Hm...high Polycount is good. BUT:

If you use, maybe 10.000 Polys or more, then you'll have a very slow game.
Good games like Half Life 2 (Cutscenes with Barney and others) have all low poly Chars. If you have a very good texture, then the polycount is not so important.

Try to use chars with max. 4500 polys. This is a very good polybudget.
The most games use not more then 3500. You can look at the page from Antony Ward. He's a freelance graphics designer in the gameindustrie. He makes 3d models for games, animations and many other things.

Here the link Antony Ward

Theres a Tutorial for making 3d models for games. I recommend to buy his book. Game character developing in Maya. (Maya PLE is also included)

Greets
Schmerzmittel


P.s. Wenn jemand interessiert ist am Modelieren von Characteren. Das Buch von Antony Ward ist nur wärmstens zu empfehlen. Ich habs mir gekauft, und meine Fähigkeiten bezüglich Organischer Models steigt jedesmal, wenn ich eine Figur anfange. Ihr bekommt wirklich alles erklärt. Bis ins kleinste Detail und das von einem PROFI aus der GAME-INDUSTRIE.

Guckt ihr HIER

(Sry for my bad english. I'm german )