I guess from all adventures i've played so far i liked the one in The Dig the most. It uses icons instead of verbs and hides and shows these up easily. On the The Dig fansite there somewere is an interesting interview were they were talking about an alternative method they wanted to implement. A very interesting approach but it needed more work on the design side.
Context sensitive actions are okay to a certain degree but it shouldn't be too much as otherwise, especially if there are no inventory puzzels like for instance in TTG'S Sam&Max, it quickly tends to feel more like a movie instead of a game. There always should be enough left for you to do.
Anyway what i never liked were the interfaces they used in the later Monkey Island games for instance or in Full Throttle were you had the medal on the screen were you could select your actions from. Very disturbing and in my opinion with The Dig they already had a better interface. I also wouldn't go back to the pure verbs icons as they weren't wisely choosen and just don't look good anymore.
So my suggestion would be doing it like in The Dig (a few nicely accessible action icons or the idea they also had in mind as an alternative) or like in the Sam&Max adventures (hidden context sensitive actions without any disturbing graphics) but with inventory puzzels.
Context sensitive actions are okay to a certain degree but it shouldn't be too much as otherwise, especially if there are no inventory puzzels like for instance in TTG'S Sam&Max, it quickly tends to feel more like a movie instead of a game. There always should be enough left for you to do.
Anyway what i never liked were the interfaces they used in the later Monkey Island games for instance or in Full Throttle were you had the medal on the screen were you could select your actions from. Very disturbing and in my opinion with The Dig they already had a better interface. I also wouldn't go back to the pure verbs icons as they weren't wisely choosen and just don't look good anymore.
So my suggestion would be doing it like in The Dig (a few nicely accessible action icons or the idea they also had in mind as an alternative) or like in the Sam&Max adventures (hidden context sensitive actions without any disturbing graphics) but with inventory puzzels.