Uplink - a quick review
Sep. 20th, 2002 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrisvenusIt was pointed out to me that I didn't explain what uplink was before so here is a quick description and a semi-reveiw. Not much of one since i'm going to run it off quickly to get back to the game. :)
Uplink is a game about computer hacking. You play the part of a hacker working unofficially for the uplink corporation. You take on freelance jobs that range from copying some data files from servers to ruining people's lives by altering criminal records and putting out a warrant for their arrest. There are also "plot" missions that are a bit more special but I'll leave details of that to the game.
The style of hacking is a very hollywood one. The first thing you do when hacking a system is to go to your world map to plot a route to your target. Sure, you could connect directly but that is so easy to track so you go to your world map and bounce off of a few other systems to make the trracing harder. Once there you point your password cracker at their system. Sometimes you need voice analysis and another handy piece of software does that. It can mostly be done from the nice GUI but occasionally you want to drop into a systems console where you can much more easily do a cd sys; delete *; shutdown and watch it kick you out as it reboots and then fail to restart.
THe game offers you news articles of the various computer crimes going on and you can watch out for your little escapades. Occasionally though if you aren't careful the feds catch you. Early on they might just fine you but in the later stages its game over to be caught. You can prevent this by being careful in your missions but also by having security on your gateway computer (self destruct mechanism in the event of tampering anybody?).
The game is very fun to play in my experience. You can race against the clock as you watch your seconds ticking down as you curse the speed of your link whilst trying to steal computer files. THe same mission can get a bit samey but fortunately as you do more missions your uplink rating goes up and people becoe willing to hire you for tougher jobs. Also you always have the option of a few freelance missions. Working out how to hack a bank and getting away with it is both very rewarding and very satisfying. I'm sure similar things can be done with the stock system but I only found that about an hour ago. :)
The plot missions are very fun initially but the later ones were an absolute nightmare. This may be because I went about it wrong (logically things I did were, in hindsight, ludicrously stupid) or it might be very hard. However unlike some games the plot is not the central fun stuff of the game.
New functionality has recently been added for LAN hacking which looks like it hugely increases the stuff to do in the game. As far as I can tell LANs have about a dozen types of subsystems including mail servers, authenticaton servers, routes, switches, terminals, etc. I've not gone up against one yet (as mentioned in other post) so I don't know how much they add to the enjoyment of the game.
The demo is downloadable which gives you access to the very easy levels of missions. The full game costs 20 pounds and is worth it in my opinion on the other hand your mileage may vary.
I'd give it full marks but that is a bit cliched so I'm going to go for the other cliche of giving it 9.5/10. :)
Uplink is a game about computer hacking. You play the part of a hacker working unofficially for the uplink corporation. You take on freelance jobs that range from copying some data files from servers to ruining people's lives by altering criminal records and putting out a warrant for their arrest. There are also "plot" missions that are a bit more special but I'll leave details of that to the game.
The style of hacking is a very hollywood one. The first thing you do when hacking a system is to go to your world map to plot a route to your target. Sure, you could connect directly but that is so easy to track so you go to your world map and bounce off of a few other systems to make the trracing harder. Once there you point your password cracker at their system. Sometimes you need voice analysis and another handy piece of software does that. It can mostly be done from the nice GUI but occasionally you want to drop into a systems console where you can much more easily do a cd sys; delete *; shutdown and watch it kick you out as it reboots and then fail to restart.
THe game offers you news articles of the various computer crimes going on and you can watch out for your little escapades. Occasionally though if you aren't careful the feds catch you. Early on they might just fine you but in the later stages its game over to be caught. You can prevent this by being careful in your missions but also by having security on your gateway computer (self destruct mechanism in the event of tampering anybody?).
The game is very fun to play in my experience. You can race against the clock as you watch your seconds ticking down as you curse the speed of your link whilst trying to steal computer files. THe same mission can get a bit samey but fortunately as you do more missions your uplink rating goes up and people becoe willing to hire you for tougher jobs. Also you always have the option of a few freelance missions. Working out how to hack a bank and getting away with it is both very rewarding and very satisfying. I'm sure similar things can be done with the stock system but I only found that about an hour ago. :)
The plot missions are very fun initially but the later ones were an absolute nightmare. This may be because I went about it wrong (logically things I did were, in hindsight, ludicrously stupid) or it might be very hard. However unlike some games the plot is not the central fun stuff of the game.
New functionality has recently been added for LAN hacking which looks like it hugely increases the stuff to do in the game. As far as I can tell LANs have about a dozen types of subsystems including mail servers, authenticaton servers, routes, switches, terminals, etc. I've not gone up against one yet (as mentioned in other post) so I don't know how much they add to the enjoyment of the game.
The demo is downloadable which gives you access to the very easy levels of missions. The full game costs 20 pounds and is worth it in my opinion on the other hand your mileage may vary.
I'd give it full marks but that is a bit cliched so I'm going to go for the other cliche of giving it 9.5/10. :)