View All (6)

Uplink: Hacker Elite is a brave attempt at a new style of game. It works on many levels, which makes its flaws all the more annoying.

Many movies and novels have glamorized computer hacking. Yes, I know that in the ranks of real computer gurus, “hacker” means an imaginative and brilliant programmer – but in this game we’re firmly in the realm of Cyberpunk.

In a near future environment, you play the part of a novice hacker for Uplink, a secretive organization. The game is fully immersive, in that you start by ‘downloading’ software for your computer, and then play on a screen representing your new operating system.

This immersion continues in that the Tutorial is presented as a program running under the new OS, and that Help files (effectively the manual, since the game includes no printed documentation) are accessed on Uplink’s server. Nothing you see on your screen breaks the illusion that you’re using your own PC as a terminal to your ‘Gateway’ system at Uplink HQ. Neat, very neat; and hugely stressful. It’s easy to get paranoid and to think you’re really connected to an external system while you play!

In a great nod to the history of the idea, one of the (mainly fictional) companies featured
is Steve Jackson Games, who infamously got entangled with the FBI when it produced a card-game about hacking!

As an Uplink agent, you take jobs starting as easy search-and-destroy missions and gradually becoming more complex. Success brings cash and advancement, unlocking more missions. (I’ll talk about failure in a moment.) Ultimately, a typically convoluted story starts to emerge, which you’re free to follow or ignore as you choose.

Cash allows you to upgrade your Gateway, making it easier to multitask and transfer data. You also buy new software, which enables you to attack better-defended systems. You have to discover the right combination of cracker programs and bypassers to get into a given target, and then do your job before time runs out and the victim traces your connection.

You can buy yourself more time by setting up elaborate chains of connections. However, you’d better by sure to hack one of the links and remove access logs; or you will eventually be discovered.

Here’s the hard part, folks. If your connection is traced, either during a hack or later through an undeleted log, it’s Game Over. (OK, there’s some extremely expensive hardware that can delay the evil moment, but if you’ve gotten that far then you know you’re good.) Yes; Game Over. And you can’t save your position.

While I understand that this adds to a great ‘real world’ feeling – you can’t afford to screw up – it’s hugely frustrating as a careless error trashes hours and hours of gaming. Quite frankly, you don’t really want to start again, especially since the low-level and mid-level missions get tedious quickly. (“Hack this system and destroy this file.” Rinse and repeat.)

Gameplay isn’t the only let down. There are some surprising interface problems, like not allowing the mouse-wheel to scroll through long text lists, or keyboard data entry only working when the cursor is in exactly the right place. There’s far too little music, given that it’s playing on a very short loop. Your virtual computer’s settings (connection maps and running programs) aren’t saved from session to session.

Uplink suffers from an inner conflict. The immersive game-world draws you in, but the repetition makes long sessions of playing feel like a chore. Similarly, the genuine tension as the timer ticks down is great, right up to the moment where you get sloppy, make a mistake, and end up having to start from scratch.

Real-life hacking may be an unforgiving business, but I play games to relax. Stress is fine in moderation. Unfortunately, Uplink gets the balance wrong, and after a promising start it ceases to be fun.

Review by Marc Read.