There was a time in my life when hearing that a game was linear was a death sentence, because I relished the chance to immerse myself in a world, roam around, and find my own way. Over the years, though, a weird thing has happened to me. In extremely open games, I tend to become paralyzed with fear that I am making the wrong choices to the point that I find it difficult to play. Every time a conversation choice pops up in Heavy Rain, I have a miniature panic attack. It has actually worked out, because me panicking has led to some pretty funny and interesting results, but I find it legitimately emotionally taxing trying to make choices in video games, which is strange.
To me, being linear in this day and age is kind of like having graphics a step or two below the top level graphics of the gen. It doesn't mean your game is bad, or less involved, it just means that the developers have to do a little extra to make you feel like what you are doing still matters. Not an impossible goal, by any means, and there are many ways around it, just like good art direction/visual aesthetics can make up for less technically impressive graphics.
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