makes updates common for the genre in the 90s. You no longer have to type in exact names to ask people about and have a list of everything you have discovered that can be clicked through. You now have more control and verb action buttons with different types of interactions as you explore a wider variety of locations, though with these changes now comes some moments of the worst pixel hunting I've seen often due to the grainy style of the environment and models.

Good voice acting, animation, and video clips and character portraits for the time. Dated now but still a decent adventure title.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1779720617178362134

Has the strong tactical gameplay and varied characters similar to Mimimi's previous games, with a new bafflingly terrible mission structure that starts to make the game a chore to complete.

Shadow Gambit takes the gameplay of Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3 to a new setting, this one focused on undead/cursed pirates fighting against a tyrannical order that is trying to destroy them and control the citizens of various islands. As a pirate looking to make a name for herself you free a captured sentient ship from the inquisition with the hope of finding the former Captain's hidden treasure. To do that you have to join forces with the ship, who has the ability to record events and move time back to those former spots, and revive her former crew in order to follow the clues left by the Captain.

In the base game there is a total of eight playable characters with an extra unlockable one if you reach 80% completion by doing different stage and character challenges. Each character has a slow or fast kill/knockout attack with their weapon of choice, a pistol that has one shot per map unless you find ammo, and usually two other abilities with often one of them changing to something else under certain conditions or when something else is in use. One of the more unique characters has the ability to possess other enemies and can then move them within a certain range of where he took over their bodies and he might gain some of their abilities, one character can grow a bush almost anywhere on the map to hide characters or enemy bodies, one has a cannon she can use to launch allies to distant places or that can be used to attack enemies, many characters have a item or animal partner that allows them to distract or lure enemies to a location. The crews various skills can pair together in useful ways and can allow you to handle locations in different ways. The characters are also likable and have their personalities brought out by their banter during gameplay, having some unique dialogue based on who is chosen to go on certain missions, story elements on your ship in between missions, and in the later game a mission or series of missions that focuses on some part of a character's backstory.

You play against the usual types of enemies the the genre has become known for having. You have the generic grunts that are easy to fool with distractions and traps, sentries that won't move or be distracted long from their set locations and line of sight, one that activates an alarm to summon reinforcements, a sniper with a longer and more quick to activate line of sight, a stronger types that requires multiple characters to take down, and in a new more setting unique enemy a pair of two enemies that need to be killed quickly before one revives the other. You have the helpful time stopping planning button found in their previous games that allows you to chain multiple actions together and the always nice to have fast forward button that Desperados 3 had so you aren't needlessly waiting around for enemies to get into certain positions or for alarms and alerts to end.

In this genre Shadow Gambit would be of the same excellent quality of the developers previous games, if not for suffering from one area that those previous games didn't struggle with.

The game unfortunately becomes something of a chore to finish, even more so with the DLC, due to the constant need to replay the same locations with little changes 3-5+ times. Even with the ability to bring a different set of crew members and to start and finish in different locations the repeated visits to the same maps is easily the worst part of this game. It's so bad you might get into a situation where you have to go to the same map 3+ times in a row. In Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3 a map was designed for the mission and character it was made for (Desperados 3 eventually giving modes where you could try different characters), the maps here are made to play for multiple missions where almost nothing changes except for the minor mission objective targets or the time of day (a much bigger change than just about anything the objectives will do). Many of the missions will focus on you really only needing to complete your objectives around a portion of the total location with you being able to pick from a few starting locations and exit locations once your tasks are complete. The problem with the approach is that it leads to some very short uninteresting missions in the worst times, but there is also the problem that they didn't necessarily spread out how those missions tend to limit themselves. You might play a mission that focus on a third of the map, only to find your next mission focuses on pretty much the same area of the map, then to find you have another mission on the island that now deals with 2/3s or the entire map that again will have you dealing with that same 1/3 all with the same enemy groupings and locations. There being a lot more playable characters and being able to take the 1-3 you want to each time does help to alleviate some of this problem, but it still ends up getting dull as you end up playing a lot more total missions than in Minimi's previous games, less interesting missions, much less challenging missions, and the types of enemies you are facing doesn't really expand as the game goes on.

The challenge badges for each map and crew member are a lazily handled mess where it is needlessly difficult to check your progress or what you have done on the revealed badges, the logbook is a mess that you can't even access for some reason while on the mission planning screen, some badges just don't seem to want to unlock when you complete them, and the challenges aren't all revealed until you complete the game. Because you really want to go back to that one map you just played six times, however many more times to try to hit a ridiculously high 80% badge completion rate to unlock a hidden character so you can play the same maps some more times with them.

Both sets of DLC adds a new character, giving you total of 11 playable characters with the additional unlockable one, one new location that will have three missions on it and three new missions on the older locations. The characters are both fun to use but the new islands tend to only have one mission on them that is actually interesting and the other three missions mean you will be going back to areas you've already played even more than you have to in the base game. If you are really playing the game a lot and see yourself frequently replaying missions or just really like having the varied characters then they are going to be worth getting just for that.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1779332521110691961
Video: https://youtu.be/l2mPhZSk5dc?si=kceIF0gjE0bhbcXe