Uplink

[Holsety]

It's this sorta neato hacking game (it's legal! just a game!). You play a freelance agent (hacker) hiring yourself out to do the dirty work of corporations, criminals, and other people who need stuff done. I've only been playing for a coupla days, but so far I've gone from taking and deleting select files to altering records (social security, academics, etc) to crashing mainframes. It's set in 2010, and I'm hoping it's very far from the realm of reality, because I can complete the most complex missions thus far in a matter of minutes.

One nice thing is that it's pretty open-ended, you're free to choose your own missions. I like this; it might just be a game, but I still got a queasy, guilty feeling the one time I was lowering someone's qualifications for a job w/ his face on screen. Not only that, but you can use your own strategies to get in; whether you want to buy a proxy bypass (safer) or a disabler (far cheaper) is up to you.

You have to be careful though. Short of copying your files and keeping them in a backup folder (I mean on your actual computer), if you lose, you lose permanently. You don't get caught, but your gateway (remote login which you do everything through) is taken and your company pretends they don't know you. So for all intensive purposes you die. You can buy bombs and motion detectors to frag your gateway if police are coming in, but I haven't yet - it's 20k for the bombs, and I haven't been caught yet.

There are some neat little side features as well. The store site for upgrading your compys and accepting missions also has news bulletins, most of which have been reporting my various projects recently (mysterious hacker costs some company or other millions...and he only gets paid a few thousand for his trouble). Also, stocks raise and lower in price based partially on the companies you hurt and help, so if you watch your clients and targets you can make a fortune (it's sorta like betting on horse races, then rigging the race). And when you need voice-login systems, you buy a voice recorder, then use public databases to call admins and steal their voices.

Finally, there seems to be some sort of story going on with some company that's hiring out hackers to make/hide/whatever a mysterious weapon. I have no idea what's going on with that as of yet.

I got the full version for free (my bro brought it from college) but if you guys want, you can try the trial version at www.uplink.co.uk/demo.html

EDIT-For Gibson fans, there's a "Neuromancer rating" which grades what sorta hacker you are. If you're all anarchistic and attack corporations and stuff, you go up (I'm "single focused) but if you help criminals, steal from banks, and track other hackers, you go down. It's really rather silly.