In concept this is quite an achievement, because the number of PC games available today isn’t exactly shrinking. In practice, though, that same originality is also the game’s undoing. Quite simply, hacking into computers isn’t action-packed work, and although there are a few intense moments when a corporation will be hot on your trail, you’ll probably find that you work with computer interfaces enough during your day job that you won’t want to do the same in this game.

From the very beginning you can tell Uplink is going to be a unique title. There’s no opening movie, no loading time, not even a developer’s or publisher’s logo. Instead, it opens with a welcome screen, as though you’re installing software, and immediately registers you with the company for whom you are going to be taking on hacking jobs.

Connecting to the company and working your way through the first few minutes, you’ll definitely begin to feel immersed in the title. I can honestly say that I’ve never felt this naughty playing a video game – and I’ve played some doozies. The game, in fact, does such a wonderful job presenting itself as a legit hacking program that I often found myself checking the DSL traffic just to make sure I wasn’t inadvertently doing a side job for the developer. The presentation really is that solid.

Of course, that presentation means the gameplay premise is relatively static. The entire time you’re literally using “purchased” software to hack into corporations’ mainframes, steal their files and email the information to your client. With just a few mouse clicks, you set the process in motion and watch the computer do the work. It’s not exactly the most engaging experience.

The exceptions to this experience come when you’re being traced by authorities or your “victimized” corporations, in which cases the psychological stress can be pretty high. The best way to describe the stress is to think of the feeling you had the first time you heard footsteps in Splinter Cell and scrambled frantically to pick a lock before you get caught. It’s just too bad that those psychological exceptions in Uplink are few and far between until the later missions.

If you happen to get caught, it’s the end of the line, and not just in the sense that you’ll go back to the last mission and try over. One failed mission, for any client, and your computer will be confiscated, your game will end, and you’ll have to start over. In this sense Uplink mimics real-world ramifications, but the game has a steep learning curve and an even steeper price for gamers who want to just sit down and have some fun pretending to be “l337” hackers.

Remember the hours of fun you had playing Centipede and Asteroids? In those games it didn’t matter that the graphics required massive amounts of imagination, because they did just enough to make you believe you were actually shooting spiders and blasting virtual planetoids. Uplink resembles those games in graphical concept, although in this case it’s world maps and Windows-like screens that do just enough to set the gameplay scene.

The graphics in Uplink amount to a black screen with windows that display your tracing path, currently loaded software, CPU workload and email inbox. While this fits wonderfully with the remote-hacking theme of the game, on the whole it leaves much to be desired in variety and pizzazz. If you work on computers all day and/or grew up using DOS, you can imagine what you’ll find in Uplink. The graphics are realistic, for sure, but they’re more likely to damper your interest than dazzle your senses.

Again, with Uplink the game is trying to make you feel like you’re hacking into the world’s most exotic mainframes, so sound isn’t nearly as important as, say, watching your “victim” track you around the globe. The music in the game is a mix of high-quality MIDI files and the occasionally spy-like song, and the only other sounds you’ll notice are the beeps and clicks that correspond to pressing buttons and connecting to remote computers.

As sad as it sounds, the “dialing modem” sound is one of the game’s best audio touches, and you’ll hear it frequently when connecting to Uplink’s computers. Unfortunately, though, there’s a reason people buy internal modems and the sound is now the butt of many a joke in radio and TV advertisements.

Uplink is fairly open-ended in terms of whether you choose to accept a mission or decline it, and you’ll have to pay attention to the jobs you accept, because those decisions have an impact on your reputation and prospects for future work. In this sense, the replayability has the potential to be high, because gamers might want to play through frits as an upstanding citizen and again as a criminal.

Honestly, though, I don’t see many people playing Uplink more than once. After you figure out the most effective way to crack a system and achieve your mission, you’ll find yourself not needing to return. The challenge just isn’t there once you beat a given level, and the general gameplay is so similar from mission to mission that it gets a bit “old hat” after a while.

Overall

Uplink is a highly original title on premise alone, and I’ve got to hand it to Introversion Software and Strategy First for having the gumption to create a game that breaks the mold as drastically as Uplink does. Unfortunately, respect and kudos do not a good game make. If you’re interested in what it might be like to hack into massive corporations, then Uplink is most definitely for you. If you’re like 99 percent of the population, though, this game will do little to grab, let alone hold, your interest.