EDIT: Seems dynamic music is back in style in some very recent games, many of which I haven't really played yet. Good.
For me, it's dynamic music, the kind that some games had that adjusted moment by moment to what was happening in the game.
The best-known example of this in the 90s game TIE Fighter, where the moment more enemy (or allied) ships showed up the music would have a little additional flourish to acknowledge the shift in battle. There were pre-battle tension tracks, battle music, complications of battle, grandiose flourishes for the arrival of enemy or even allied capital ships, and victory and failure music all ready to flow into the next seconds of the game.
A lesser-known but still excellent example of this was in Ultima Underworld and its sequel, where drawing a weapon had its own special "preparing for battle" tension music, getting attacked had a jump-out-of-your-skin joltingly sudden musical start that actually scared me as a kid when I got ambushed, music for battles going well, going poorly, victory and defeat.
I wish more games did those sort of second by second musical changes, but they've sort of fallen out of fashion for the most part.
Fmv cutscenes, especially the horrible cheesy ones. It's like you found the worst actors in your local drama theatre and gave them a budget of 25 dollars. I love it.
Oh God yeah; I unironically loved those. I couldn't tell good acting from bad and thought they were so cool. Heck I still think they're awesome!
The MechWarrior FMVs were gold
Fire PPCs once, don't fire them again. Resort to machine guns until out of ammo, die. Seylah.
rebel assault 2 had some of my favourite FMV in it
they had access to a bunch of the actual star wars props cos lucasarts made it lol
Playing C&C tib war and i will never skip those live action cut scenes..
If you like cheesy live-acted cutscenes, I recommend Roundabout. Or at least watching its trailer. Or if you don't have time to actually play games, there was an SGDQ run where they did a speedrun but left the cutscenes on, but I think they end up skipping some due to tricks.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
You might be interested in “Not for Broadcast”. The politics are lib, but it’s almost entirely FMV while you’re the producer of a news show who gets to balance having fun with it, getting good numbers, and pushing an agenda.
The acting is actually good (you can the tell the cheesiness is an affect not a lack of skill).