Yeah this is pretty much what story-based games have become when you talk about the biggest blockbusters. A lot of them have become less games and more "interactive rides." I don't think that's bad in and of itself, but in my opinion probably around three developers in the entire industry do it well, Valve being possibly the ultimate example. OP, whenever a developer says "story-based" in their description, that's usually a sign this is the kind of experience you're going to get.
What I don't like about all these types of games is they take control away from the player too often, to try to tell a story that maybe isn't a very good fit or that kind of video game. They try to do too much that doesn't really accommodate the base gameplay mechanics and thus end up abandoning those mechanics a lot of the time. It's almost like many of these games are ashamed to be video games, or are caught trying to choose between making a game and telling a "cinematic" story. I just think that if a game is going to try to tell a story, it shouldn't try to borrow from film as much as many of these games are. A lot of these developers need to let go of some of those ambitions and realize video game stories aren't going to look like film, just like the movie version of a story will inevitably differ wildly from the book.
The few games that do the linear story-driven thing well I feel are games that manage to do it without actually robbing the player of control. Too many games rely on QTEs and parts where you have to "Press E to accept baptism." The good ones simply craft the scripting and story into the environment around the player instead of trying to directly control the player's actions. Valve is very good at doing this in the Half-Life and Portal games in my opinion. Some may disagree with me, but I'd also put up Call of Duty 4 (but none of the later COD games) as an example.
That said, the people saying there are tons of games that don't do this are right. You just have to know where to look. A good way to tell is by the developer making it.
If you want to avoid super-scripted AAA gaming you should probably stay away from Ubisoft with the sole exception of the last couple Rayman games. Ubisoft has become hand-holdy as fuck in recent years and has even managed to make open-world games feel linear. Actually Far Cry 2 is another big exception -- that game offers you a lot of freedom, but has its own set of flaws. Ubisoft started to take this turn after Assassin's Creed II became a hit in 2009.
In general, Japanese developers haven't done this crap nearly as much. Capcom perhaps has fucked up with the last couple Resident Evil games but that's disputable. A lot of big Japanese games still have shitloads of cut scenes and non-interactive dialogue in the case of JRPGs, but that's been the case since at least the late 90's. If your'e expecting to explore big worlds at your leisure in JRPGs though stay away from Final Fantasy XIII. Platinum is excellent if you want snappy, classic Japanese arcade gameplay. Nintendo has made some of the best mechanic-focused games of the last decade.
Bethesda has been another great developer and publisher for games that are 90 or 100% actual gameplay. Their Elder Scrolls and Fallout games are all about letting you just do whatever you want for hundreds of hours after their brief tutorial sequences. The games they publish like RAGE, Dishonored, and Wolfenstein The New Order are also great examples of singleplayer first person games that actually let you play the game most of the time. Actually, Bethesda has also been a great example of how to make story-focused games that don't repeatedly take control away from players.
Really, western RPGs in general I think have been one of the best avenues for interactive storytelling. You spend a lot of time going through dialogue and making narrative choices, but those dialogue trees are essentially part of the gameplay, and feel much more interactive and immersive than QTEs or scripted events.
