Not every game must be an open-world sandbox where you can get lost within thousands of irrelevant sidequests, mining and harvesting flowers.
Mass Effect and Skyrim are great, but so is Spec Ops: The Line and Max Payne. And quite honestly: screw whoever thinks Spec Ops The Line shouldn't exist.
IMO there's a time/place and most of all a market for both kinds.
People complaining about "all games nowadays are too linear" probably don't play much games at all lately.
We've had Skyrim, Fallout 3/New Vegas, Deus Ex HR, whole Assassin's Creed series, Dishonored, GTA, Bioshock series etc.
And many of these are first-person-shooters.
That picture of an FPS map then&now is stupid to use in 2015. The only games where that applies are Battlefield and COH, and we all know those are essentially multiplayer games with a small campaign as an extra for newbies to get their hands around the controls.
I get that people are bothered by the cliffhanger (and apparently lazy) ending. I also get that people complain about it being rather short.
But someone who's decided they hate games with a linear story probably shouldn't be reviewing it in the first place.
I know I would refuse myself from reviewing FIFA 15 or a Dress-my-Barbie game. What's the point in forcing myself to play a game I know I'll hate playing just to write about how I hated playing it?
