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Hackers, Little Green Men and The Apocalypse (or: Introversion games are pretty cool)
Ledneh
shinesquawkRegistered User regular
shinesquawkRegistered User regular
This last weekend I finished a marathon run on Uplink and Darwinia, two of my top-ten games. That was a damn good weekend. Today, I'd like to talk about the games that came out of everyone's favorite independent UK developer, Introversion, and hopefully get some of you poor bastards who haven't tried their games yet to give Introversion your money.
Uplink
Trust is a Weakness
The year is 2010, and the world lives and dies by the power of computers and the Internet. Those who know how to control them control immeasurable power... and command a pretty steady paycheck.
In Uplink you play a hacker who has just set up an account with Uplink Corporation, who provide gateway computers, software, mission boards, and other services that hackers like yourself can use to make a pretty penny. Employers will post jobs--from "I need some data off this guy's server" to "Get this guy arrested, he's a dick" to "Find out this guy's bank balance" to "Trace another hacker" to "Wipe out this system completely" to (my personal favorite) "Hack this server and get this guy blamed for it", and many others. The problem? The moment you get started on your dastardly deed, your victim will start using active traces on your connection and passive traces on your connection logs to find you. And if he does, the penalties range from mere warning right up to disavowal by Uplink Corp.
And once you're disavowed, that's it; you're not reverting to an old save, it's game over. Needless to say, this and the incessant, rising tempo of the beeping of your Trace Tracker make things hugely tense.
The game is played as essentially a series of menus; menus for your running software, server lists, server activities, file lists, so on and so forth. None of it has any relation to real-world hacking whatsoever, but even then it's pretty spartan. Don't let that dissuade you, though; in my opinion taking away the distraction of expansive graphics and a convoluted UI makes the whole thing seem more "real" (even if it isn't), and helps with immersion. Moving back and forth between the rapidly-dwindling trace timer and your file progress bar, praying one finishes before the other, is all the stress one needs; anything else would just get in the way.
My only regret is that the game is single-player.
Uplink can be bought on Steam. I couldn't find the price, since I've already bought it it won't show it to me, but it should be $15-$20 and worth every damn dime.
* You may find Uplink: Hacker Elite in a brick and mortar store. This is the correct game, but if I recall correctly Introversion sees no money from sales of this game due to a snafu with the publisher. I'd just buy the version on Steam anyway.
Darwinia
A Digital Dreamscape
In the olden days, a guy name Dr. Sepulveda made a new gaming system. It sucked, and he got left with 50,000 of the damn things with no money and not much hope for the future.
Suddenly today, he is back in the news; apparently he wired those 50,000 systems together, did a little programming magic, and ended up with the beginnings of an artifical intelligence: the Darwinian. He created a world for them to live, learn and grow in, called Darwinia. The Darwinians have advanced to a stage of staggering (and somewhat mystifying) intelligence; however, everything they and Sepulveda have built is under viral attack from an unknown source. For reasons I still don't get, Sepulveda can't do a damn thing about it; instead, he relies on you.
It's damn near impossible to pigeonhole Darwinia into a genre; if I had to try I'd say it's a kind of 3rd person RTS shooter like Battlezone. Except it isn't, and Battlezone wasn't quite so fractal looking. You generate programs such as Squads, Engineers, and (later) Armour which you have direct control over, and use them to accomplish goals in each world (such as capturing a Trunk Port, or saving/spawning a certain number of Darwinians). Squads shoot things, Engineers capture and control things, and Armour can either carry Darwinians or deploy into a stationary battle turret. You can also turn select Darwinians into Officers, which are your only method for giving orders to the little green dudes , with simple orders such as GOTO and FOLLOW.
The game is worth seeing simply for the look of the thing. It's a 3D world, composed of 2D/pixel elements (for example, all souls are represented by a simple diamond, and the Darwinians themselves are completely 2D). Many of the effects are blurred to give the illusion of the olden-days of gaming, with low resolution and odd animating glitches. The overall effect is, in a word, stunning.
Darwinia is also single-player, and definitely worth playing many times.
Except for those fucking ants. Fuck ants. God DAMN fuck ants. :x
Darwinia is available on Steam. Again I can't see the price, but I think it's $20.
