I'm so fucking tired of people claiming that Warren Spector coined the concept of Immersive Sims, when the man himself will tell you it was Doug Church, all the while these people bash the concept of such a genre even existing. Their arguments are uniformly rooted in prejudicial ignorance every single fucking time. Often making some idiotic remark about how the name is misleading because flight simulators have nothing to do with them, WHEN THE ACTUAL OG IMSIM DEVS MADE FLIGHT SIMS TOO. The entirety of the Looking Glass output were ALWAYS simulations. I'm inclined to believe that the people who were the original developers at the forefront of Simulation focused game development are right in attaching such a denomination in one form or another to their RPG and FPS outputs as well. There's a very simple litmus test you can employ to discern why the bulk of modern first person video games do not deserve to be brought up in conversation by halfwits mistakenly complaining about the genre being "meaningless" because "all games strive to be immersive" (lmao even) or what have you when that's clearly not true. The litmus is whether or not the game is implementing its mechanics via scripted interactions or SIMULATING systems to allow for a rationally comprehensible and predictable game world. Yet somehow people keep bringing up Elder Scrolls, Metroid Prime, et al, in conversation.
I suspect this is an unfortunate effect of general human neurology struggling with comprehending nuance and abstractions, all the while putting much too much emphasis on definitions. Thus the incessant roundabout arguments throughout all of history that often boil down to nothing more than fucking pedantry.

Anyway, as I see it what makes ImSims most consistently identifiable, rather than pedantic slavish insistence of finding individual shared mechanics, is observing how systemically implemented game mechanics end up informing and recontextualizing a game's Level Design.
I feel the need to point this out because I've seen far too many people think that statpoints and skill trees are of chief significance, when they're really just a tool by which developers can choose to allow players influence over their characters. Too few people have played the OG System Shock which is quite lacking in all the ARPG frills that have come to define a particular subset of this criminally misunderstood peak genre of PC gaming. A genre that arguably IS PC gaming.

Oh, yeah, the game. Deus Ex is okay. I made the mistake of playing on Hard and had to suffer through the mediocre gunplay. It was still good though and definitely a must-play. I willfully restarted the Hong Kong level a few times because I wasn't ready to move on before trying several different approaches just for the hell of it. Truly an excellent level.

For all my complaining of pedantry, I wish such widespread flagrant misunderstanding and misapplication of terminology didn't piss me off so much, but I simply can't tolerate besmirchment of PC gaming's most engrossing lineage.

BioShock is a corridor shooter.

Overlooked and underappreciated. MindThunk is currently in the preliminary stage of crafting a sequel and deserves your financial support to bring more of this stellar gameworld to life. For reference; even with only one active dev when I sent in a bug report, he immediately isolated the issue and had a fix ready to roll out in the next day or so. Also, the ingame mirrors reflect you in realtime. 10/10.

While it is possible to commit to an aggressive playstyle in Ctrl Alt Ego, I think it shines best when attempting to clear it stealthily and without harming any of the bots. Doing so recontextualizes many rooms into interesting puzzle boxes that require careful observation and planning to dismantle or pass through. But due to being a systemic Immersive Sim, these aren't one and done puzzle rooms kindred to the likes of Portal, but are rather invitations to forge one of many possible solutions. I feel this greatly aids in the potential longevity and replay value of Ctrl Alt Ego.
The game's also rather amusing, with a dryly humorous script. There's also CATS, a lot of CATS.

Hot take: BioShock is a mediocre corridor shooter and absolutely undeserving of being compared to System Shock or any other ImSim. The camera mechanic is annoying busywork that is near mandatory to engage with in order to limit the obnoxious enemy health scaling.
BioShock, both original and remastered, seem to be regrettably unstable on modern windows too.

A great deal of my distaste comes down to broken expectations. I went in expecting one of the best games ever made. Continually I was wondering: Well? Where is it?
In the end, monologues about free will are laughable in linear video games. Especially when said video game is considerably more on-rails than any of its purported kin.