When I think about video game puzzles, I'm generally thinking along the lines of Professor Layton and the Curious Village or Portal. The Roberta Williams "random series of actions" school of puzzling is more like an extended exercise in manual combinatorics. The only way to "solve" most of those games (and I speak from extensive experience) is to use every single item on every other object or person you encounter. Occasionally, there's some sort of sense to what goes where, and you really can "figure it out." Just as often, though, you're putting masking tape on the hole in the fence so that when the cat goes through some fur will stick to it which you can then combine with maple syrup to make a fake mustache to disguise yourself as a man who, incidentally, doesn't have a mustache.

As many of those games as I played as a kid, I can't really say I'm sorry to see them go.