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[alexpoysky]

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/hacker-evolution-duality/player_review.html?id=772845
please vote to keep this guy from lieing to more people.

EDIT: Sorry guys, I have to agree with the last poster's review on this game. Loads of hype for pretty much nothing . All flash no substance.

Edit 2: I gave it another try just because the game cost me money and I honestly am in disbelief of the fact that the creator lied so much about what he was making. He touted it as a hardcore realistic hacking simulator with open world unscripted gameplay as well as other hackers that you could ally with.

His defense is that he HAS given us all this in the following forms.

1: Crappy mouse driven ui, I don't use my keyboard for anything, am only given 2 generic attacks and a crappy firewall button. The "attacks" were supposedly these intense minigames that everyone interpreted as difficult console or kernel hacking simulations that would test our prowess and emulate what a real D dos attack would be like.

What I ended up with was an emp button that prompts a ridiculous little sattelite picture that turns around that I have to click when it alligns properly. I think monkeys throwing their own shit against the wall have a harder time than this "realistic emulation of hacking." on a side not, SINCE WHEN DO HACKERS USE FUCKING EMP SATTELITE ATTACKS??? And you would think that would mess up the entire building but no, it only reduces that single computer's integrity by one. Wow, that is truly a masterpiece of crap there.

And the DDOS "simulation" is even worse. I don't even know how a denial of service attack works, but I think it is somewhere along the lines of forcing various computers to send useless information to a single server at very fast intervals. This evokes thoughts of me accessing many servers all over the world (MUCH LIKE IN UPLINK, THAT PSEUDO REALISTIC HACKING GAME THAT NEVER CALLED ITSELF A SIMULATOR WITH A STRAIGHT FACE.) and bombing it with said information, overloading it and causing the website to crash. How this elminates physical server integrity (according to the most realistic hacking simulator ever, mind you) is beyond me, maybe Romanian hackers are cool like that. The fact is that we don't get that, what we DO get is a very realistic depiction of four sliders, a prompt that tells you what number to put the sliders at, and thats it. Seriously, that is the ddos attack.

Don't even get me started on "hacking" a firewall. Click the big FIREWALL button and away it goes, in a very SUPER realistic manner, prompting you to exit the server because your hack was a complete success! WOW hacking has never been easier!

Sorry about the rant here, but seriously I am quite pissed off! Now on to the second point....

2: the "hardware store" that everyone was hyped about because we thought it would be an uplink spin off with dozens of pieces to make your own terminal, turned out to be a very, VERY shoddy display button with three generic purchasable upgrades, firewall cpu and some other one that boosts integrity. All these do is serve as an arbitrary number so that you know that the higher your number is against theirs, the better you will do. This is so realistic, in real life hackers just push a single button and go into a server, withdraw the money and exit the server without having to eliminate any traces or anything!!! Also, you would think that in a realistic hacking simulator you would either A:) set up the firewall, even in an arbitrary manner, let's say by selecting from a preset series of defence algorithms that may or may not work when attacked in different manners or B: purchase set firewall types, or hell, even a GENERIC firewall that can be levelled up in different ways. But hey, what the hell do I know, I'm no elite hacker right? Oh, and don't even get me started on

3: The "A.I PLAYER DRIVEN HACKERS".

You see, last year when I was fucking stupid enough tu purchase this garbage, I purchased it because of a very distinct blurb on the website. "PLAY AGAINST THE AI THAT OTHER OPPONENTS MAKE". In a series of posts on his forums he would inform us that what he would be doing would be take the first 200 pre orderees, and have them stress test the game, and record their information, their log in times, the way they hacked the servers and how the played in general. He would then make "custom A.I opponents" that would be available to team up with against other people, which when I hear it sounds really neat.  What we got was, our names, shamelessly posted on the game and the dumb as bricks ai arbitrarily attacks anyone it wants. Wow, really awesome "teamwork faction system that lets me bribe people, or blackmail them into helping me!"

I HATE being lied to, and this guy is a shameless charlatan. I am really ashamed at what he has done, seriously I am ASHAMED for HIM.

Anyways, I'd give it a low score, but I can't really calculate how low it would be, as being lied to directly by the dev for the whole time, and I don't mean peter molenyeux lies, I mean the whole game is something else. Like imagine the new quake comes out right? Oh shit, it's a first person shooter and it'll probably be in the vein of the other ones. Wait no, it's a puzzle bobble clone HAH tricked you, no refunds.

Yeah, that's how I feel, I purchased a quake 5 puzzle bobble clone.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Rift]

Um, yea, it looks interesting, but their isn't exactly a lot of details on the site...
Since its coming out in a couple weeks, maybe wait for a review or something?

