Recent reviews by pikachu

I don't normally write reviews, but considering this gem has only 162 reviews at the time of writing, I kinda have to do it - it just deserves much better visibility.

First thing's first - this is not a hacking game - you don't need any real hacking knowledge and you won't earn any either. It just borrows some general "hacking aesthetic" - you need to uncover secrets that was not supposed to ever go public, unlock new malware on black market that helps you proceed, you consult your fellow hack buddies, get to make some decisions that affect real people outside of the net - all that while combating the threat of being traced. And oh, all that is achieved exclusively by typing commands. Gameplay-wise, I found it pretty fun, but after you unlock some programs that might be a little too OP, the game might become a bit too easy and stale. You can unlock some challenges to make it harder though, but personally I didn't see a point. The game does everything to combat the staleness though - even the most broken combos won't work in every other situation - you have to change your loadout quite often. Also, the production value is on an unreal level - there are quite a lot of special one-time mechanics just for that level.

The main thing that made me glued to the monitor though, was the story. It starts a bit slow, but delivers EXPERTLY. It manages to make you care about your buddies - even though you don't really know much about them - anonymity is a thing in the hacking world after all. It telegraphs certain story points to make you feel like you know what's going to happen and still manages to throw you off. I also really adore how the writers leveraged the fact that it feels like you - the player, in our world - is doing all this nerdy stuff, hacking, emailing and so on - but no spoilers - you'd have to see that for yourself.

The music though may be the weakest link in the game - it's nice, but I felt like there is only one track playing over and over and over. Even the boss music is a variation of the same track - this is actually pretty nice, because you feel there are some stakes involved.

Concluding - you should really get the game - it's absolutely worth every penny.