Uplink: Hacker Elite

This is basically the same game sold elsewhere as "Uplink: Trust is a Weakness" or even just "Uplink", but: - "Hacker Elite" is the version distributed in the U.S. by a publisher called Strategy First, who are no longer making the required royalty payments to Introversion Software, the developer. (Do an internet search on these terms to learn more.) In other words, if you buy this version, you're supporting corporate malfeasance instead of the team that actually made the game. - Recent "Hacker Elite" builds have been modified so they are no longer compatible with third-party mods. Shame on GOG for doing a deal with Strategy First instead of Introversion.

In this game, you are a cracker who works for a mysterious organization committing computer crimes for money. PROS: + Good atmosphere CONS: - No saving - Poor user interface - No keyboard shortcuts - Inadequate explanations The first time I played this game, I unplugged my network cable due to its atmosphere and my paranoia. The feeling of immersion lasted a while and made the game fairly enjoyable. However, this ended over time. The point and click interface is tedious and unintuitive. For example, it wasn't apparent that links could be re-added to the world map after completing missions and it wasn't clear how the proxy/firewall bypassers worked. The shortcomings of the interface are glaring when you need to break into many different computers or one computer repeatedly for a mission. Also, the similarities between the Uplink world and the real world along with inadequate help/explanations causes confusion, but the inability to save and load make learning what you need to know about the game more time consuming. SAVING YOUR GAME: If you want to save your game, you can exit the game, create a folder with the name that describes your current game state, such as "save - bank missions completed", and copy the "users" folders into it. To load the game overwrite the game's "users" files with the ones that you previously copied. If you're a Linux user, just copy the ".uplink" folder in your home folder.

I played 30 hours and got the game for about £1 so shouldn't complain, but... First playthrough, found it very addictive, the excitement of learning the ropes and upgrading equipment. Then I got busted just as I was starting the story missions due to messing up a bank hack. On restarting, it became very repetitive. I knew how to complete the different types of missions so it was just a matter of the same clicking on the same bits of software, waiting for them to work. A much longer bounce network gave ample time for all missions so no sense of urgency. Also, unless you hack banks for cash for easy upgrades, you don't seem to get enough low level missions to earn enough to progress to high level (LAN) missions so end up fast forwarding time waiting for missions to appear. Finally, there is a morality system of sorts, but due to the slow crawl of missions becoming available, it would be difficult to pick and choose based on morality. So all in all, fun while you're still learning what to do, but gets old pretty quickly

Uplink offers fun and intrigue for the first 1-2 hours. After that, you realize that the life of a hacker is just about dragging your hacker tools (powers) onto certain icons relatively fast and letting the game play itself. You'll also find yourself repeating the same tedious jobs, over and over again, to grind for exp and money so you can unlock and accept "better", more rewarding missions. It grows tiresome and tedious really fast. The game has quite a steep learning curve too. Often-than-not, you will need to figure out what the hell are you supposed to do to beat the missions. There's basically no tutorial, no hints. You'll learn through trial and error. Worst part is, if you get caught, your game will get deleted as a bonus to "immersion". This means that all the time you spent grinding on the most simplistic and tedious missions (the initial ones) of all the simplistic and tedious missions of the game will be for nothing. You'll have to start all over again, grind all over again and then lose your progress all over again when you get confused on what to do on a certain mission. I don't get what do people call "immersion" when the game pretty much plays itself. I didn't feel like a Hollywood hacker on any moment. At least on movies hackers just press random keys on their keyboards to achieve something and rarely use a mouse.

-Very unique game unlike any other I know, but becomes painfully repetitive and tedious -Very deep and complex, but the complexity itself isn't in a fun way because the game appears to expect the player to just automatically know certain things. I read many different separate guides and there were still some things where I was left asking "uhhhh, what do I do now?" or "Why wont the game accept this? I did exactly what it said!" or getting in trouble and having no idea why or how it happened. There's a lot of clicking. Huge amounts of clicking. I got very sore after playing for a while, had to take lots of breaks. -Lots of timers. If you don't like timers, this is very uncomfortable to play. It's understandable but there is no option to turn them off and enjoy the game at your own pace that I know of. I couldn't find a setting for it. That being said, if you click very very fast, you can complete most actions needed to progress. I didn't like it though. -For all the complexity and depth the game has to offer, it still somehow manages to be unusually lacking, in that besides checking the "news" there isn't much else in obvious ways to observe the affects of what you did on the world, so "you" don't feel very real as a character, and the "world" doesn't feel very convincing either, sadly. -Not exactly the most comfortable game to look at. I understand this is a game from the early 2000's, I'm just being honest about how I feel. Obviously, I fully understand that this is a video game. It's not meant to be perfectly realistic, nor do I ever wish to find out what real hacking even looks like anyway Lol. That being said, It gives a very good feel of supposedly "realistic" hacking compared to other video games, but I surprisingly find myself still thinking "I still haven't found the hacking style video game that's right for me". This one had its charm, but it's still not "the one". I'm happy I experienced it, but I un-installed it sooner than I would have hoped.