Not as awesome as the PS1 GitS, but this game is a Stand Alone success in its own right.
When I first played this game, I hated it because I didn't have the instructions or the idea to think that I might have to latch onto things. After a good hour on the first stage, I played the tutorial and felt like a child - grabbing is very important and this game is full of precision jumping. Then I got stuck again later on the first stage so I went back to the tutorial and did the whole thing this time to learn how to hack. And you can get past the entire game with only having to use the ghosthack once, really. The first stage really prepares you for the meat of the game: firefights, hacking, lever pressing and Tomb Raider jumping, and the importance of grabbing and walljumping. Once you get the hang of the controls, which are pretty much standard Max Payne controls only with reversed shooting and jumping (which you can change), you can play on without worry of running around trying to figure out what to do next. As I played through and through, I fell in love with the game.
The music (not by Yoko Kanno, sadly) is amazing, the graphics aren't nexvious gen or whatever but they look dang good regardless, the story is convoluted and full of terms you might not want to learn just for the game or anime series but it's a decent-enough backdrop, and the voice acting from the series is nice. Get past the controls and you've got a great explorer-shooter, but it ain't perfect as you might expect. Not because it's based on an anime series based on a movie based on a manga, but rather because Cavia didn't go the extra mile to help craft SAC into something much better. The worst things I can say about this game are that (a) it's too short. Got 5 hours? Bam, play through it on easy or normal. (b) You can find better shooting action in many games that are out now. Especially since Black is now a Greatest Hits and only $20. Wanna blow stuff up without all the talk about viruses in MicroMachined Rice? Get down with Black or some Ghost Recon. Hell, Deus EX is easier to follow and also a great and rare title. (c) For a game that featured the ability to play as Motoko, Batou, and a Tachikoma at one point, there was very little in the way of variety. Maze and shoot, jumping challenge, shoot, hack, tunnels and shooting, exit via boss or terminal.
Every now and then, an interesting option would appear but never for long. In one stage, you hack gun terminals to attack a hostile helicopter chilling outside the building you're in, but once you hurt the chopper enough or he shoots all your turrets down, it's back to run and gun. Also, there are secret fans to collect, 100 in total, which are hard as heck to find (much like the memory capsules in FF7:DoC), and a multiplayer deathmatch mode if you get someone into playing the game with you. The game works on a points system as well: enemies destroyed + time it took to clear the stage plus/minus a difficulty handicap = points get! The more you score, the more difficulties you can unlock. You think Easy to Hard is all this baby can do? Wrong, good sir. There's about 8 other difficulties to deal with as you unlock them, so if you're into a challenge... And, finally, beat the game and you get more outfit color options + the ability to choose a 2nd weapon or infinite ammo when revisiting stages.
Aside from the problems I felt were minor (which I'd probably resent more if I paid the full $50 for it), I had a blast playing GitS: SAC. It took a while for me to understand the MM-Rice Terrorist Act plotline, but once I could fathom the terminology, I was hooked. Ok, so that might not happen if you're not already some kind of fan, but you can ignore all the in-game speech by pressing X as you run and empty clips into fools that step up. For a good third-person shooter set in a post-cyberpunk technohuman future, I can recommend nothing else, really. Yeah, there are better games, but there are far worse and the 6.1 Erik Wolpaw gave it is ludicrous.