The best I've found in recent times would be Secret Files : Tunguska ( which I suspect is one of the "german ones which lack what made the old adventures great" you referred to, and I will concede that it lacks finesse with plot, dialog and characterisation, and the humour is pretty base. )
A little older, Dreamfall:The Longest Journey was really good, good plot and characters, beautiful graphics, not really enough puzzles or difficult enough, but very enjoyable and pretty large.
And going back a little further still there was Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy which was really excellent in every respect, but perhaps wasn't "adventurey" enough for everyone.
When SamAndMax is available from TellTale ( I know it's out, but only through some Steam-Alike where you have to subscribe and when you stop subscribing you lose the games ) I will probably buy the whole package ( which I believe will cost $35 ) but I'm kinda not expecting too much from that either.
Broken Sword 4 was rubbish. Worse graphics than BS3, a weak plot, obscure puzzles, too short, the sheer lunacy of sidelining Nico, no chemistry between George and the new girl, lots and lots of bugs.
I think the short answer is that - unless it's a FPS or an RTS, publishers can't get the games on the shelves. You just have to look at Secret Files : Tunguska. It got rave reviews almost everywhere and yet you can't bloody find it in most game stores. My local Game™ bought one copy. To put that in context, it's a smallish town, but they can sell 250 copies of the new Gran Turismo or something like that in a single day.
I think what we need is for a few more niche publishers like The Adventure Game Company and Strategy First to get into the business, but it's a tough business and I wouldn't want to be the guy whose money was on the line for genre games like this.
A little older, Dreamfall:The Longest Journey was really good, good plot and characters, beautiful graphics, not really enough puzzles or difficult enough, but very enjoyable and pretty large.
And going back a little further still there was Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy which was really excellent in every respect, but perhaps wasn't "adventurey" enough for everyone.
When SamAndMax is available from TellTale ( I know it's out, but only through some Steam-Alike where you have to subscribe and when you stop subscribing you lose the games ) I will probably buy the whole package ( which I believe will cost $35 ) but I'm kinda not expecting too much from that either.
Broken Sword 4 was rubbish. Worse graphics than BS3, a weak plot, obscure puzzles, too short, the sheer lunacy of sidelining Nico, no chemistry between George and the new girl, lots and lots of bugs.
I think the short answer is that - unless it's a FPS or an RTS, publishers can't get the games on the shelves. You just have to look at Secret Files : Tunguska. It got rave reviews almost everywhere and yet you can't bloody find it in most game stores. My local Game™ bought one copy. To put that in context, it's a smallish town, but they can sell 250 copies of the new Gran Turismo or something like that in a single day.
I think what we need is for a few more niche publishers like The Adventure Game Company and Strategy First to get into the business, but it's a tough business and I wouldn't want to be the guy whose money was on the line for genre games like this.