Uplink - PC / Mac / Linux

Have you ever dreamt of being the fat guy from Jurassic Park? The straggly haired loser from the X-Files? Or the delusional chump from Goldeneye? Well that wait is over. Uplink simulates the action-packed life of a computer hacker without the tedium of paranoia, programming skills etc. As you inveigle your way through corporate data enclaves, deleting files willy-nilly, manufacturing fake logs and absconding with company credits you'll slowly progress up the underworld ranks earning the virtual-respect of your peers and unlocking juicy high-profile missions. Later, as you recline on your swivel-chair after a hard days (w)hacking, thoughts turn to the delightful romance of computer upgrades and many a credit will be spent on gateway mods, RAM and helpful software (torrents?!) However don't expect to be warped suddenly into a TRONlike wonderland: your OS is distinctly quick and dirty and no amount of processor power can simulate acting skills as feeble as Keanu Reeves'.

. . .  and all this just to spy on a friends Facebook account.

. . . and all this just to hide your sordid search history.

Download Demo from Homepage
Download Bonus Disc (Soundtrack, Wallpapers etc)
Premier Mod Site 
Cyberpunk Review Article
Fassbinder's Welt am Draht (good movie about programming)

Uplink is one of a minute pool of hacking games and is easily the best. With the option of an overarching story or freelance gameplay, unique interface and excellent techno soundtrack you may wonder why hacking isn't a more popular pastime. Then you watch Jurassic Park and remember why.

Wizardry 8 - PC *Masterpiece*

"Grimpack the Mook hired you as an escort for a long voyage. He didn't say where you were going  .  .  . "

.  .  . and with these ludicrous yet immortal words begins the greatest expression of hardcore cRPG gaming the denizens of planet Earth have yet produced. Seamlessly splicing the good things old-school RPG's brought to the tabletop with the glittery trappings of the new school. Wizardry 8 was the culmination of 20 long years of cRPG evolution: making it a great ape amongst hordes of pitiable, gibbering; makak's, marmoset's and lemur's. This was software house SirTech's swan song and it hits a high note very few others can match.

The world and its many proclivities are well established: combining both the high-tech and sorcerous with aplomb. What a disappointment when every supposed fantasy world is populated by the same tedious gobloids and stunted misfits as Tolkien's was some 70 years ago: then embellished with a hodge-podge of creatures chosen at random from world mythology. Not quite so with Wizardry: your party may consist of Faeries, Mooks and Androids and while wondering the realm you may encounter Battering Hogar's, a Drunken Rapax or heaven forbid a Kaos Kube: at worst you may sight a Golem. There is a hint of cyberpunk, not a rehash of that genres tropes but quite an unusual combination of anti-heroes, artificial intelligence, doom-laden techno-magic and at the stories core: a pervasive sense of irony.

Looking at the party members: humans suddenly seem rather exotic.

Wizardry's character development is amongst the best in any RPG, marrying experience from level gains with good ol'fashioned practice: allowing for a bizarre range of career options. The combat system is equally well developed: seamlessly transferring from real-time exploration to turn based battle. There is a plot arc of bewildering proportions stretching back to Wizardry 6: yet you are free to meander the entire world on a whim. The addition of randomly spoken dialogue from your party members in most games is painful . . . not so here: actually adding personalities that aren't toe-curlingly offensive. Dungeon design, script, sound track, story arc; excellent, excellent, excellent etc: this game has quality in spades.

The days before eBay

Played on Iron-Man mode the challenge is unforgiving especially for an inexperienced gamer: but this is how it was meant to be played: the fear of death made palpable indeed almost real as 40 hours of you actual life go to waste as you are set upon by Ratkin Goon's. People with things to do and appointments to keep need not apply.

Flamstryke's Pre-eminent Fansite
Ironworks Wizardry 8 Forum
Wizardry Walkthrough's
Editors and Mods
Download

The Wizardry series is hugely popular in Japan yet it is the antithesis of the typical console RPG; with their anodyne game-worlds populated by buffon haired monosyllabic sociopaths possessed with about as much personality as a bowl of rice. OK, that was a bit harsh: the Japanese have made some truly phenomenal games, just not many like this: that may explain its popularity and vica-versa. It is possible to export characters from Wizardry 6 through 7 and into 8: this game arc is perhaps the most challenging feat of human endeavour available to mankind: making Shackleton's expedition seem like a light stroll after xmas dinner. There will almost certainly never be a Wizardry 9. Imagination, humour, and depth, when software is rated on these criteria we, as a civilisation, will be getting somewhere.

Darklands - PC *Masterpiece*

Heroic Role-Playing Adventures in Medieval Germany

The computer RPG has become a rather different sort of animal to the pen and paper progenitors of the genre. The computer was originally expected to take the role of dungeon master: encouraging the player to engage imaginatively with the source material: however this attitude gave way very quickly to the computer acting as automated taskmaster, reducing the player (by way of exp, new weapons, magic etc) to an beleaguered dogsbody; grinding characters, amassing trinkets and killing the proverbial foozle. I am not saying this style of play isn't fun and it can be integrated with the more imaginative style of cRPG: but it should be considered of secondary importance if you want a game with substance.

