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Great Independant Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: March 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The basic premise is that you are a freelance hacker working through the Uplink Corporation. Uplink specializes in providing secure gateways through which hackers do their dirty work. In the event the hacker is tracked the gateway is lost, but the hacker remains hidden. Your task is to make money by successfully completing hacks for various corporations with which you can upgrade your gateway to open up new hacking opportunities. Eventually a true plot emerges and you end up fighting on the frontlines in the battle for the future of the internet.

Being created by three bedroom programmers it lacks the high-end graphics and system killing effects of other games, but it is highly addictive and refreshingly original.

Innovation among imitators

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: March 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The timer ticks down, a few seconds left. The trace is beeping like crazy. You type in a flurry of keys and quickly disconnect JUST before you are actively traced. You go back to one of the servers and delete your logs to hide the tracks. Welcome to the world of uplink. The game is amazingly innovative: you do missions, gaining money, power, prestige, and the almighty powerful computer. This game combines the money management aspects of Mechwarrior 2: mercenaries, with the suspense of a hacker movie.
When I first saw the review for this game it seemed appealing, but too good to be true. It wasn't until I downloaded that demo that I realized how cool this game is. Each hacking mission is either a race against time, or a way to showpony your skills. This is one of the few games that gave me an adrenaline rush when I first played it. The only other games that have given the adrenaline rush are counter-strike and doom. The game is constantly tense, filled with suspense.

The music for the game suits it very well. I choose to listen to the music rather than play my own. The various beeps, clicks, and dial-up sounds are great, and definitely add to the im-a-dangerous-hacker feel of the game. The game is very open ended. I am not a programmer, I am a gamer, and yet I love this game.

Uplink-A review

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: March 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Since Uplink-Hacker Elite, as it's called in the USA has just been released I thought it valid to write a review as I have had the game for a few months, being from Ireland and getting it during it's UK release. It's simple, you are a hacker, working through an online company, sub-contracted to various other countries to do jobs, from the simple, steal a file, to the more fun destroy a mainframe, frame someone, hacking a bank and many more. There is a plot but I'm not giving it away. Trust me and buy the game.

Blue glow of your monitor in a darkened room

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Uplink is probably one of the most unique games I've played in a very long time. Instantly addictive, you'll keep going back to it, and find yourself up at stupidity late hours playing it. Theres nothing like the adrenilen rush you get as your tracer tracker starts beeping faster and faster as your connection is traced.
This is a great game that everyone should play at least once.

A must-buy

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I got this game ... and I have never played such an immersing and exciting game...now sitting in the dark playing a game never seems so 'sad'! I recommend you at least try the demo from [website] and see for yourself what I mean. It's the only game which has kept me interested and is still playable over a year after I bought it, and there is a community to match!

Must-buy

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

RPGs bore you? Played all FP-Shooters over and over again?
Looking for something new?

Uplink is your answer if you do....this gameplay has been never seen before, so don't worry about running into "just-another-remake" of a genre leader....
Uplink has no category. You can't put it in the "Simulation" stack of your local Games market next to Sim City and Gran Tourismo; it's a life of it's own, and will undoubtedly call up many followers.

Just buy it.

Awesome!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: March 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Originally released only on the internet, this gem now comes to the US. Uplink strikes a great balance between action, in an obtuse manner, and gameplay. While the graphics are not top of the line, in fact there arent really special effects, they add to the mood of a grimy world overrun by robber barons of the 'Net.

The game uses many features to create the perfect mood. A "trace tracker" which beeps will give you a sense of urgency. While hacking LANs, you will need skill and a little luck.

Overall, I will recommend this game to anyone who has ever thought of being a hacker, but doesnt want to go to jail, and anyone who wants a not-so-flashy but excellant game.

Well done Introversion. Well done.

A tedious process made fun.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: March 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The game basically gives you missions. Once accepted, you're given a target and a basic outline of the goal. Maybe copy a file, delete one, or change some record. You set up a connection by clicking 'nodes' on a global map to make a complicated web of connections, giving you more time before you're traced. At one end of your connection maze is your computer, the other is the target. After connecting you see a username/password screen. Running a utility on this screen begins to break the password by trying various combinations of letters. This is when the action picks up.

The instant you perform a suspicious act it is detected by the system, which initiates a trace on your connection. A direct connection is discovered instantly, and you're hit with a hefty fine, or in worse cases, game over. Since the game saves constantly, game over is the end; you must start over at the beginning. The trace-tracker application beeps faster and faster as the trace nears your system... the password breaker finishes and you are granted access, but are quickly running out of time to do what you came for. You start the file copy... beep-beep-beep, it gets faster... only a few seconds left...

