Lizard_King wrote:

Splinter Cell did keep me playing until I beat it, although revisiting it I am hard pressed to find what appealed to me so much.

Perhaps FABIO is right and stealth just isn't fun. In NOLF2 it was incredibly, incredibly badly implemented as well, the palace level being a case in point. I didn't really like Thief all that much either, and in MGS2 my favourite parts by far were those with unrestrained violence, like the prolonged, fast moving shootouts in the :Substance Snake Tales.