I also think that "jumping" from camera to camera can be disorientating. In my opinion, this type of camera is unfit for games in which there is the possibility of fixed camera angles obscuring important objects in the environment. If the objects that you interact with are stationary then you can use fixed camera angles that take their position into consideration, but if the interactive objects move about then there will almost inevitably be times when important stuff is out of frame - very annoying!
Personally, even for adventure games, I prefer a standard third person camera that follows the PC and can be manually rotated around him. It's more immersive in my opinion; it draws the player into the environment. Barring this, an "on rails" camera would be my second choice.
For me, the ideal control/camera system for an adventure game would would mix camera orientated directional movement (pressing down would rotate the character to face the screen and move forward, pressing up would rotate the character to face away from the screen and move forward, etc), visual clues as to where interactive objects are in relation to the character (the turn of a character's head, the glow or sparkle of interactive objects, a hotkey to highlight interactive objects, textual tags, or some combination of these), and a camera that can be rotated around the character.
Personally, even for adventure games, I prefer a standard third person camera that follows the PC and can be manually rotated around him. It's more immersive in my opinion; it draws the player into the environment. Barring this, an "on rails" camera would be my second choice.
For me, the ideal control/camera system for an adventure game would would mix camera orientated directional movement (pressing down would rotate the character to face the screen and move forward, pressing up would rotate the character to face away from the screen and move forward, etc), visual clues as to where interactive objects are in relation to the character (the turn of a character's head, the glow or sparkle of interactive objects, a hotkey to highlight interactive objects, textual tags, or some combination of these), and a camera that can be rotated around the character.