G4M3 H4XZ0R5... Or something

So as previously mentioned at the weekend, I got Uplink and Darwinia at the weekend off Steam for a low low price of only 6 quid, which works for me. I've been playing them all this week, all though not as much as I'd liked to, having to fit it around revision, but I've given it my best shot. Although I've only played Darwinia once. But I'm entitled to my opinion, so there.

Uplink is a hacking game, which I had no idea about prior to download, except it was a hacking game. Set in some kind of bizarre future where hacking has become so prominent, it qualifies as employment, you take on the role of an "Uplink Agent", whose job it is to, unsurprisingly, hack things. Right from the outset, you really buy into this illusion that it is REAL hacking. The game asks you to put in a username and password, and asks you to wait to connect to the network. It's all very nice.

Visually, there's not a whole lot to see, but it's not really necessary. It reminded me a little bit of text based adventures which I've never played. It is fun to hack computers though as the trace tracker makes you really impatient for the password to be cracked before you get traced and fined and OH MY GOD IT'S SO STRESSFUL!

Onto more relaxed things, Darwinia. I had no idea about this game either, cept it was a sort of real time strategy in a virtual world. Which is sort of what it is, but also sort of not... If that made any sense.

Set in "the world's first virtual theme park", Darwinia is a strategy game with a difference. You don't build troops, you run programs. You don't research upgrades, you get upgrades by collecting Research. You don't collect resources, you collect DNA spirits... Okay several differences. It's a nice change from your average strategy game. The visual design is very good, and does sort of look like what the internet might look like if it were visualised.

The only bad thing about Darwinia is that I feel I'm playing it in the wrong way, although I guess that's my fault, not the game itself. My strategy is to shoot everything, then send my little Engineers in to scoop up the DNA so they don't get hurt. But this strategy doesn't work, since the DNA fades away quite quickly. Ergo, I need to be braver. Actually that's true in real life =)

So that's my take on the first two Introversion games. I'll be playing them for a while yet, so expect to hear more about them.

Three things to cover, very swiftly, since this is already way too long;

1. My iPod has some how fixed itself. It seems to do that a lot. I think it has a learning chip in it.

2. I've been eyeing up the classic Fallout games in preparation for getting Fallout 3 on the XBox (that I don't have yet) Only 6 quid for all three on Amazon? Yes please.

3. View this for me;

This is what I've made using Word and Paint. I know it's not funny, but that's not the point. The point is that I did it. I desperately wanna do a Link's Awakening webcomic but ComicGenesis doesn't like breach of copyright, and I'm worried it wouldn't work.

Meh. What happens happens I guess.

Anyway, I've wasted too much of your time already. Catch you at the weekend.