Uplink v1.55

By kiaaze

Uplink is a hacking simulator. In it, you play the role of a hacker working for the Uplink corporation. This corporation provides companies and/or individuals with services like stealing or destroying data from the competition, clearing criminal records, framing people, making illegal bank transfers, etc. So actually, it’s more of a “cracking” (or black-hat hacking if you prefer) simulator, since hacking doesn’t necessarily involve illegal/destructive actions. Tracing illegal bank transfers or other crackers are the only legal missions in the game. However, they require hacking into servers illegally, so it would be grey-hat hacking…

To make things simpler, I’ll just use the terms hacker/hacking from now on.

The game manages to set up a great Hollywood-style hacking, cyberpunk atmosphere by offering a cool interface and fitting music. When you’re watching the download progress of a file, while hearing the beeping of the trace tracker with increasing frequency as the authorities close in on you, you’ll feel just like a hacker. Unfortunately, the hacking itself is just Hollywood-style hacking as I said (or script-kiddy hacking in a certain way). It’s not realistic at all and is mostly just clicking around (altough some servers offer basic terminal commands). Don’t expect to learn any real hacking abilities there.

The gameplay is mainly based on hacking missions provided by the Uplink corporation. The missions are very varied, but get repetitive once you’ve done all possible mission types. There are 16 basic mission types which can involve different security features to vary their difficulty.

Completing missions will earn you money and increase your uplink rating. Money allows you to buy software like password breakers, decrypting software, etc or upgrade your hardware. The uplink rating determines the missions you have access to. The higher it is, the more difficult the missions you can get. Abandoning or failing at missions will lower your uplink rating.

The game also features a story with two possible endings. Some time after the beginning of the game, you’ll get a mysterious e-mail from a hacker telling you that he is dead (the mail was scheduled for autosend) and asking you to investigate what the Andromeda Research Corporation (ARC) is up to. After hacking into their mainframe, you’ll get a job offer from them, as well as counter-offer from the Arunmor corporation. Depending on which side you’ll choose, the ending will be different. ARC wants to destroy the internet by using a virus called “Revelation”, while Arunmor is trying to develop an antivirus called “Faith” against it.

The missions from ARC will only be available by e-mail, while some of the missions from Andromeda will be available at the Uplink corporation.
This means that if you choose the ARC side, you’ll be able to complete more missions. However, choosing the ARC side ends the game either with you getting arrested or with the internet destroyed, while choosing the Andromeda side allows you to play on forever if you succeed at the last mission.

Of course, you can also choose to completely ignore the story or the missions and hack around freely for yourself. This can actually be very interesting since the developers have put a lot of secrets and fun references into the game.

With the two story arcs and the secrets, the game has some replay value. However, this replay value is limited by two major problems of the game: the gameplay is repetitive and the interface can be frustrating. You have to place your mouse on a text box in order to type into it for example (pressing tab works too, but there’s no shift-tab). There is also no copy/paste feature, so you’ll often have to write down IP addresses, bank accounts, etc on a paper (or in an ingame e-mail draft).

The game can seem hard the first time you play it because it is very unforgiving. There is no save/load game feature, the game is saved automatically everytime you exit it. Once you get arrested, it’s game over.

However, once you figured out how everything works and have learned how to clean up your tracks, it’s very easy (except for the final ARC mission, but there’s a trick to make it easier). Additionally, you can of course also save/load your game status manually by backing up ~/.uplink where the game gets saved.

Now as for the GNU/Linux compatibility: I experienced a few graphical glitches some times (the world map having a different background image), but they don’t affect the gameplay. I somehow also seem to experience them more frequently now that I switched to Ubuntu 9.04, so it might be related to a graphic card driver or openGL version problem and you may not experience them. Luckily, there’s a demo available so you can test the game before buying it. Note that buying the game online from Introversion gives you access to the Windows version too.

Up’s and Down’s:

Great atmosphere thanks to the cool graphics, fitting music and stressful tracking beeps
Lots of secrets / easter eggs
Has an optional story with two possible endings
Varied mission types
Low system requirements

Missions get repetitive after a while
More of a fast-clicking game than realistic hacking
One of the end missions is excessively hard compared to the rest of the game
No multiplayer
Some random glitches with the world map

System requirements:
300 MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, 25MB hard disk, OpenGL-capable graphics card (only required by versions prior to 1.55)

Please, help us to keep this free project updated and alive. THANKYOU!

Uplink v1.55!
Article created by: kiaaze.

Uplink is a hacking simulator. In it, you play the role of a hacker working for the Uplink corporation. This corporation provides companies and/or individuals with services like stealing or destroying data from the competition, clearing criminal records, framing people, making illegal bank transfers, etc. So actually, it’s more of a “cracking” (or black-hat hacking if you prefer) simulator, since hacking doesn’t necessarily involve illegal/destructive actions. Tracing illegal bank transfers or other crackers are the only legal missions in the game. However, they require hacking into servers illegally, so it would be grey-hat hacking…

To make things simpler, I’ll just use the terms hacker/hacking from now on.

