The developers over at Introversion have made some Uplink game fans very happy with the recent announcement that the classic '90s hacking game is now available for the iPad. I first discovered Uplink as a free download that allowed me to play a few missions to decide if I liked the game. The truth was that I absolutely loved the game! The full version was one of those low-priced, indie CDs that often fell through the cracks at stores like CompUSA but I managed to hunt a copy down and played the game all the way to the end... and then began hunting down modifications and add-ons that added more missions and more hardware choices.
If you're not familiar with Uplink, you can read my original review of the PC game version here. As you'll read, I liked to use the Uplink game to prank friends who were not so tech savvy. The game is all about hacking other computer systems. You take the role of an elite hacker employed by the Uplink Corporation – they provide you with a small loan to purchase some hacking software and a basic Gateway computer system that is remotely accessed to provide you with some basic security in case your antics are back-tracked. Getting caught isn't good, but often the worst that happens is that your Gateway is destroyed, preventing hacked companies from locating you. You have to start over, but at least you're not heading to jail, right?
When the game starts, you're offered low-paying and non-difficult jobs such as hacking into systems to delete or copy single files. As the game progresses (and your skills and reputation increase) you'll be offered more difficult jobs such as changing academic records, falsifying credentials, and much more. And there's even a backstory that's going on that will unfold as your skills increase and more powerful organizations take notice of you.
The game was 100% fun on the PC, but what about as an iPad game? Much of the PC game required a lot of typing and clicking. You select software tools from menus, you change someone's grades with the keyboard, and you rush to shutdown your connection and edit data logs to hide your activities. With a mouse, I often found my heart racing as the PING-PING-PING got faster as the target server's IT department began its trace on you and I frantically clicked on various buttons and menus to complete the job and get out. I'm a fast typist, and there were certain jobs where the Trace percentage was around 95% complete and the alarm was BEEP-BEEPING so loud that my fingers were shaking as I finished up changing a target's status to DECEASED. It's a game, but I often found my hands shaking and spelling errors popping up as I tried to beat the Trace. So how does the game feel on a tablet with an on-screen keyboard and a touchscreen instead of a mouse? I was a bit skeptical about how the game's mechanics would translate to a tablet, but I'm happy to report that I'm once again an elite hacker for Uplink and my skills are in demand.
First, let me talk about using the touchscreen. I tried to play the game using just my fingers to select the various menus and buttons. The list of software menu buttons is fairly tight, and unless your fingers are extremely small, you can expect to occasionally tap the wrong menu. It happened to me frequently enough that I finally switched over to using my Wacom Bamboo Stylus. With the stylus, the mistakes disappeared. I believe I'm actually even faster with the stylus than I was with the mouse playing the PC version – I find myself tapping out the various menus, tapping on buttons, and tapping on the processor % settings that increase or decrease the processing power applied to the various software tools that are open (such as increasing the Password Cracker tool to give more processing power to the password search and reducing processing power to the Trace tool, reducing its accuracy). When tapping out a network connection of jumps between servers, I find the stylus lets me make fast and furious server jumps that I would have to be much careful about with my finger.
Can the game be played successfully with a finger instead of a stylus? I'm not sure. I think you'll have a lot more mis-taps and incorrectly selected items as the Trace program beeps faster and faster and starts to mess with your calm. You may find yourself having to run a mission more than once to develop a muscle-memory of the various taps to break into a system. Bottom line – your mileage may vary, but given the iPad's smaller screen fingers are not going to be as accurate in the high-speed hack jobs as a stylus.
And as for the keyboard – I tried both typing with my fingers and tapping out the keys with the stylus. I'm sticking with the stylus. Even though I'd be a bit faster with a real keyboard, I would find myself having to use the delete key to fix a spelling error (when typing out the name of a subject to search in a database, for example). My typing is a bit slower with the stylus, but I find myself making fewer mistakes. I guess I could use the Bluetooth keyboard and the stylus for the best Uplink gaming session, but I tend to play Uplink on the go, so the on-screen keyboard is most often my only choice. One thing I'm not a fan of is how the keyboard covers much of the Uplink game screen, but there's really no way around this – it can obscure parts of the screen you might need, so be prepared to experiment with dragging and dropping the various tiny software tools around the screen to place them where they'll always be visible.
As for the rest of the gameplay, the iPad version of the game is 100% identical to the PC version. It's got the same music (very retro, and still very cool to hack to), the same email interface for accepting missions and getting paid, and the same early-'90s line-graphic style. The story is still there, and all of the same hacking job-types are still available. You save your money to upgrade your hardware and software (more memory and faster cracking tools) and you scan the Uplink jobs database for more dangerous, higher paying jobs. Accept a few jobs and open up the network map to start your run. It's still completely fun and addictive, and I'm loving the game all over again.
One final thing – as I wrote about in my earlier review of Uplink, the iPad version makes it even easier to pull a good prank on a friend (see the video below for some real game footage). Turn down the sound (the music kind of gives it away that you're playing a game) and then tell your friend you want to show them something cool. Look around the room suspiciously and then run one either a file deletion job or a file copying job. Select your servers, dial up the remote server's IP address, run the Password Cracker tool to hack the password, access the File Database, open up your File Deletion tool and delete that file. As your friend's eyes open wider, don't forget to add the finishing bit by hacking into the Internic server and deleting the logs showing your jumping-off connection to some other server. Log out, contact the employer about the successful file deletion, and then show your friend how much money you just got paid to delete a single file. Smile slyly at your friend, turn off the iPad, and then offer to pay for lunch. Elite hackers always catch the tab because the next job is always easy money.
Note: I'd like to thank Introversion for providing me with a copy of Uplink for iPad. And if you haven't played their other games, DEFCON and Darwinia, I promise that you'll love them just as much as Uplink. I'll be sure to review Prison Architect when it is released – looks like another hit from Introversion!
