izigame.me

To this day, Uplink has utterly ruined any other "hacking" games for me.
That's not to say other games about hacking are bad, I'm fairly certain you could make an argument that some of them are better than Uplink, it is by no means perfect.
But understand, dear reader, that the things that make Uplink so perfect for me, is its approach to capturing what being a hacker is like. At least, a hacker as viewed by 90's to early 2000's movies. You know, tapping keys and seeing code fly by, "hacking the mainframe" and "I'm in". (Though I guess Uplink doesn't have as much typing as movie hacking)
I don't generally like drawing comparisons, every game is a world unto itself, so without naming any names:
Most other games about hacking (that I have tried) fall into one of two categories. They're either games about "real" hacking, involving programming (either using a real programming language or one made for the game) or... They're puzzle games where hacking is the theme, the set dressing that frames the things you're doing. Everything is static. Without naming any names:
Why is it that a game, supposedly, about hacking stresses how important it is to delete your logs, and then every time I disconnect from a remote system, it leaves a log pointing straight to my home computer? Making it impossible to ever really cover my traces?
In Uplink, every single thing you do on a remote system leaves a log. Every system you bounce through leaves a bread crumb all the way to you. So, how do you deal with it? Well, once you're disconnected from your target and the beeping's over, you have a little time. After all, someone at the target has to notice the intrusion, inspect the logs you left behind (which you could have deleted or modified) and start following that bread crumb trail. You can cut off this trail at any point in your bounce path. You could intercept the logs in one of these systems and direct the trail somewhere else, making someone else take the fall, hell, redirect it back to the trail itself. Throw those after you into a loop that leads nowhere. Leave behind a mocking message. This connection? Yeah it bounced to IP Address 000.000.000.000 trace this, dumbass.
You see what I'm saying?
There are some games in those two categories that I've liked. I love Exapunks, a game themed around hacking, but in my mind that's a game about programming, not about hacking.
What is it that I am actually, doing, in the game? Am I a cool hacker, or am I just playing a strategy game? Am I really sniffing out clues with all of these really cool real world inspired tools the game gives me, or am I just trying to find the one thing the game designer expected me to do? Am I cracking into protected systems, or am I just writing pseudo-javascript code?
Obviously I'm not actually hacking real systems in Uplink, but it sure feels like it. And that's what it's all about, to me. Every aspect of this game blends into what is, in my mind, the experience I picture when I think of being the cool hacker you see in movies.
Now, this game is from 2001 and it really shows its age. Both in good and bad ways. If you want to play at modern resolutions, I hope you like squinting. But, it is that forward-looking vision from 2001 that gives the game so much of its soul. This is one of the first games I played that felt like it did the faux-OS style of game. Like this really is the software you'd use as an Uplink agent.
I bring this up, because I want to air my grievances about Uplink OS. I appreciate it for what it is, a modernised version of Uplink, which you can actually play at a modern resolutions. But... It strips away some of the style in the original. The map, while you could say it is more readable, is now just a featureless square, instead of a world map, losing that sensation of bouncing your connection all across the world. "hack the abstract representation of the internet" isn't quite as catchy as "hack the planet". It's slick, it's modern, we're in 2020 now and left the far off future of 2010 (as envisioned by 2001) far behind us.
If my rambling has sparked your interest, do be aware, my glasses are not just tinted in rose, they're offensively pink. Even I can acknowledge the game's aged a bit poorly. It can be confusing to figure out what to do without an external guide. While there are last-ditch measures you can take to prevent failure (namely, strapping a bomb and motion sensor to your gateway, which is COOL AS HELL), failure will mean that your entire progress is gone. Hope you like re-doing the (admittedly, pretty easy) tutorial!
And, of course, don't let my grievances with it rob you of trying out Uplink OS, if you can't stomach the game as it is. Even I caved, in exchange for higher resolutions.