YMMV / Splinter Cell

• Complete Monster: Kombayn Nikoladze is a powerful industrialist turned politician, and the mastermind behind the Georgian Information Crisis. To cover up his invasion of Azerbaijan, he used information warfare to disable intelligence systems and radars, leaving thousands dead. In retaliation for being exposed, he launches cyber-attacks on American military, computer systems, transportation, and a water treatment facility, killing soldiers and civilians nationwide. Teaming up with a rouge Chinese general, Nikoladze nearly starts World War III, exchanging nuclear material for weapons. He also holds American soldiers and Chinese dignitaries hostage, and announces a plan to have the soldiers executed on a live broadcast. When that plan fails, Nikoladze takes to having a nuke smuggled into Washington.
• Demonic Spiders: PLA Soldiers in the first game. They can kill you in 3 hits even on normal mode, come in large groups, and some even have flashlights attached to their helmets making hiding in the dark difficult against them. The ex-Spetsnaz with the assault rifles in the Kola bonus missions are equally dangerous (the ones with the shotguns are a bit more manageable), and some of them have night vision goggles, making hiding in the dark useless against them.
• That One Level:
  • Infiltrating the CIA is a beast, because you can't kill anyone or be seen and start the mission without any gun.
  • The Abattoir mission ends with Sam finding the hostages, only for Grinko and his mooks to start flooding in; granted, you have a turret and wall mines to assist against them, but it seems out of place and happens pretty suddenly.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • The split jump is extremely situational and can only be done in very specific places, making it extremely rarely used by most players. In fact, it's common to hear of players who learned how to do it in the tutorial and proceeded to never use it for the rest of the game.
  • The thermal goggles, to a lesser extent. There are only two places in the game where they come in handy, both in the Abbatoir level: for picking out mines in the minefield, and in the kitchen where thick fog and steam obstruct your visibility.
• Unintentional Period Piece: In 2004, two years after the first game came out, there was a revolution in Georgia in which the corrupt oppressive government was replaced with a freer more democratic one, pretty much negating the storyline focused on a genocidal Georgian dictatorship wreaking havoc in the Caucasus.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: One of the reasons why the series got so much praise in the first place was its very advanced lighting engine, which holds up today even with the first game.

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