Atlantico: Simple pleasures, ... yeah I've played all those games. Linear.
New games tend to be just that too, such as CoD, MoH, DNF... Linear.
Games that are not linear are few and far between. Fallout and Farcry.
Love the sneering holier-than-thou self-importance of your post. Thumbs up!
JDR13: Indeed - Except that the vast majority of people wouldn't consider games like Quake, Doom or Duke Nukem 3D very linear, and System Shock 2 was most definitely not linear.
As far as those newer first-person shooters, yes, I agree that most of them are very linear.
It was an legitimate question though. Perhaps you really do have a different definition of the word than most people. It sure appears that way.
Or perhaps everyone is just out to insult you. :)
Nah I don't see the world out to get me.
And if none of the games you mentioned is linear, then this Shadow Warrior reboot most certainly is not.
To be charitable, it's on par in linearity with the "go from point A to point B to progress to the end of the line" System Shock 2. What some people think or incorrectly perceive as "freedom" in SS2 is that after unlocking the elevator shaft one is free to visit any level of the vB, but in reality there's nothing there - the only way is follow the dotted line to the Rickenbacker. There's no interactions, no new areas, nothing not already covered in the dotted line one followed to begin with.
Point being, it's neither here nor there your particular definition of linearity, rather that Shadow Warrior is as linear as System Shock 2 and faaaar less linear than Doom, Quake or the like.