Sierra was definitely a seal of quality for a time, like Blizzard, Disney or Nintendo-- anything they produced was going to be very well polished and even if it wasn't your thing, you could tell it was a solid product.

Adventure games died for a while, but there are some good ones that have come out since the 90s. The Shivah captured a lot of the humor of the genre but with a distinctly Jewish flavor, and I found The Cat Lady to be far more captivating than Gabriel Knight or Phantasmagoria.