Uplink: Hacker Elite

"Take the life of a hacker...and realize how boring it is"

After playing Enter The Matrix's Hacking sessions, I thought it would be fun to try out a computer game witht he same kind of concept. That's when I found Uplink. It was good fun for a while, but it slowly goes downhill after no more than twenty assignments.

Story...

Story? Well, you're a hacker, and you...hack...stuff. You basically take jobs that you see posted on some message boards and take them. Not much of a story, but I don't think this game was designed for a story, so I'll make it fair.

-/10

Gameplay...

The gameplay seems fun and realistic when you first start, but soon you'll discover that you will be doing the same things over and over, just for other people.

When you first start out, you have the weakest computer (who's specs are amazingly high, I mean, they got GigaQuads of space!) and you must simply do some tasks to raise your rank and reputation. You also do jobs for some money, and with money, you can buy new Gateways (computers) and new programs or upgrade existing ones. At first, the gameplay is really fun, as you quickly attempt to copy, erase, modify, etc. files while people are trying to track you down, and you can buy many programs and use some skills to slow down the tracing process. Then, once you're done doing what you need to do, simply disconnect, reply to the person who gave you the job, he'll give you your pay, and there, one mission done. Now do this a couple hundred times and you've got yourself Uplink. All the jobs are either copying a file, erasing a file, or modifying someone's school diploma or life using the social or school data base, just that as you progress the systems get harder to crack as you must bypass firewalls and proxy thing-a-ma-bobs. But it is quite pleasing when you finish a job and looking at the trace progression and noticing you were one second away from being caught.

All in all, the gameplay quickly gets repetitive, boring, and tedious.

4/10

Graphics...

Hmmmm...nothing to say here, no images or whatnot, anything you would expect on your computer's desktop, can't give a fair mark.

-/10

Sound...

The sounds are all just beeps and buzzes, anything you'd hear from a computer. The music, on the otherhand, is quite upbeat and jumpy. The music is good to get your heart goin while you try to delete some rival company's data while they try to trace you down. Nothing big, but great music.

7/10

Replayability...

Well, if you enjoy the game, the replayability factor will be through the roof as you will be able to do countless jobs and missions. However, if you don't like the game too much, you will despise trying to finish all the missions. There's not much difference between the missions at the beginning and at the end, so it's whether you like the game or not when it comes down to it. Personally, I don't want to know why you would want to continue playing this game.

4/10

Buy, Rent, Trash?

You can always get the demo to serve your curiosity, but otherwise, Trash. I don't know if you'll get anything good out of the money you would spend on this game. The demo is pretty much what the game will feel like from beginning to end, so your best bet is just that, Rent (download the demo).

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/01/03, Updated 07/01/03