Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell/YMMV

• Broken Base: The early development shots of Conviction divided the base on whether "Social" Stealth in place of Light/Shadow Stealth. Ubisoft then went and redesigned the game to have use absolutely no Social Stealth and more action than previous titles. This resulted in a new split, between those who think that the action elements are fine, and those that don't.
• Complete Monster: Tom Reed from Conviction. Long before the events in Malta and Washington D.C., he served as Sam Fisher's and Vic Coste's commanding officer. When Sam gets captured, Reed was more than willing to leave him for dead, forcing Coste to rescue his friend from the Iraqis. And after that, he happily accepts being Meggido's mole within Third Echelon. Taking over Third Echelon with an iron fist, he eventually plans to assassinate the president by using EMP attacks to blackout the city and allow Black Arrow to takeover the metropolitan area. He apparently does so because of her soft policies on foreign terrorism but in reality, he just wants to earn a promotion from Meggido-influenced politicians. Once you see Reed for what he truly is, you'll definitely feel tempted to shoot him when given the choice at the end.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: During a particularly emotional scene in Conviction, the designers include DJ Shadow - "Building Steam With a Grain of Salt." It works perfectly.
  • Also Amon Tobin's score for Chaos Theory- captures the game's atmosphere so well that it seems astonishing that they didn't keep him on retainer for the rest of the series.
    • For example, Theme of Battery from Chaos Theory is really good at setting in the mood.
  • Problem is, some of Chaos Theory's music kicks in at some really inappropriate times. For example, in the bank mission, knocking out a Mook would start up a really dramatic song whether anyone else witnessed the attack or not, completely spoiling the atmosphere and making players falsely believe they'd been caught.
  • And lest we forget, the menu theme for Conviction by none other than Amon Tobin himself.
  • Your Mileage May Vary on how well the 3DS port of Chaos Theory turned out, but almost everyone agrees that its theme song Breaking Protocol, once again by Amon Tobin, kicks ass.
• Even Better Sequel: Pandora Tomorrow to the original and Chaos Theory to Pandora Tomorrow. It went downhill from there, but bounced back up with Conviction.
• Hell Is That Noise: The sonar ping from enemy Splinter Cells in Conviction. Also, the enemy has LOS and detected sounds.
• Jumping the Shark: The first three games were progressively improving both graphics and gameplay mechanics, even introducing Versus multiplayer in Pandora Tomorrow and then improving the formula further in Chaos Theory, not to mention the co-op missions that tie in with the singleplayer plot. Double Agent is presumed to have been ported from the Xbox and suffers for it with its unwieldy menus when trying to use any computers. Multiplayer got some much-needed improvements, but the PC version outright crashes if the player tries to watch some of the training videos. It only got worse with each sequel from then that derailed Fisher's character.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Sam's night vision goggles.
• Older Than They Think: Conviction's critically well-received "Mark & Execute" system was pioneered in the Rainbow Six: Vegas series. Which is unsurprising, considering that the games have the same gameplay director.
• Porting Disaster: The PC version of Double Agent.
  • The Mac version of Conviction unfortunately qualifies as this as well, no thanks to Ubisoft's "Always On" DRM.
• Punch-Packing Pistol
• Scrappy Level: Infiltrating the CIA in the first game is a beast, because you can't kill anyone or be seen.
  • The Sea of Okhotsk level in Double Agent isn't very difficult to complete, but extremely difficult to get a perfect stealth score on.
  • Infiltrating Third Echelon and The Russian Embassy in Conviction's co-op, for being "insta-fail when detected" levels.
    • To elaborate, unlike Washington Monument where you only had to tail and eliminate the three spotters, in Third Echelon Sam has to plant C4 on the two transformers, then get to an elevator taking Sam to the reception desk. Although he can go loud after this, he then has to quickly get to the end of a hall before two security gates can come down. Even then, a good portion of this level includes long, dull periods where no enemies are about (hence no risk of detection) and it's just Sam moving about on pipes and ledges. White Box Laboratories is actually worse with the second reason despite not being "no detection."
    • Price Airfield just because while the opening rendered cutscenes are eventually skippable, the subsequent portion using in-game graphics isn't, and in the case of Price Airfield, it is long. Even when you're finally able to move it's just to smack Grim around, and then you're allowed to exit.
    • The Iraq level of Conviction. While not difficult if you don't mind lethal gameplay, it feels very out of place with the rest of the game and does nothing to further the story except give us a Friendship Moment between Sam and Vic. Also, that fact that you're playing as a soldier means you lose most of your extra abilities, including Mark and Execute and there are no shadows to hide in.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Okay, the graphics are cleaner and state-of-the-art, the gadgets have improved, and the Mark and Execute function returns, so Blacklist is going to be awesome, right? One major problem: Michael Ironside is being replaced by Eric Johnson from ABC's Rookie Blue. Crying over the series being ruined and anger towards Ubisoft ensue.