Posted August 23, 2015
Well that was interesting. After having just completed the game, i'll give my opinions. I started playing this less than 24 hours ago so hopefully everything is still fresh.
So HackNet... Is a game where you are a hacker; And you get an email (and possibly the entire laptop) shortly after the death of a skilled hacker. Your journey will go through simple hacks, more complex hacks, using the commandline as well as the GUI to get around...
Realism: Not very realistic. To some degree it's a little more than Uplink, but at the same time Uplink did a better job on certain things. A number of the commands are real Unix commands (cat, mv, cd, etc), although they don't behave the way you'd really expect it. Wildcards are lacking so if you wanted to download/upload/move a bunch of files at once, your SOL, you can only delete files in bulk which only makes sense if you want to delete directories, or the log files.
The log files... These in particular are less realistic, however you don't need to know the realism to enjoy the game :)
The port numbers for a number of the protocols look right (21, 22, 80, etc).
Also the memory consumption for programs is highly unrealistic. A notes program that takes up 37Mb and each note about 20+Mb?
Music: Sounds really good. Sorta New-Age and Trance-ish, good background music that changes with the mood rather than randomly getting selected. The 'hurry up and finish or you're screwed!' music was especially stressful :P However there is no theme music, so when you start the game up and you don't hear anything, that's normal...
Graphics/UI: Really good. Although there are 4 (possibly more) layouts, the configuration changing on you a little takes time to get used to. Sometimes it's faster to click and sometimes it's faster to type, although you can't go keyboard solo much, namely typing in IP's would be an utter pain the whole time...
One annoyance of the font choice, i can't tell sometimes if a letter's an N or an H. The difference ends up being mostly the H is 2 pixels wide while the N is 1. So...
Ahh yes then there's the visual fun that's with every page and program you run, each looking different. I enjoy porthack the most personally :)
Story: Feels a little short. But that's my opinion. You do jobs but you don't earn money (just ranking) so upgrades aren't possible, only new programs to help you along.
Now other than choosing what missions you basically want to do, the missions are effectively static, so the game/story's rather linear.
But don't let that fool you, a number of solutions to progress are very subtle. Thankfully most of the time your targets are rather small so you can pour over files over and over until you notice the clue you really need to progress. If not i'll try to help out while i can still remember what to do. (maybe?)
Bugs: Came across a few, so just be prepared...
Using Decypher.exe on Encrypt_base2.cs: results in a crash. The game just stops, uses up all your CPU cycles and never progresses, you have to manually kill the program. It should refuse to try to decypher the source file rather than get to 100% and break.
SEC/home/DeathRowTemplates: Entering this directory has a high chance to stall the game. You can fix this by having a higher resolution. My resolution was 1280x720, so...
Bug for Propaganda mission: During my playthrough, i got an email to start looking into a computer system, but didn't have a bypass for the medical port (#104). Curiously after i finished all of the hacker missions, the whole mission started over rather than letting me resume. Minor annoyances there.
Easter Eggs: There's plenty of IRC chats scattered throughout the game, as well as references to pop culture. Zer0Cool, and a built in cookie clicker game (i really need to play that after i hack it...). I also got into an email account for Sal, which was full of spam, and it was curious and sorta fun to laugh at.
There's also references to companies, sites and services (changed names)... but i'll leave that for you to find if you want :P
Conclusion: It's a pretty good game, with a condensed sense of what hacking is like, sorta that magical feeling of when you watch it in movies (like sneakers or hackers), yet very much a shallow version of what the real thing is like, but for most people that's probably a good thing. So if you enjoyed TIS-100, or Uplink, or CRobots, or use Unix/Linux with the terminal/commandline, then you might just enjoy this. If not, maybe get it and watch someone who can play it...
So HackNet... Is a game where you are a hacker; And you get an email (and possibly the entire laptop) shortly after the death of a skilled hacker. Your journey will go through simple hacks, more complex hacks, using the commandline as well as the GUI to get around...
Realism: Not very realistic. To some degree it's a little more than Uplink, but at the same time Uplink did a better job on certain things. A number of the commands are real Unix commands (cat, mv, cd, etc), although they don't behave the way you'd really expect it. Wildcards are lacking so if you wanted to download/upload/move a bunch of files at once, your SOL, you can only delete files in bulk which only makes sense if you want to delete directories, or the log files.
The log files... These in particular are less realistic, however you don't need to know the realism to enjoy the game :)
The port numbers for a number of the protocols look right (21, 22, 80, etc).
Also the memory consumption for programs is highly unrealistic. A notes program that takes up 37Mb and each note about 20+Mb?
Music: Sounds really good. Sorta New-Age and Trance-ish, good background music that changes with the mood rather than randomly getting selected. The 'hurry up and finish or you're screwed!' music was especially stressful :P However there is no theme music, so when you start the game up and you don't hear anything, that's normal...
Graphics/UI: Really good. Although there are 4 (possibly more) layouts, the configuration changing on you a little takes time to get used to. Sometimes it's faster to click and sometimes it's faster to type, although you can't go keyboard solo much, namely typing in IP's would be an utter pain the whole time...
One annoyance of the font choice, i can't tell sometimes if a letter's an N or an H. The difference ends up being mostly the H is 2 pixels wide while the N is 1. So...
Ahh yes then there's the visual fun that's with every page and program you run, each looking different. I enjoy porthack the most personally :)
Story: Feels a little short. But that's my opinion. You do jobs but you don't earn money (just ranking) so upgrades aren't possible, only new programs to help you along.
Now other than choosing what missions you basically want to do, the missions are effectively static, so the game/story's rather linear.
But don't let that fool you, a number of solutions to progress are very subtle. Thankfully most of the time your targets are rather small so you can pour over files over and over until you notice the clue you really need to progress. If not i'll try to help out while i can still remember what to do. (maybe?)
Bugs: Came across a few, so just be prepared...
Using Decypher.exe on Encrypt_base2.cs: results in a crash. The game just stops, uses up all your CPU cycles and never progresses, you have to manually kill the program. It should refuse to try to decypher the source file rather than get to 100% and break.
SEC/home/DeathRowTemplates: Entering this directory has a high chance to stall the game. You can fix this by having a higher resolution. My resolution was 1280x720, so...
Bug for Propaganda mission: During my playthrough, i got an email to start looking into a computer system, but didn't have a bypass for the medical port (#104). Curiously after i finished all of the hacker missions, the whole mission started over rather than letting me resume. Minor annoyances there.
Easter Eggs: There's plenty of IRC chats scattered throughout the game, as well as references to pop culture. Zer0Cool, and a built in cookie clicker game (i really need to play that after i hack it...). I also got into an email account for Sal, which was full of spam, and it was curious and sorta fun to laugh at.
There's also references to companies, sites and services (changed names)... but i'll leave that for you to find if you want :P
Conclusion: It's a pretty good game, with a condensed sense of what hacking is like, sorta that magical feeling of when you watch it in movies (like sneakers or hackers), yet very much a shallow version of what the real thing is like, but for most people that's probably a good thing. So if you enjoyed TIS-100, or Uplink, or CRobots, or use Unix/Linux with the terminal/commandline, then you might just enjoy this. If not, maybe get it and watch someone who can play it...
