Uplink: Hacker Elite

by Strategy First

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00008OE4M
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: March 11, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #38,792 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

High tech computer crime and industrial espionage on the Internet of 2010.

You play an Uplink Agent who makes a living by performing jobs for major corporations. Your tasks involve hacking into rival computer systems, stealing research data, sabotaging other companies, laundering money, erasing evidence, or framing innocent people.

You use the money you earn to upgrade your computer systems, and to buy new software and tools. As your experience level increases you find more dangerous and profitable missions become available. You can speculate on a fully working stock market (and even influence its outcome). You can modify people's academic or criminal records. You can divert money from bank transfers into your own accounts. You can even take part in the construction of the most deadly computer virus ever designed.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique, suspenseful, and exciting, May 16, 2003

By 

bayou_hannibal "bayou_hannibal" (West Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Uplink: Hacker Elite (CD-ROM)

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A tedious process made fun., March 18, 2003

By 

"crazy_carl_" (Troy, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Uplink: Hacker Elite (CD-ROM)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Independant Game, March 4, 2003

By 

David S. Stewart (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Uplink: Hacker Elite (CD-ROM)

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.