Shadowrun

You are Jake Armitage, a shadowrunner. You were unceremoniously executed in the streets, but somehow you woke up in the morgue (albeit with a massive migraine). Somebody wants you dead, and you have to find out who, and why.

Outside the Matrix

 * : Draw weapon/fire
 * : Examine/manipulate objects, talk
 * : Examine object
 * : Pick up object
 * : Show stats
 * : Game menu

Both manipulating objects and firing weapons depend on positioning the cursor. You might wonder how you can take evasive action in combat when you cannot move and control a cursor at the same time. Well, you can't. You generally just stand in place and fire your weapon, taking whatever damage comes your way. This is not a tactical game.

Inside the Matrix

 * : Initiate combat (destroy IC or nodes)
 * : Pick up data/alter prog

Attributes

 * Body: Your HP is ten times your body attribute.
 * Charisma: Determines number of shadowrunners you may be with. The number is half your charisma, rounded down.
 * Magic: Your MP is ten times your magic attribute.

Balancing HP and MP
In the beginning, HP is at a premium and cannot be recovered well. Therefore, it is a high priority to boost your body stat (up to 5 before Caryards and around 10 at Caryards). Once you acquire the Heal spell, things start to change. At first you will not have enough karma to boost your spell to 6 and also increase your MP capacity. However, it is wise to do so when you can. The heal spell is by far the most useful spell in the game, so do not worry that a level 6 spell will drain your MP, because you'll use it for little else. You also experience increasing returns with each spell level. That is, each level adds more HP healing capacity than the previous level did.

Here's where the balancing act comes in. A level 6 spell heals 90 MP, therefore, late in the game, it is usually to boost your magic attribute instead of your body attribute, even if your body attribute is not maxed out and you have karma to burn. For example, suppose you have 15 body and 10 magic. You can burn 15 karma for a 10 HP boost, or you can burn only 10 karma for an extra 90 HP of healing capacity. Which is better, 10 HP or 90 HP?

This is not to say that it's worthless to boost your body stat a bit further. Doing so allows you to sustain damage longer before needing to cast the spell. If somehow you had only 10 body and 10 magic, it may be wiser to boost the body because you only get maximum value out of a level 6 heal when you have 10 HP or less, which is be dangerously low. If you have trouble healing yourself in combat, you might be better off getting your body attribute close to the max before you start boosting your healing capacity. An average or better player should need only about 15 body near the end, although you might want more when it's time to fight Drake.

Skills

 * Leadership: Determines how long shadowrunners remain with you.
 * Buy it at Dr. Maplethorpe's office.
 * Negotiation: Reduces cost of shadowrunners.
 * Buy it at the arena in the caryards.

Fun stuff

 * Most of the time you cannot shoot unarmed civilians. However, it still is possible sometimes. If they don't go down in one shot, you probably can't kill them. If you continue to shoot at people who you can't kill, you will get a warning. If you ignore the warning and keep doing it, you will lose one karma point, unless you have no karma, then you just get the warning again.
 * At Ed's Patch & Fix, after Ed activates the cortex bomb, you can shoot him. This is one of the rare exceptions to the rule that you cannot kill people who mean you no harm.
 * You can kill any scientist in the Drake Volcano whether they can hurt you or not.
 * You can try to kill the helicopter pilot at Drake Volcano (but not at the top of Drake Tower) and he'll take damage, but he seems to have infinite HP. It wouldn't be a good idea anyway because then the only way to get out would be to defeat Drake.

Bugs

 * It may sometimes be possible to kill an enemy with one hit if you shoot them before the battle music starts. Normally it won't happen, but it's possible.
 * The game automatically gets rid of unneeded plot items at various points in the game. Some users have reported becoming stranded due to visiting areas earlier than anticipated and picking up plot items there. Short of cheat codes there is no way to reverse this, and you will have to start over.

Trivia

 * The name "Armitage" is a reference to Neuromancer, which features a character with this name. The Genesis Shadowrun also has a reference to Neuromancer, in the form of a character going by the name Nero Manser. Neuromancer is a book by William Gibson, and was the first cyberpunk novel.