10 Video Games That Roasted Themselves

The first two Splinter Cell games were pioneering entries into the stealth-action genre, though more casual players struggled with the series' tricksy difficulty, whereby triggering three alert alarms would result in a Game Over.

This restriction was mercifully ditched for the third game in the franchise, Chaos Theory, introducing a fourth alert phase and only upping the difficulty if that threshold was reached.

In the game's second level, "Cargo Ship," an opening dialogue takes a knowing potshot at the silly arbitrariness of the three alerts rule, when Lambert tells protagonist Sam Fisher about the ship's new alarm system, to which Sam asks, "Don't tell me, three alarms and it's over?"

But Lambert subverts expectations and retorts, "Of course not! This is no video game, Fisher. But you don't want the whole place alerted to your presence. Keep it under control."

While "this isn't a game!" quips are generally pretty lame, in this case it works because it's taking aim at such a widely loathed aspect of the first two Splinter Cell games.