Uplink, the 12-year old "hacking simulator", is possibly the finest game of its type yet created. But it is definitely showing its age and I'm not averse to trying something new. On the face of it, Hacker Evolution Duality looks to be an excellent successor to that beloved classic. But first appearances are frequently misleading.

Hacker is not a game; it is a collection of dull and fiddly mini-games. While it has an excellent presentation, the gameplay itself is nothing more than pushing a button at the right time; an uninteresting race against the clock that you need to repeat dozens of times in each mission. It looks great - it has the appearance of Hollywood hacking nailed - but it quickly degenerates into uninteresting repetitiveness. And just to make things even less fun, the controls were stiff and unresponsive; just the thing for a game that demands quick reflexes. Despite its stylish gloss, the game fails to engage on almost every other levels and ultimately is not particularly fun.

I played the first Hacker Evolution and I loved it. So when I heard that there was going to be a sequel, I jumped at the chance to purchase it!

However, this game has little to recommend it, and doesn't much resemble the original at all. The original made you feel like an actual hacker, typing commands into a console. This game is a GUI based point-and-click. You don't get the feel of being a hacker that you might expect from the title.

Not only that, but the gameplay is boring, and a lot of the tools at your disposal are arbitrarily difficult to use, and the time limit placed on you just makes things stressful and not fun when the tools take almost as long or longer than the time allotted to you. Do not buy.

its a simple hacking simulator, I mean simple is really simple like to hack a server is as easy as double click.
Really not interesting or chalenging, i think "hackthegame" the free hacking simulator game is far better than this game.
look at the price, its so overpriced and not worth with your money, there are so many better title with the same price.

This game is absolute garbage. It's not "open world" and it sure isn't full of amazing anything. I'm sure you're thinking "Oh man this looks just like Uplink!" and you would be right it does LOOK like Uplink which suckered me into buying this hunk of digital crap. This game is nothing like Uplink and is utterly disappointing to play.

I bought this game really cheap, but free is the only fair price for it. It is really bad.

First of all it starts on my second display which is my TV, took a while to realize it.

Second, there is a bug where you can't read messages (gives some file not found error), apparently the dev knows about this since Jan or Feb or something and it still isn't fixed. There's a dude that posted some workaround with converting mp3 files to ogg and changing some text files around to make it work, this way you can actually read mission objectives.

The game it is kind of crap, it is not very intuitive what you need to do, in fact in the tutorial the AI hacked me down to 0 firewall and 0 integrity and I had no idea what would I need to do to counter it. Don't be mistaken by the name the game has nothing to do with actual hacking or IT skills, it's just a theme, so it's not about me not knowing what a computer is (I do, working since 15 years in IT).

I know now it's a rather old game and it's not a big financial loss to try it, but if I knew what I know now I wouldn't have paid even 1 euro for it. Angry birds is more fun and an actual game that works compared to this (I don't play angry birds, never undestood the fascination, it's a really stupid game).

What sort of game developer makes you pay for a tutorial? The game is glitchy, even the developers cannot give a proper one and done solution for users who have glitches. Not worth 20 dollars, certainly not worth the dlc.

My playtime: 11.4h (based on Steam, 100% achievement)
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (~4 achievements, it might take ~6h to get them all).
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (7 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.

As a fan of hacking games, Hacker Evolution Duality catches my eye; it looks like other hacking games at first glance despite its negative reviews. I ended up giving it a chance after some careful consideration, but is it as bad as other people say? More on the review.

Pros:
- 7 levels
- 3 difficulties

Cons:
- There is no way to defend whenever enemies are attacking
- Confusing tutorial
- Trial and error is needed to finish some levels
- Windowed mode is locked at 1200x800

No.
You can get Hacknet (my review) instead, which is a far superior hacking game if you're willing to spend more money.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It might not be a surprise for a hacking game, but there isn't much to boast in terms of graphics. There is a good-looking image on the screen with some buttons and information that you can use. The interface is easy to understand although the buttons might overwhelm you at first with their number.