DEFCON
Everybody Dies
(click for big)
Those of you who lived through the height of the Cold War know the fear of mutually-assured destruction, of nuclear weapons, of radiation sicknesses killing everyone you know and love long after the explosion has passed. Fortunately for us denizens of the real world, this particular apocalypse never came to pass.
UNfortunately for the citizens in DEFCON, it did indeed come to pass--except it's the whole world instead of just the USA and the Soviet Union.
DEFCON is (very roughly speaking) an RTS without resources. Each games starts at DEFCON 5, during which each nation places units such as missile silos, nuclear submarines, bomber airbases, and naval fleets. At DEFCON 3, traditional war is authorized, and you may begin attacking the other player's ships and submarines. At DEFCON 1, nuclear war is authorized, and the fun really starts. Carriers and airbases can launch nuclear bombers, silos can fire ICBMs or be converted to missile defense, submarines can launch right off the coastline, and the whole damn thing blows up.
Your objective? To kill everyone that isn't you. Specifically, in the default mode you gain one point for every million not-you citizens (read: not military) killed. You get nothing for military action; you score only for wholesale slaughter of cities and citizens. Since the entire game is played on the Big Board from Wargames, you won't hear the explosion or the death; the only feedback you'll ever see is "CAIRO HIT - 13.2M DEAD", a white glow on your screen, and audio such as the genuinely haunting music, and once in a while, the sound of a woman softly crying out and leaving the control room.
The game has a single player mode against reasonably competent AI, but the meat and potatoes is online, where you add that cruicial element that elevates the game from "good" to "awesome": intrigue. You can set up alliances in game, sure, but there aren't any alliance victories; only one player can win, so while you're plotting the backstab you'd better be watching your own neck, or else you're going to lose it all.
In the game of thermonuclear war, you cannot win. But maybe--just maybe--you can lose the least.
DEFCON is available on steam etc etc $15.
With that out of the way, I open this thread to discussion and hopefully promises to lavish Introversion with praise and money (not a shill).
Uplink
Trust is a Weakness
The year is 2010, and the world lives and dies by the power of computers and the Internet. Those who know how to control them control immeasurable power... and command a pretty steady paycheck.
In Uplink you play a hacker who has just set up an account with Uplink Corporation, who provide gateway computers, software, mission boards, and other services that hackers like yourself can use to make a pretty penny. Employers will post jobs--from "I need some data off this guy's server" to "Get this guy arrested, he's a dick" to "Find out this guy's bank balance" to "Trace another hacker" to "Wipe out this system completely" to (my personal favorite) "Hack this server and get this guy blamed for it", and many others. The problem? The moment you get started on your dastardly deed, your victim will start using active traces on your connection and passive traces on your connection logs to find you. And if he does, the penalties range from mere warning right up to disavowal by Uplink Corp.
And once you're disavowed, that's it; you're not reverting to an old save, it's game over. Needless to say, this and the incessant, rising tempo of the beeping of your Trace Tracker make things hugely tense.
The game is played as essentially a series of menus; menus for your running software, server lists, server activities, file lists, so on and so forth. None of it has any relation to real-world hacking whatsoever, but even then it's pretty spartan. Don't let that dissuade you, though; in my opinion taking away the distraction of expansive graphics and a convoluted UI makes the whole thing seem more "real" (even if it isn't), and helps with immersion. Moving back and forth between the rapidly-dwindling trace timer and your file progress bar, praying one finishes before the other, is all the stress one needs; anything else would just get in the way.
My only regret is that the game is single-player.
Uplink can be bought on Steam. I couldn't find the price, since I've already bought it it won't show it to me, but it should be $15-$20 and worth every damn dime.
* You may find Uplink: Hacker Elite in a brick and mortar store. This is the correct game, but if I recall correctly Introversion sees no money from sales of this game due to a snafu with the publisher. I'd just buy the version on Steam anyway.
Darwinia
A Digital Dreamscape
In the olden days, a guy name Dr. Sepulveda made a new gaming system. It sucked, and he got left with 50,000 of the damn things with no money and not much hope for the future.