And so, you see what I mean. The game has a good storyline behind it as well as a well-detailed fake-net to play in. You can do pretty much anything you want to anybody, though doing these things risks getting caught. Occasionally I find myself going off an a grudge against one of the competing hackers that attempted to trace me down, editing his criminal record and getting him imprisoned for 10-15 years on computer fraud and destruction of propery. *evil grin*

If you play too much, however, it's not all that hard to break the storyline, or one of the pending missions. MOre than once i've accepted a mission to destroy a computer, then another one (posted earlier) that asked me to retrieve a file from that system. The missions are NOT flexible, and must be accomplished to the letter.

The interface, while slick, still lacks many of the refinements that we're used to seeing in windows. Text-boxes can only be modified by deleting everything in them back to the point that you wish to change, then replacing everything after. Tables don't sort when you click a column header, and the whole thing is a little sluggish due to a lack of proper utilization of directX acceleration and code optimization. There's an adequate tutorial to get you started, but extensive research on the forums was the only way that I could begin to delve farther into the game without being caught. The game is full of exploitable situations too. One, for example, is a mission where you track down some poor guy that stole 800 thousand dollars from his company, noticing afterward that the illegal funds are still there. A little bank job and you've got enough money to buy every single piece of software and hardware upgrade in the game, making hacking very easy. There are systems that never change their passwords or trace you, just begging to be the starting point of all your hacks so you can easily pop in later and delete the logs... Still, it is a catchy game that I play nearly daily.

If you are even a little interested in hacking, and want a good thinking-man's game full of mystery and cloak & dagger, At the budget price, this game is for you. If you prefer action-packed shoot-em-ups and simple arcade-style games with little or no strategic thinking or instruction-reading required, then give it a miss.

Unique, suspenseful, and exciting

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 27 / 27
Date: May 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Unique, suspenseful, and exciting.

Ahhh, Uplink. Another one of those games that most people have never heard of. And if you haven't heard of it, and you are looking for an exciting and unique simulation, then you have been missing out. Uplink: Hacker Elite isn't just the only game of its kind. It is also an excellent game.

The game has a basic premise. You are a freelance hacker in the year 2010, free to commit all sorts of cyber crimes however you would like. It's kind of like Grand Theft Auto in cyberspace. It is executed very well. The simulation never gets "out of character", so to speak. The start game screen isn't even a typical start game screen - it's a "login" screen onto the game's virtual network.

What this game does a great job of doing is giving you a feeling of mischief that comes from poking your nose into places it is not supposed to be. You accept jobs off of a bulletin board, sabotaging corporate data, breaking into banks, and doing other assorted dirty deeds. You break into secure systems by hacking passwords, disabling firewalls, and other methods, and then work as fast as you can before you are traced. It's very exciting, and it gives you a devious pleasure when you successfully sabotage a company's files.

"Uplink: Hacker Elite" has all sorts of different things to explore. Did you get caught and get yourself a criminal record? Hack into the criminal database and erase it! Are you going to destroy a corporate database? Buy the stock of the company's competitor and make some money off of it. You have to either experiment and figure this stuff out for yourself, or use a walkthrough from the internet. The difficulty level of the game is insane, and it gives you almost no hints.

This game is certainly not for everyone. You will probably either love it or hate it. It requires lots of brainpower, experimentation and planning, and it can get extremely frustrating. This game is very unforgiving, and does not allow you to reload a saved game if you get caught (but there are ways around that). However, you won't find anything else like it out there, and it's very well done. If stealing files from a corporation and then framing someone else for the crime sounds like fun to you, then "Uplink: Hacker Elite" is the game for you.

Awesome!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: June 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Uplink is totally awesome. Very addicting and I play it nearly everyday. Unfortunatly however, I happend to stumble onto it while looking for info on real hacking so unless you found it that way too, I don't know how anyone would know this game exists. I was looking into hacking as a fun hobby but didn't want to do anything illegal. This filled that gap even though it's only losely based on real hacking, it still has enough challenges and things to explore. If your looking into hacking for the excitement and challenge, just buy this and you don't have to worry about getting shell accounts, teaching yourself the ropes, or breaking the law. You still get enough feel of what hacking is like breaking into big time companies, deleting/copying files, changing idenities, and all without fear of getting sent to Club Fed for a couple of years. Heard they're coming out with a sequal with a multiplayer feature allowing you to break into each others computers.... pretty cool :) In the meantime though, this is the game. Hopefully the next one will be more publicised though.

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