I so desperately want to like adventure games. I love the visual styles, I love the storytelling opportunities, but the idea of being defeated by an opaque puzzle infuriates me.
And yet even as I keep buying and playing the games, I am always disappointed.
I don't know what the future of adventure games looks like, but it definitely does not involve inane inventory "puzzles."
Revolution (Broken Sword, etc) tend to have fewer puzzles outside the context of the story than Lucas Arts (Monkey Island, etc).
Some of the modern groups have built some really good stuff. Try Resonance for a great brain fry, or Technobabylon, Gemini Rue, Shardlight, Cathy Rain for lighter noggin usage. IIRC telltales Sam and Max had fun story and humour while light on puzzles.
adventuregamers.com has a large library of reviews with a general scoring and som "good" and "bad" points. I've found their taste to be relevant enough to look at, while figuring out which good/bad to look for or avoid respectively.