Suddenly today, he is back in the news; apparently he wired those 50,000 systems together, did a little programming magic, and ended up with the beginnings of an artifical intelligence: the Darwinian. He created a world for them to live, learn and grow in, called Darwinia. The Darwinians have advanced to a stage of staggering (and somewhat mystifying) intelligence; however, everything they and Sepulveda have built is under viral attack from an unknown source. For reasons I still don't get, Sepulveda can't do a damn thing about it; instead, he relies on you.
It's damn near impossible to pigeonhole Darwinia into a genre; if I had to try I'd say it's a kind of 3rd person RTS shooter like Battlezone. Except it isn't, and Battlezone wasn't quite so fractal looking. You generate programs such as Squads, Engineers, and (later) Armour which you have direct control over, and use them to accomplish goals in each world (such as capturing a Trunk Port, or saving/spawning a certain number of Darwinians). Squads shoot things, Engineers capture and control things, and Armour can either carry Darwinians or deploy into a stationary battle turret. You can also turn select Darwinians into Officers, which are your only method for giving orders to the little green dudes , with simple orders such as GOTO and FOLLOW.
The game is worth seeing simply for the look of the thing. It's a 3D world, composed of 2D/pixel elements (for example, all souls are represented by a simple diamond, and the Darwinians themselves are completely 2D). Many of the effects are blurred to give the illusion of the olden-days of gaming, with low resolution and odd animating glitches. The overall effect is, in a word, stunning.
Darwinia is also single-player, and definitely worth playing many times.
Except for those fucking ants. Fuck ants. God DAMN fuck ants. :x
Darwinia is available on Steam. Again I can't see the price, but I think it's $20.
DEFCON
Everybody Dies
(click for big)
Those of you who lived through the height of the Cold War know the fear of mutually-assured destruction, of nuclear weapons, of radiation sicknesses killing everyone you know and love long after the explosion has passed. Fortunately for us denizens of the real world, this particular apocalypse never came to pass.
UNfortunately for the citizens in DEFCON, it did indeed come to pass--except it's the whole world instead of just the USA and the Soviet Union.
DEFCON is (very roughly speaking) an RTS without resources. Each games starts at DEFCON 5, during which each nation places units such as missile silos, nuclear submarines, bomber airbases, and naval fleets. At DEFCON 3, traditional war is authorized, and you may begin attacking the other player's ships and submarines. At DEFCON 1, nuclear war is authorized, and the fun really starts. Carriers and airbases can launch nuclear bombers, silos can fire ICBMs or be converted to missile defense, submarines can launch right off the coastline, and the whole damn thing blows up.
Your objective? To kill everyone that isn't you. Specifically, in the default mode you gain one point for every million not-you citizens (read: not military) killed. You get nothing for military action; you score only for wholesale slaughter of cities and citizens. Since the entire game is played on the Big Board from Wargames, you won't hear the explosion or the death; the only feedback you'll ever see is "CAIRO HIT - 13.2M DEAD", a white glow on your screen, and audio such as the genuinely haunting music, and once in a while, the sound of a woman softly crying out and leaving the control room.
The game has a single player mode against reasonably competent AI, but the meat and potatoes is online, where you add that cruicial element that elevates the game from "good" to "awesome": intrigue. You can set up alliances in game, sure, but there aren't any alliance victories; only one player can win, so while you're plotting the backstab you'd better be watching your own neck, or else you're going to lose it all.
In the game of thermonuclear war, you cannot win. But maybe--just maybe--you can lose the least.
DEFCON is available on steam etc etc $15.
With that out of the way, I open this thread to discussion and hopefully promises to lavish Introversion with praise and money (not a shill).
Ledneh on
0
Posts
Its just so good.
Is that true!? Oh man...
Game sounds cool anyway, I like boardgame-like-games.
-Louis C.K.
Yeah, it's a real mindfuck the first time you hear it. I only wish I could get it to come up reliably so I could torture my little brother with it
Really ought to finish it.
PokeCode: 3952 3495 1748
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
According to wikipedia, introversion are working on a multiplayer version called "Multiwinia" set to come out in 08. It also says that Darwinia is being ported to XBLA, anyone else hear anything of these?
Firstly, there's some talk of procedurally generated cities.
Secondly, i am interested in it.
One of these may actually be a useful piece of information.