I'd like to answer that, at least regarding Still Life (Post Mortem I only played the demo of). It's basically a game in which there are long passages of just walking between plot points - walk to A, recieve dialog, walk to B, recieve dialog, walk to C, etc. Compare that to, say, Broken Sword, wherein mostly everything is unlocked by first solving a puzzle or something - I think the puzzles in Still Life can be counted on two hands, max.
Now, this can be acceptable - I love the Phoenix Wright games for the DS (the fourth game being the exception) because they actually offer a well paced and interesting plots, even though they mostly consist of talking to characters and not solving things. "Interactive fiction" as it's called by some. The thing is, most of these new acclaimed AG:s aren't that interesting plot, character or setting wise. Still Life for instance has some good stuff in it concerning the killings and general plot, but is paced poorly with lots of reeeally boring passages and some puzzles that are just plain, shitty and illogical (for the setting) time wasters.
AG:s nowadays are too pretentious with their plots, thinking that they don't need anything else to be good. Grim Fandango (which you apparently didn't like) had puzzles, plot and characters that you actually cared about. I'd say the same about Monkey Island, Gabriel Knight and Broken Sword. That's thrice as much fun for the money.
/rant