[jocan2003]

While you wait http://www.streethacker.com/

[Twerty]

While you wait http://www.streethacker.com/

Yeah, I remember playing this as a demo this one yeaaars ago and being all giddy about it. I went back recently to try to play it again, but it spits out an error when I try to do it. :/ Win7 64-bit doesn't play nice with it I s'pose.

[jocan2003]

admin mode and compatibility XP should do the trick

[Calhoun]

Pushed back a month?

[Xgamer4]

From Steam:

"Available: July 31st, 2011
This game will unlock in approximately 1 month, 4 days and 19 hours"

So, yeah, looks like it.

[Calhoun]

Yes, but the official website still says June 30th.

[Twerty]

Yep, the game's definitely been delayed. Poked around a little and dev confirmed so explaining he wanted to round out a few rough corners, but he really should change his website.

[Gabeux]

I loved Uplink, and Street Hacker is very cool until some bug de-rails your campaign, save get corrupted or the npc don't reply to your e-mail, so you have to start all over again.

I never liked Hacker Evolution series much, due to the linear nature..but I always thought if they added freedom into it, it would be awesome.
I'll watch this

[forsaken1111]

I loved Uplink, and Street Hacker is very cool until some bug de-rails your campaign, save get corrupted or the npc don't reply to your e-mail, so you have to start all over again.

I never liked Hacker Evolution series much, due to the linear nature..but I always thought if they added freedom into it, it would be awesome.
I'll watch this

This is pretty much my sentiments exactly. I disliked Hacker Evolution series intensely. It was annoying to play and overly linear. The level mechanics were clunky and the way money was handled made it play almost like a puzzle game. I'll take a look at this new one but I'll likely 'demo' it first.

/jaded/

[Twerty]

And pushed back again to August 15th. :x

[forsaken1111]

More time to reconsider my decision about buying it.

[Calhoun]

Wouldn't even be so bad if each delay wasn't made official on the release date.

[Sirian]

So, i "demoed" this game and honestly i didn't like it at all. You don't get to keep improvements or money from mission to mission, so they're all like short independent scenarios.

You use money to buy 3 types of upgrades : firewall (increases the time it takes to trace you), cpu (must be above a target's firewall level to breach in), and integrity (kinda like health points and apparently buying that will decrease your trace level if you had any).
The improvements are all a generic +1 numeric increase and the cost is always 5000$ for a +1. very bland imo.

Other than that, there's not much fun anyway, hacking into a target is just about very boring mini games and timers. some processes can't be aborted, so sometimes you just have to wait for it to finish even if they've traced you.

You can use 2 special powers (both have cooldowns) : "d.o.s" a target, which involves moving 4 sliders to a required position, or launch an emp blast on it, which involves having a satellite picture rotate and click to stop it when it faces your target. Curiously, an emp blast won't completely fry a target, only reduce his firewall level and integrity by one... now that's a weird thing. But not weirder than a d.o.s attack having exactly the same effect.

For the record, in case you don't know what emps and dos are in real life, an Electro-Magnetic Pulse is a high intensity burst of radio waves that overloads and destroys all unprotected electronic circuits in a large area, and a Denial of Service attack is about coordinating a large number of computers to send requests to a public website to prevent it from being accessed for the duration of the attack. None of those should have anything to do with bypassing a firewall, but whatever...

The only other minigame i tried was the voice identification thing, which was almost the same as the d.o.s tool : move 3 sliders (instead of 4) to match the numbers. The scale's a bit shorter so it's easier, but there's also an option to make the sliders stick into place, so it doesnt really matter. There are 2 other mini games i didnt try, but from what i read on the game's forum, they're even worse.

Now let's talk about the AI. Some of the servers on the map are controlled by AIs, which means that if you try to hack them in any way, they'll become agressive towards you and start sending d.o.s attacks and EMPs on you (also depending on the level, they will apparently try to steal your money, and even degrade your cpu). Since each attack will reduce your "integrity" by 1, they can "kill" you after some time. There is also a random chance that they will go "rogue" and attack you unprovocked.
I'm all for difficulty, but in my opinion this is just annoying, and what's more you can't do anything to prevent them from attacking, they don't need to trace you, and they WILL send their attacks every x minutes. Actually, you can do one thing : destroy them by reducing their own integrity to 0, and for that you have to keep sending d.o.s, EMPs and breaching their firewall every time you can. Of course, because there is a limited supply of money in each map, waging war with the AIs is a bad idea, since they'll consume your money by removing your upgrades.

The only times i vaguely felt like i was a hacker were the scripted parts of the storyline missions, and even that was very generic.


If you don't like to race agaisnt time in repetitive mini games, don't buy this game, because that's what it's all about. (And don't tell me that the genre demands it. Uplink had both mini games and timers, but it also had much more, and that's what made it great).