Machinarium (PC, 2009)

I will admit that I've never been a fan of point-and-click adventure games.  When I was a kid, I actually played a lot of them, but they were the ones developed by Humongous Entertainment.  That's right, the edutainment titles like Freddi Fish and Putt-Putt.  Years later I tried my hand at some of the more intelligent titles of the genre, like Shadowgate and King's Quest, but I always have the same problem with them:  they are too confusing and difficult.  Solutions to puzzles are often too specific and too surreal to solve, with the added problem of death being at every turn.  So I just figured the genre was not for me.  Until, that is, I played Machinarium (2009).
In this game, you play as the little robot Josef (named after the man who coined the word "robot").  He has just been dumped out by a garbage bot, and after reassembling himself, he returns to the robot city to find that three robots that used to bully him (as well as everyone else) are going to detonate a bomb on the tallest building in the city.  You find out later that this is actually Josef's home, and you must save it, as well as his girlfriend who has been taken prisoner and forced to cook for the bullies.
The story could have been more in-depth than it is, but the characters make up for it.  Each robot in the game is wonderfully drawn and has a unique personality, shown not through dialogue (of which, there is none in this game) but through appearance and behavior.  Josef, for example, is a weakling by nature, but he is clever and contemplative.  Whatever revenge he can get against his tormentors gives him not catharsis, but just indifference.  The bullies each have a different personality.  One of them is a portly bandit, who offers oafish laughter when he steals another bot's drum.  In your quest, you will come across many colorful characters.
True to adventure game style, these characters will have something that Josef needs to advance, but will only give it if you perform a favor for them first.  One robot is a walking wrench that you can use to drain a water tank (dumping it on the unsuspecting bullies below), but he wants you to get him a new radio before he'll lend his services.  When the bullies find you and toss you into a jail cell, your cellmate will let you borrow his extendable arms if you can make him a cigarette, which is a fabulous example of the game's greatest achievement, its puzzles.
Puzzles in Machinarium come in two different forms, whose that require item use and combination, and those that require clever manipulation of machine interfaces.  Sometimes you will have to do both.  In an early scene in the game, you must disguise yourself as a police bot to gain entrance to the city.  These bots wear a flashing cone hat and are taller than Josef.  Fortunately, Josef can stretch and contract, but needs to fashion himself a cap.  Another puzzle requires you to use a control panel to move a pipe that you can use to reach an object that you need.  All of the puzzles in this game are clever and will require a great deal of intelligence from the player.
Machinarium is a game that takes the tried-and-true templates of games past and perfects it.  The game is fun, smart, and beautiful.  All environments and characters are hand drawn and animated, giving this world of machines a feeling of life.  The art style reminds me of the dystopian world in Terry Gilliams' Brazil, with pipes and tubing running everywhere, a bureaucratic system that is not entirely practical (the same goes for the puzzles), however, the world of this game is much friendlier.  This is a game that will test your brain and get to your heart simultaneously.