Or just to scale a mountain (because I'd rather spend five minutes jumping up a mountain than ten walking around to find the right path).

OP, I liked Proteus. It's short, and imho really cool exploring and experiencing the environment and how it interacts w/ you. It's probably a game you'll play just once, but I left it installed on my machine to play again after a while once I've sortof forgotten some of it. If you enjoy exploring for the sake of exploring, it's cool.

I think walking simulator is a derogatory term, but I've found I like games that they call walking sims - so it's sortof useful in that sense.

Others that are pretty good that I've heard that term applied to are:
Lifeless Planet (really cool visuals, strange world/story, and quite a bit of platforming too, some fairly easy puzzles), Dear Esther (more of a story than exploration- more a true walking sim imho where the story really just plays out for you as you move through it), and I've just started Gone Home.which seems kindof cool to me so far. I'm not too far into it but there's more stuff to dig through in the house to uncover the story - more adventure-game-like in that sense.

If you're talking about The Path from Tale of Tales, then yes, it's a very good one.

You can play this game more than once. You take control of six sisters, who are asked to "go to grandmother's house and stay on the path", something they really don't want to do. As you go deeper in the forest, you have to make crucial decisions for them, who lead to different conclusions, especially if the sisters encounter their "Wolf". It's a dark fairy tale similar to the Little Red Riding Hood.

Just finished Dear Esther and it's awesome.

I am indeed speaking of The Path by Tale of Tales. Excellent game. I think I had completed four of the sister's paths but lost that save when my old laptop went the way of the dodo and haven't gotten around to giving it another dedicated playthrough yet. Either way, marvelous game, one that took a lot of chances (with most of them paying off).
If you give it another playthrough it's supposed to have some alternate dialogue and scenes in a few place.

My counter to this topic would be 'has anyone actually walked somewhere lately?'

Don't remember that. But she was the playable character in the technical demo
3 km evety morning and every evening to go to work. 12-25km in the forest during the weekend when the weather is good. Week-long trails in national parks every year in june and september. I love hiking ^^

Fantastic! I wish I could do the same but 1) I don't work 2) my study is distance 3) I fear for my safety sometimes.

I'm guessing it's nice where you are. Jealous now!

I don't see how the narrative is simple minded. The majority of the story is told through the environment. If you're only listening to the audio you miss out on most of the story.
This idea that something isn't a game if it doesn't have lose states is idiotic. By that logic Monkey Island isn't a game.

Those ninja koala bears, I'm guessing. I heard Australia is a dangerous place.

lol what?! Oh, America stop it. Yes it's Armageddon what with all the koalas falling on you, snakes filling the streets and spiders bursting out of the walls. Oh and kangaroos with boomerangs.

Come on, don't pretend to be stupid - there was a bunch of fairly simple "find the password" things and I believe the game tasked you with finding hidden locations at some point. Simple? Yes. Could impede your progress to the point of not proceeding? Possibly. Not being able to proceed is too a failure state, as TotalBiscuit who popularized this definition repeatedly said (sorry if you got it from somewhere else.)

Why do you even care? Why do any of those people care? We have genres to make the distinctions between various forms of videogames, interactive experiences, whatever you want to call them. Creating an entirely new media form because some people are not happy with where some minor parts of their media is moving is, quite frankly, ridiculous. We don't have 'Movies', 'Moving Fantasies' and 'Romantic Comedy' as three distinct types of media, because that would be completely bonkers. Similarily, the term videogames is constantly spreading wider to encompass an incresingly larger audience and products - does it call for a rename of the entire media? Possibly. Is it a bad thing? No bloody way, innovation comes from variability.

Are we seriously unironically using the term "walking simulator now"??

Sigh, well, I've been playing Vanishing of Ethan Carter recently and I'm really digging it.

No, we're not.