One book that really brought this difference out to me was The Wolves of Willoughby chase, which is an older book that I read for the first time. The first page is a description of an estate, which it turns out is beset by vicious wolves. I sat down, read, and really settled in, invited, thinking, "Ah! This is going to be good!"
If it were being shopped now, it would open with the MC being chased by wolves instead. One is action, the other is foreboding of something eerie and wonderful to come. Either can work in a published novel, but I like being invited into a story rather than dropped into it.