I didn’t think the games from the past were particularly good tbh, at least the ones I’m familiar with like Sam & Max, Monkey Island and Back to the Future. To me they’re pretty mediocre adventure games at best and I’ve never even finished them. In Sam & Max I got bored in ep 2 or 3, in Monkey Island I got bored in trial (well, really long before then but that’s when I finally gave up — ep 4?) and in Back to the Future I also got bored in ep 2 or 3. It was unsatisfying and boring in a way semi-contemporary releases like Syberia 1 & 2 weren’t.
Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us, by contrast, are quite decent entries in their genre. It sucks that they stuck almost completely to the same mold ever since but the interactive story concept was much better executed than the half-hearted adventureish straightjacket from before.