Recent reviews by Spans

A great hacking game with a story too linear. 8/10

People are saying Hacknet is Uplink but better. I'm saying Hacknet is a derivative work of Uplink.

Uplink can be seen as an "open world" game. The goal is simple; do contract work, get money, upgrade your stuff. There's a "story" involved but you can completely ignore it if you so wish.

Hacknet is more linear. There isn't much beside the story. There is contract work, but its point is to just advance in the story. You're locked out of some of the contract work after advancing through a certain point in the story. You cannot get money or upgrade your gear, you're limited to the same amount of RAM and power you have.

Based on what I said, Hacknet can be seen as a bad game, but it's everything but bad. The gameplay is amazing. The interface is well fit for what it's used for. The story is very appealing and really clutches on you to take you with it.

The game simulates a command line environment quite well, but is missing some really basic stuff you'd expect to find. The tab autocomplete is lacking. You cannot create files or folders, so you're locked to any files or folders the game gives you. There isn't a text editor, so your only way of editing files to use a replace command. Then again, the game clearly isn't directed at experienced command line users, but rather to newcomers (or "skiddies", the game even calls you such at one point) who may have never used a command line.

Doing the hacking is not complicated at all. You don't have to memorise complicated command calls or signatures, you just run the right command at the right time. Most of the time you don't even need to use the command line, since usually there's a button to click or a scrollbar to drag.

I was expecting a tad more realistic simulation of a command line, but the game is really good nevertheless. It took me about 5 hours to beat, after of which there isn't anything sensible to do. There are small secrets scattered around to look for and discover, if you like easter egg hunting.

Started gathering pieces for a cool vehicle.
Got enough pieces, started building cool vehicle.
An enemy called Boom Fish comes and destroys everything while I'm building.
Boom Fish destroys my half-built vehicle.

11/10 would die to Boom Fish again.