What are your favourite games that are completely linear?

[Omega07]

Metro 2033, Dead Space 1 and 2, Prince of Persia: Sands of time, Bastion, a lot of the old PS games... almost anything that isn`t of the new kind, because, imho, the industry has forgotten how to make good, linear games, and now a linearity is like a symptom of a plague...


there are a few modern exceptions (and i`ve named them) but mostly it`s either open-world (Skyrim, Fallout 3), or shitty corridors (CoD, Bulletstorm) nowadays... still the new games (besides CoD) are still good, in their own category, but they`re not linear and good at their linearity...

a good linear game, imho, wouldn`t even make you think about the possibility of deviating from the path. Playing the Crash Bandicoot games, i never felt a desire of the ability to explore the surrounding, and even when replaying them now on an emulator, i still don`t feel this desire...

 

[Bostur]

I'm not so sure of that. GTA is a very old series and it was always open.

Granted, but we've somewhat changed the meaning since then. The original GTA games are a prime example of an empty open world; a few weapons to find, a few cars hidden away and maybe the occasional side mission. It didn't take much power to do because it was as sophisticated as a shoebox. It was much more a level with a large map than a wide-open explorable world.

Thats true, but isn't that the same with the more recent GTA games as well? It's a pretty common trait for open world games that they are big, but lack interactivity. Skyrim has a reasonably big game world, but lacks in interactivity. But many linear games have even less interactivity, it's just less noticeable I think because we don't expect them to feel real. Most shooters are pretty empty except for enemies and ammo pickups.

Some of the old 1980s top-down RPGs had a lot of interactivity especially compared to more modern games like Dragon Age or the newly released Shadowrun. The Ultima series and Wasteland are good examples of this.

I also remember a lot of open world games from the '80s. Bethesda has pretty much specialized in 3D open worlds and they go way back, TES Morrowind is pretty old.

Of course there will always be a tradeoff between graphical fidelity and openness. Some of the very old open worlds didn't look very nice. But that tradeoff still exists and will probably continue to be.

My point was that it's now less of a tradeoff, and games can retain graphical fidelity whilst being open. As a result a lot of developers seem to jump feet-first into the idea just because they can. It's not that the potential didn't exist before, but that now it requires much less sacracfice in other regards.

Yes it probably is less of tradeoff. We may be seeing better looking open world games. Although there still needs to be people designing all the 3D objects and design the interactivity.

As a bit of a sidestep I couldn't help looking up an ancient classic that maybe very few people know about. One of the first 3D open world games - Mercenary. It looks awful and is mostly an empty world, but hey it's huge. ;-)
If anyone wants to know how huge? It would take days to walk from one end to the other, which is why it had vehicles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary_%28video_game%29

The games were notable for their smooth vector and polygonal graphics, vast environments, and open-ended gameplay which offered several ways to complete each game

 

[GonzoGamer]

I like Rez & Child of Eden, it doesn't get more linear than that. Burnout Revenge is another favorite. The Portal games of course.

Some of my favorite games are open world games but I hate it when there's a pointless and shallow open world that's just a waste of time like in no more heroes.

 

[DyqstARD]

Is Pokemon linear? I mean sure the world slowly opens up and you're able to travel back and forth between places, but you have no reason to go back most of the time because you don't need to, and you get to the end, and there's only a couple of legendary Pokemon roaming after you beat the game and go to some place or whatever.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Bastion. Bioshock. Spec Ops: The Line(can you actually like this game?). Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

What's nice about these is that, Spec Ops aside, you have other options to progress besides shoot the things until they stop moving. Nothing usually stops you from running away in them and sometimes you can circumvent enemies entirely. Linear game and storytelling, non-linear environment in which to complete your objective.

 

[loc978]

Most of the ones I can think of go at least semi-open world at some point

...

Everything other game I can think of that I enjoyed had at least some open-world features to it.

Hmm, interesting point. At what point do we define something as open-world? I'm playing through Psychonauts at the moment, which is really just a sequence of levels to be beaten in the correct order. Those levels are all accessed from within a hub world though, which is (while fairly small) explorable for currency and collectibles. Would we count that as open-world? If not, at which point do we switch over from "has open-world features" to "open-world game"?

honestly, I wouldn't mince on the definition so much if the title didn't specify completely linear...

But I guess going back to my original examples, I would consider The Legend of Zelda "open-world" for having very few locked-down areas at the start (there's pretty much only the bridgeless waters and the raft points, everything else is open for exploration if you can survive)... whereas Final Fantasy is semi-open world, since the world opens up gradually as you complete objectives.

Psychonauts I would consider semi-open world, less so than Final Fantasy. About like Batman: Arkham Asylum (and less open world than Arkham City, of course).

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

While I generally think the vast majority of games are absolutely linear (the exceptions being ones entirely procedurally generated at which point the official narrative is little more than a conceit and the narrative you experience as a player is entirely emergent), I can certainly pick from the long list of games that don't even pretend to be non-linear.

To that end, I'd say my favorite example from recent memory was Neverwinter Nights 2. While there are some side paths you can explore, they never advance the narrative in any meaningful way. If you include the Eye of the beholder expansion, it becomes on of my favorite games of all time.