There is a pretty big difference between this criticism and the earlier one. Instadeath fail states, QTEs, and "slow repelling" might not be compelling to everyone (it's not, as you put it, uninteresting "any way you slice it"), but there is a fundamental difference between taking issue with a game's design for being bad and taking issue with a game's design for being unoriginal, unimaginative, or uninventive. There's nothing inherently wrong with the last three. Some of the biggest and most popular games are all of those three.
I certainly can understand the perspective of people who prioritize innovation, inventiveness, or originality over iteration and polish, but I do not always agree and I find myself very annoyed when certain posters (like you in your post) assume that just because something is NOT those things that everyone should automatically understand a) why that's bad and b) why anyone should care. There's nothing wrong with tried and true. Lots of people like tried and true. I like tried and true. I also like inventive and original. I find room for both in my gaming diet.
It's also pretty annoying to see people say things like painfully linear or restrictively linear. I LIKE linear and you haven't done your diligence in showing me why I shouldn't like it. So I don't respect comments like that.
Penalizing a linear scripted shooter for being scripted, a shooter, and linear is silly. It doesn't get to any fundamental truth about a product, it doesn't convey the experience of playing the game, it doesn't inform the reader beyond vague generalities about what something denotatively IS, and it certainly doesn't read as more than "I don't like this thing so you will deal."
Again, big difference between the first post and the second post you made. And it's not just you. You just happened to be one of the only people worth responding to.