The story is told in a chunk of text before you start each level. It's mostly there for the sake of the game though and the ending doesn't seem to make sense. It is not the main selling point of the game after all so it's not much of a surprise.

Hacking
Unlike other hacking games, you won't be hacking with your console. The game has a console feature but its functionality is limited - you can't even use it to connect to a server. Hacking can be done as simple as clicking on a server and pressing some buttons, which also have keyboard shortcuts that you can use. Most hacking tools will require you to do some minigames and half of them are time-consuming as you need to find a lot of numbers that are shown on the screen. Sometimes I even wonder whether I was playing a hacking game or a puzzle game because of this.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2332034490

Attacking Servers
Although most servers are docile, some servers will become hostile when you hack them. They will keep on attacking you several times for a certain time and there's no way to stop or defend the attack. Your Integrity, which works the same as HP in RPG games, will be reduced after each attack and you'll get a game over screen once it reaches zero. You can increase Integrity with money, but sadly, money is limited. This makes every level that has hostile AI in it require trial and error as you need to make sure that you do the correct decision quickly to finish the level.

Objectives
Each level requires you to finish some objectives to move to the next level. You can get the gist of it from the information that is provided before you start a level and the messages that you'll receive after you start the game. Strangely, both of them tend to not be clear enough; there were times where I had to check the objectives screen to see which one that I missed. All objectives are also listed on the objectives screen from the start that it becomes useless to check the in-game message afterward.

You need to have a certain understanding of the game to understand some of the objectives. Some objectives can also be lost completely, making it impossible to finish the level. Although this sounds impossible at first, it happened to me a few times at the first level because the tutorial isn't clear enough to explain the basic mechanic.

Length and Difficulty
The story mode has 7 levels with 3 difficulties: easy, normal, and hard. I'm not sure what's the difference between each difficulty is, but I finished the game at 4.9h in the easy difficulty. Strangely, the game becomes easier as you are further in the game since you only need to do the time-consuming minigames at the later levels.

The game also has an "Open World" mode where you have to attack other AI servers until there is only one left standing. However, I lost interest after playing it once. You have a cooldown between attacks and you can't defend nor stop any attacks that are coming to you. Moreover, there is no notification whenever you got attacked except the small green text on the upper side. The AI also seems to have a wicked speed that my money is stolen as soon as I finished stealing money to my server.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2332034518

Problems
The game will be closed if you alt-tab in full screen. There is an option to start the game in windowed mode, but it's locked at 1200x800 resolution and the text is very hard to read at that size. I ended up changing my screen resolution to fit the windowed screen size to play it, but some buttons at the bottom row are cropped because of this. Strangely, these buttons were hidden when I did this for the first time, making it hard for me to understand how the game works since I didn't know some functionalities that were never explained in the tutorial.

Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

I would like to say that it was an okay game, but it's actually worse than I thought. The hostile servers and attacking mechanic are just a cheap addition to make you lose the game, the hacking tools are time-consuming, and the "Open World" mode is not balanced well. It might be a good idea if the dev focuses more on the hacking elements and drop the attacking mechanic since the game doesn't feel like a hacking game because of it.

Visit SaveOrQuit.com for detailed game reviews, posted daily!

Basically the same level of gameplay as a free flash game. If you want a fun Hollywood-style hacking sim, ignore this one and grab Uplink instead.

STAY AWAY! If you came looking for another Uplink clone, THIS IS NOT IT. Hacker Evolution: Duality tries to come across as a worthy sucessor to the masterpiece that was Uplink, and falls far, far short. The game is outright unfinished on my system, with the game menus broken and unusable, and there is no story. The game just feels wrong, and you would get more for your dollar looking elsewhere.

Uplink did a better job being a game about hacking computers. This is all just clicking on stuff and not actually thinking. It's also buggy as hell (the main interface randomly disappears).

Avoid!