The game manages to set up a great Hollywood-style hacking, cyberpunk atmosphere by offering a cool interface and fitting music. When you’re watching the download progress of a file, while hearing the beeping of the trace tracker with increasing frequency as the authorities close in on you, you’ll feel just like a hacker. Unfortunately, the hacking itself is just Hollywood-style hacking as I said (or script-kiddy hacking in a certain way). It’s not realistic at all and is mostly just clicking around (altough some servers offer basic terminal commands). Don’t expect to learn any real hacking abilities there.

The gameplay is mainly based on hacking missions provided by the Uplink corporation. The missions are very varied, but get repetitive once you’ve done all possible mission types. There are 16 basic mission types which can involve different security features to vary their difficulty.

Completing missions will earn you money and increase your uplink rating. Money allows you to buy software like password breakers, decrypting software, etc or upgrade your hardware. The uplink rating determines the missions you have access to. The higher it is, the more difficult the missions you can get. Abandoning or failing at missions will lower your uplink rating.

The game also features a story with two possible endings. Some time after the beginning of the game, you’ll get a mysterious e-mail from a hacker telling you that he is dead (the mail was scheduled for autosend) and asking you to investigate what the Andromeda Research Corporation (ARC) is up to. After hacking into their mainframe, you’ll get a job offer from them, as well as counter-offer from the Arunmor corporation. Depending on which side you’ll choose, the ending will be different. ARC wants to destroy the internet by using a virus called “Revelation”, while Arunmor is trying to develop an antivirus called “Faith” against it.

The missions from ARC will only be available by e-mail, while some of the missions from Andromeda will be available at the Uplink corporation.
This means that if you choose the ARC side, you’ll be able to complete more missions. However, choosing the ARC side ends the game either with you getting arrested or with the internet destroyed, while choosing the Andromeda side allows you to play on forever if you succeed at the last mission.

Of course, you can also choose to completely ignore the story or the missions and hack around freely for yourself. This can actually be very interesting since the developers have put a lot of secrets and fun references into the game.

With the two story arcs and the secrets, the game has some replay value. However, this replay value is limited by two major problems of the game: the gameplay is repetitive and the interface can be frustrating. You have to place your mouse on a text box in order to type into it for example (pressing tab works too, but there’s no shift-tab). There is also no copy/paste feature, so you’ll often have to write down IP addresses, bank accounts, etc on a paper (or in an ingame e-mail draft).

The game can seem hard the first time you play it because it is very unforgiving. There is no save/load game feature, the game is saved automatically everytime you exit it. Once you get arrested, it’s game over.

However, once you figured out how everything works and have learned how to clean up your tracks, it’s very easy (except for the final ARC mission, but there’s a trick to make it easier). Additionally, you can of course also save/load your game status manually by backing up ~/.uplink where the game gets saved.

Now as for the GNU/Linux compatibility: I experienced a few graphical glitches some times (the world map having a different background image), but they don’t affect the gameplay. I somehow also seem to experience them more frequently now that I switched to Ubuntu 9.04, so it might be related to a graphic card driver or openGL version problem and you may not experience them. Luckily, there’s a demo available so you can test the game before buying it. Note that buying the game online from Introversion gives you access to the Windows version too.

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The news section where you can read about your exploits.

Yippie! A command-line interface! Unfortunately, you can't write any scripts.

Setting your status to deceased doesn't seem to change much to the game

Breaking an "elliptic curve encryption cypher"

Make people get arrested or clear their criminal history

Breaking passwords looks cool, but is boring

PHDs made easy

The sysadmin is looking for you!

Modifying logs is useful for framing people

Gateway upgrading

A lot of spam in the inbox :)

Hacking the social security database

The world map without glitch

The world map showing your connection route

The world map has some glitches sometimes.

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Up’s and Down’s:

Great atmosphere thanks to the cool graphics, fitting music and stressful tracking beeps
Lots of secrets / easter eggs
Has an optional story with two possible endings
Varied mission types
Low system requirements

Missions get repetitive after a while
More of a fast-clicking game than realistic hacking
One of the end missions is excessively hard compared to the rest of the game
No multiplayer
Some random glitches with the world map

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System requirements:
300 MHz CPU, 32MB RAM, 25MB hard disk, OpenGL-capable graphics card (only required by versions prior to 1.55)

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FILE:	LINKS:	USERS SCORE:
Size: 52 Mb Singleplayer: Yes Multiplayer: No Network Play: No Ubuntu Native: Yes File Extension: .sh Licence/Price: €11.08 / $14.67 / £10.00 Source available: Yes, but under a restrictive license and for money	Homepage: Link Download demo: Link	VN:F [1.2.0_562] Graphics: Gameplay: Sound: Difficulty: Overall: 7.4/10 (Votes: 23) Saving... Move your cursor over the stars to vote

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