deleuz: I'm just glad FMV gaming died. These were not good games, imho, they just dazzled people by how many CDs they could ship. Bad acting, bad fmv, boring/bizarre puzzles, lackluster story, horrendous UI. In some ways, I think 7th Guest and 11th Hour are far more "dated" than games like Wasteland or Starflight.
grimgroove: Not the greatest fan of FMV gaming either, mind you, and it definitely doesn't have its place in today's new game racks. But it does have a place in gaming history and I don't think its fair to crefer to FMV-gaming as if it were a genre, because it isn't. Some games using FMV were bad, some of them were good. Granted, the good ones were rarely good because of their FMV and rather despite of it, but still. A good FMV game that springs to mind is the second game in the Gabriel Knight series.
And while the acting is often lackluster, it can be enjoyable just because of that. In the case of The 7th Guest it wasn't so appalling as to pull me out of the game, but it was funny in some cases.
Sometimes the cheesiness in FMV adds appeal to the game. For example, I really liked the FMV sequences in Crusader: No Remorse, especially the news anchor Trina Jenkins. The way she delivered some of her lines and expressions was cheesy but in a way that was totally in line with a propaganda news network. The only FMV sequences that felt bad where to ones with Shannon Brooks, to me, her performance was just too forced.