Perhaps the most addictive game to date. A masterpiece, tense and rewarding.
The screen goes black. My stomach wraps itself in knots as text runs out over the darkness, detailing my successes and my ultimate failure. It was all over and all for the sake of a hundred thousand or so credits.
Uplink is an unforgiving game. You can rule the economic world from your computer but if you slip up once it'll all come crashing down. Game over, man. Game over. But I love it.
You are placed into the role of a newbie freelance hacker working with the Uplink Corporation. It's 2010 and the world's economy is ruled by no more than 50 or so mega-companies. Each and every one of them want your special services to ensure market dominance. And all you have at your disposal is your computer and a gateway super-computer controlled by Uplink. You must hack, crack, delete and steal your way to dominance amid the greatest IT-terrorist attack ever.
As you may have guessed, it's a remarkably tense game. You see the world from your computer monitor, all in retro blues and lines of code (think 'The Net'). The terrible beeping as your target's administrator traces your location shreads your nerves and, as there's absolutely no save or load function beyond leaving the game, every move counts.
Uplink is also incredibly modable. New displays, computer types, targets, people, methods of hacking, sounds and even an in-game IRC client means you can customise the experience to your own liking. This is also necessary as the available faces, names, voices and such is very limited.
So, overall, a perfect game when supplemented with community content. However, I'm here to review the vanilla game. If you want to get hooked into a retro-sci-fi world of the keyboard and huge rewards, this is definately something to sink your teeth into. A game to play before you die.