@gameragodzilla It's basically punishing the player for playing poorly.  I think people coming to it now fresh will have a harder time with it than those of us playing it at the time though - EVERY game had weapon degradation at the time.

The problem becomes when the game doesn't communicate why the weapon is degrading well.  SS2 does this half-way - melee weapons give you sparks flying and different sounds and stuff that you can use to differentiate the hits so you know when you fucked up (usually by hitting a wall rather than the baddie).  But the guns don't communicate the degradation well at all.