One Shot.

 I was thinking about Robotech this morning, and the old Robotech RPG by Palladium. In the anime, most enemy destroids go down in one, maybe two hits. If you play anything by Palladium you'll know nothing goes down in a single hit. A shot might do 2d6x10 mega damage (that's 2d6 x 1000 normal damage), but an enemy destroid might have 500, 600, 1500 MDC, and can tank two or three hits.

Not really cinematic, that. And I was thinking, 'how would you make it cinematic, then'? Well, there's a few games that have a really good way of doing that, I think.

Mob Rules 
In games like Godbound, or Outgunned, the entire 'mob' of bad guys have a single pool of hit points. Depending on how big and tough they are, they might have more attacks, do more damage, have extra special tricks, or whatever.

And when the heroes attack, you can describe them gunning down 2, 3, 10 opponents in a row as the pool of hit points drops. In Godbound this is especially good, because once the mob is 'dead', it breaks down into smaller mobs (if the mob is big enough it can do this twice), or shrink down to a smattering of individuals with only half their hp left.

Which becomes the more significant, personal fights at the end. You can have the final enemies it be 'the commander' or whatever. So, this allows for the cinematic 'mow down the enemies' kind of thing, and there's still risk involved if the mob is big enough and bad enough.

Snipe! 
The other thing I had to think about was sniper rules. A lot of games don't really put much effort into the 'one shot one kill' rule. Some might go 'your enemy doesn't get certain benefits to avoid the attack', but even so, more often than not, it's not going to be 1S1K. You might do a boatload of damage though.  Games like Pathfinder have 'Flat Footed', where armour is taken into account but not anything evasive ... but that really doesn't do much for damage, now does it?

Shadowrun, on the  other hand? Yeah, you can totally pull off a single shot ending someone's career. And someone can totally do that to you (counter-sniping). I'm actually a big fan of this -- it makes a PC sniper a deadly opponent, but it also makes it important that the PCs be very, very careful about who they take on, and how they take them on. You can totally run it heroic, of course, and have enemies be the kind to show up in close range for a firefight and martial arts, and if that's how you want to run it, cool.

I just like the option of blowing an enemy's brains out from a click away. Another game that can account for this is Legend of the Five Rings. You can sometimes take 2 to 4 hits, but then there's the lucky rolls that make the enemy (or you) explode. 100+ damage to a single creature with a single arrow? Yes please.

Not Fun
I know that's not everyone's cup of tea, of course. I mean, everyone loves to give a beatdown on the big bad -- whether it's drawn out and cinematic, or it's total overkill. Not so many want to see their own characters dropped in an instant. I get that.

I'm just glad there's games out there which allow for it. Do I want my characters to die? Of course not. Will I accept it? Usually with a look of shock, and then I start thinking about who I want to play next. I was a lot more connected to my characters when I was a teenager, I put so much into them I wanted them to live forever (oh, wait...) but these days I accept that if the character's going to go out and adventure or put themselves in harm's way, then the chance of them not coming back should exist.

And not just when it's "dramatically appropriate". I mean, that'd be nice, but if a goblin crits my paladin I'd spent the last three months developing... yeah, it sucks, but then if I didn't accept that kind of outcome, I wouldn't be playing a game that allows for that kind of outcome.

The Right Kind of Game 
I mean, different games have different allowances. You don't go walking into Call of Cthulhu with the understanding that you're not going to get killed. That's part and parcel of the game -- there's always the chance of you going down, either to madness, or to freak accident, or to the claws of a monster.

My girlfriend (now wife) tried Call of Cthulhu with me once. Her character chased a ghoul into its burrow. Dark. Narrow. No light. The book simply says that if the PCs do this? They die. There's no attack or damage rolls. They get torn to bits and eaten.

I think it's important for players to look at the rules, the setting, and get a feel for that game's parameters. Is it a high-lethality game? Heroic? Are the PCs nigh-invincible, or vulnerable? Is it Red Box D&D where a PC can begin the game with 1 hit point, or is it Exalted where you can no-sell attacks like they were nothing and fling your opponent countries away?

And yeah, of course the game master can tweak the rules or fudge a whole lot to get the game to run a certain way ... and if that's what everyone wants, then fine, but ... why not pick up a game that plays more to your interests?

You don't pick up Kult and try for camp. You don't go into Robotech for gritty realism. There's a lot of games out there, catering to a lot of different tastes, and I'm sure there's a game for everyone.

What's My List?
So, to give you an idea of my personal tastes:
TORG 1e
7th Sea 1e
Legend of the Five Rings 2e
Vampire: The Requiem 1e (and Werewolf the Forsaken 1e, Mage the Awakening 1e, Changeling the Lost 1e, etc)
Shadowrun 4e, 5e
Kult
Godbound
X without Number (Stars, Worlds, Cities, Ashes)
Exalted 1e, 2e (as a player, not as a game master)