• No, don't even think melee. Unless you are one of a kind of a masochist, a unique case even amongst the best of the best of them, that is. With non-existent life-steal and *very* limited healing options during your adventures, having to experience melee builds in this game is even worse then having to cross the desert with sand in the sand in your bottle made out of sand.
  
• That leads us to...

It doesn't matter all that much which category you choose—the gameplay will still be as shallow, painfuly slow, and boring as ever, but hey, at least you'll listen to an ominious, sparse soundtrack, good sound effects, and feel nostalgia level over 9000. However, it's important to choose one stat over another rather soon, and dump the majority of skill points into it because the stat requirements tend to be rather unforgiving. That is, Knowledge for energy weapons, or Dexterity for physical weapons. More on that in General Tips.

Anyway,

Knowledge-based weapons (energy damage) usually have lower flat-damage, every one of them is a fast-shooting implement of destruction tool to painstainkgly kill enemies one by one for half of the game, and little did you know prior starting this game, they use up the same Energy that is actually the game's currency. What's not to take here!
Having said that, here are the pros and cons:

Pros:

• They don't deteoriate and that means no money Energy-currency spent on repairs.
  
• The majority of them shoot rather fast, so that somewhat offsets the relatively low flat-damage, thus reaching the DPS mostly comparable to physical-damage ranged weapons.
  
• Their correlated stat—Knowledge—directly applies to the larger magazine, towards the damage itself, and also towards being able to equip other high-tech equipment that doubles as "spells" in this game. E.g. short-range teleport (flash-dodge), base-teleporter (little less troding through the desert with the desert of something something desert to find a portal), enemy freezers, healings, buffs, etc.

Cons:

• They literally burn your money. Energy is the currency of the game. However, that is notable only with the Rifles, which—during the first 5-10 gameplay hours—spend more Energy than you can find. The standard pea-shooter of a gun (plasma, ice, magnetic) uses up a very reasonably-low amounts of energy. Something nice for a change in this game, can it be?
  
• They usually have shorter range. That means *a lot* of hit-n-run approach (bye bye mouse buttons, hahaha, you have been warned no. 2).
  
• You'll get powerful variants—launchers—only after having completed about half of the martyrdom level of an experience game, some 15 hours.
  
• You'd need to carry several variants because some stronger enemies are usually resistant to one particular type of damage (plasma, ice, magnetic) which leads us to—oh gods, does this EVER end—even more prolonged killing.

Dexterity-based ranged weapons (physical) are your trusty, mechanical implements of dispatching your enemies to hell, one by one again, with one notable exception.

Pros:

• They usually shoot fast with some notable exception such as Disc-Throwers.
  
• Bows have nice, long range (that makes up for two nice things in this game as far as combat is concerned—and THAT'S ABOUT IT)
  
• Disc-Throwers' projectiles pass through the first enemy. In theory, you could kill two enemies faster. Yay, that's a heaven-sent, ain't it? Yeah, in theory...
  
• Other members of this category: slings and crossbows have about the same range as their Energy weapons counter-parts, but are really cheap and fast, too.

Cons:

• They deteoriate and that means spending money on repairs after ca. every 10-15 minutes of gameplay.
  
• Unfortunately (I told you to be warned about anything nice in this game) you can forget about using a powerful "magical" variants such as +15 Dexterity Bow, because having to repair one would cost you small fortune you simply don't have.
  Example: Repairing a bow 10-17 dmg costs a reasonable amount of 255 Energy. Repairing a bow 10-17 of +10 dexterity costs 3500 Energy. And guess what, during the 10-15 minutes of being able to use the bow before it breaks, you'd loot around 1000-2000 energy at the very best.
  
• You probably want to switch to an Energy pistol to shoot every one of those nasty, grindy, alien eggs, unless you want your weapon to deteoriate even faster. However, there is no fast weapon switching, nor there is two sets of weapons. Nothing. Nada. Niente. MORE DRUDGING, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT BY NOW!

• No, don't play this game, really. It's not worth your time, I have see--- *shuts up my reasonable self* Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up.
  
• Choose which category of *ranged weapons* you want right from the start and dump your points to the respective stat. I mean, it's good to raise some Dexterity if you use Energy weapons as well, because Dexterity directly applies to any ranged damage and the speed of shooting. And vice-versa, it's good to have at least a bit larger Knowledge stat if you are using Dexterity weapons, because Knowledge is used for the "spells".
  
• Strength raising: We decided that you have at least few grains of sanity left in your brain and haven't chosen the Melee category. Strength is good only for armor, then. You don't need much of an armor, since your job will be to over-click your mouse to the silicon death by dancing to and fro between projectiles and landing a shot or two in between. Raise only sparringly.
  
• Endurance raising: It's nice to have *some* more of it, since Hack will tire less this way, and in this game that could've bored even those with almost Buddha-level of patience, having to walk or wait for Stamina to regen is stretching this factor across a whole new level, yet.
  
• Shoot ALL alien eggs so that you too could hate yourself for absolutely wasting your precious irl time by horribly slow farming/grinding get a bit more Energy and/or items! It's awesome! (on a scale of 1 hour tooth removal to doing 1 week old dishes 1 hour).
  
• Don't spend willy-nilly. The creatures don't respawn, thus money are finite. You'll get most equipment through painstaking grind. Save up for thoughtful purchases of the very best weapons, repairs, and for the best chips. That is +3/+6/+9 Chips of Versatility, and +4/+9/etc. Chips of Dexterity/Knowledge. The first one is a no-brainer, +xx to all stats is a nice boost. The latter are to meet those nasty weapon requirements soon enough, thus speeding your slogging experience at least by a notch.
  
• Be wary of the best of gifts—the most expensive Chips that switch one stat with another. In theory, you could max your Dex and be able to switch to the best Energy weapons by possessing this chip. In reality, as soon as you equip the said chip, it bugs out. It works only the very first time. Once you unequip it the stats go back to what they've been (heavens be praised at least for that), but when you equip it again—no more stat switching. Bye bye 16000 if you've bought it by the vendor and not foung it, hahahahaha. Eeeehrm.

Yeah, that's about it. Stop reading and get to it, unimaginable levels of boredome and headache awaits you, but hey, you can boost your ego everyday in the morning when you look in the mirror and say to yourself, "Dude, you are one heck of a guy to have been able to complete it, I salute you!"