You can never be sure about how something actually turns out in those YouTube videos. It could look perfectly fine in a video and actually be fairly nasty in real life. As I understand it, you're asking about brush painting? If so, have actually had pretty good luck with painting small details with the Vallejo Model Color, but I can't really say how it would look if I painted a larger piece with it since anything larger than a wire, switch, or knob I tend to airbrush these days...mostly because of the nice, thin, even paint layer you get with an airbrush. But, I have to say that I'm still not all that impressed with the durability of their paint. It rubs off and chips really easily. For most of my brush painting now, I have actually gone back to Model Master Enamels (which I still have quite a few of), and I love the little square bottles from Testors. They still make those and sell them at Hobby Lobby, and they're just like what you remember from the 80s. The great thing about those old-school enamel paints is that the paint thinner they use is completely harmless to my airbrushed paint work, since I almost exclusively use MRP lacquers for airbrushing now. You can brush the enamels on right over the top of it, and even remove unwanted enamel from it with paint thinner with absolutely no damage to the lacquer...you won't see the dreaded faint base color start to show up on the q-tip as you're cleaning up the unwanted enamel on top of it.
For airbrushing, if you ever use MRP, no clearcoat is needed prior to decals. I just put on clearcoat after decaling and weathering to give it an extra layer of protection and to give it the desired sheen. I build mostly military aircraft, so those are generally flat or semi-gloss.