YMMV / Shadow Complex

• Awesome Music: Though the music is fairly infrequent, usually only playing during battles or plot scenes, it succeeds in producing an eerie and suspenseful atmosphere. Especially the original title screen music.
• Catharsis Factor: Meleeing human soldiers and punting Bomba robots, especially after you get the Omega Armor.
• Demonic Spiders: The "Storm Shadow ninjas" are stupidly difficult to target, take a stupidly large amount of damage, and deal even more stupidly large damage.
• Fan Nickname: The Big Bad evil guy is nicknamed "Cobra Commander" by the fans — and the developers.
• Game-Breaker: Many examples, however most of them are relevant during near endgame.
  • The Fusion Helmet, which requires finding all 12 of the Passkeys, but Jason once he has it on and is standing still or walking, he is invincible.
  • Unlocking infinite Grenades, Foam, and Missiles, which requires either reaching Level 30, 40, and 50 respectively, or finding all of the respective special weapon packs.
  • Potentially the biggest one is the reward for finding all of the Gold Bars — a room opens up with gold-plated weapons, including the Inertial Element. Possessing said gold-plated weapons also gives you an XP boost. And once it's unlocked for the first time, it's unlocked for all future playthroughs, like the level unlocks. Better still, that room is right next to where you find the Pistol; in a new game, it's possible to get the best weapon before you get your first weapon. In Remastered, that room also has gold-plated Omega Armor.
• Nightmare Fuel: After flooding a part of the base, you will have to traverse through it multiple times, especially if you're going for 100% Completion. While you traverse the flooded corridors to tune of a sad piano piece, you hear the complex creaking, and are treated to the sight of the numerous corpses of those you inadvertently killed. Even worse is the realization that the rooms you flooded included the cafeteria, where you just saw dozens of mooks sitting down for lunch, and that many of them may very well have been Punch Clock Villains.
• Polished Port: The Remastered version features some improved textures and character models, runs at 60 FPS compared to the original's 30, added new takedown maneuvers that Jason can pull off on enemies, an expanded Proving Grounds mode with new challenges and tutorials, and offers ten save slots compared to the original. The PC version also has the added benefit of keyboard and mouse controls, which can alleviate some of the wonkiness of aiming and shooting enemies in the 2.5D background.
• Rooting for the Empire: Depending on how much one knows about the background of the story, some players might find themselves doing this out of Values Dissonance (depending on socio-political inclination^note as the story takes place during a Democrat/Republican civil war - and counter to genre expectations, the Complex is not run by a right-wing conspiracy but by the liberals), or perhaps because Evil Is Cool (they do have all the nice Powered Armor and Spider Tanks after all.)
• Scrappy Mechanic: The ability to shoot at enemies in the background sometimes means that Jason will fire into walls or aim at background targets first rather than those right in front of him, causing you to either blow your attempts at being stealthy or waste ammo (and time reloading).
• The Un-Twist: A savvy player will realize that Claire really is a spy after the third cutscene.