Darklands is made of such wondrous substance and is amongst the handful of computer RPG's that grasped the potential of the medium. The only RPG ever released by legendary software house Microprose (developed by MPSLabs), it offers the player an experience unique in the computer gaming canon. The game world exists as a fantastical palimpsest of the real medieval Germany, where the myths, legends and superstitions of the time are layered over the deep historical reality of the period: encounters play out more like vignettes while beautifully illustrated story boards explain your current predicament. Characters age, grow old and die, skills are learnt and then forgotten, equipment rusts, your fame waxes and wanes and the game world is persistent, evolving and never ends...

Should modern games come bundled with a GPS?
No...probably not.












Another night on bald mountain.












"Well lets see...I can use flails, poleaxes and have a virtue of 99"
"You've got the job...but can you toss burgers?!"

Premier Darklands Fansite
Darklands Yahoo Discussion Group
Download from Abandonia
Intro at Youtube
History of cRPG at Gamasutra

...if you are looking for a game to play that will actually provide an enriching experience rather than a banal glorification of positive feedback then Darklands is the answer: it has had the answer since 1992 and almost nobody wants to know...

GNU Backgammon - PC / Mac

Hurmph! (he/she exclaims after being soundly thrashed) You should play me at chess it is far more logical.

Harooo! (he/she exclaims after winning with two lucky roles) Backgammon is more realistic than chess because it contains luck and I am just lucky.

Both these responses are true enough but miss the beauty of backgammon: the eventual triumph of tactics over luck. It is this for me makes the game more satisfying than chess. Plus when people insist on carping about the grand complexity of chess; I always hasten to add that a computer game like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 (or god forbid MOO3) is more complicated than chess by a factor of about 10! Naturally nobody who plays chess seriously knows anything about Heroes of Might and Magic...

...I know that in the Eastern Block, somewhere, lurks the Kasparov of HOMAM.

Anyway...Backgammon is still a long way from being solved like Draughts (in fact this was only a soft solution...all imperfect permutations have not been mapped...but good enough) and GNU Backgammon is the perhaps the most powerful and highly ranked artificial backgammon intelligence (ABI) in the world. In the computer Olympics of 2006 it crushed the nearest competitor BGBlitz 3-1 (in sets of 5, 15 point matches). Using advanced neural networks it can compete favourably with the best human and cybernetic (mainly BGBlitz, Jellyfish & Snowie) players in the world. If you can win a best of 7 match against GNU on Grand Master level then you should go and do something else! Not only is GNU incredibly strong, it is feature rich; including hundreds of dispaly, difficulty, match analysis and tutoring modes.

Download from Official GNU Backgammon Website
Selection of other Backgammon Programs to Download
Origins of Backgammon
Rules of the Game (not Renoir)
Yahoo Online Backgammon Server
Play the Royal Mesopotamian Game of Ur online at the British Museum
The Finest Book on Modern Backgammon: Magriel

Backgammon has existed in some form or another for at least five thousand years (possibly originating from the Royal Board Game of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia) although the modern version was draughted by Elizabethan tavern crawlers and finally standardised by Edmond Hoyle in 1743. Backgammon is truly a deep and rewarding game, but be warned: on the path to enlightenment you will be almost irreparably annoyed!!

3 in Three - Mac *Masterpiece*

'There is no number 3 in Three'

3 in Three by Cliff Johnson is the best puzzle game ever made (with one possible exception...his earlier masterstroke: The Fools Errand). Welcome to a peculiar alien landscape ruled my letters, curious symbols and the omnipresent letter legislator. You are a typical number 3 (female) exiled from your spreadsheet during an unusual power surge and sent spiralling into the bowels of the computer. Your quest is to make the tortuous journey back to the desktop; through fields of binary digits, warped tesseracts and garbled symbolic crossroads: while all the time pandering the ludicrous machinations and cryptic jabberings of dollar signs, question marks, self important full stops and of course the letters.

Your so-called friends.


Ctrl-s.


Logic Grid


Linguistic Blackjack


Alphanumeralogical Codes

Between each puzzle is often a short cut scene where the true jumbled nature of communication is revealed and journeying ever deeper into the darkest recesses of the machine you come to realise that mathematics and language are not as different as they seem. Essentially 3 tries to tame the ambiguity of language with the rigours of mathematical logic while questing for a personal identity outside the rigid framework of number theory. All in a days work.

Cliff Johnsons Homepage
Home of the Underdogs Entry

A truly sublime game that will take give you many enjoyable evenings: puzzling contentedly into the night. It only ever recieved a release on the Mac but by using the excellent (and free) Mac Classic emulator for PC: Executor (donwload links and serial codes available on Cliff Johnson's site) the game can reach those who like their bread butter side up.

King of Dragon Pass - PC / Mac

King of Dragon Pass is a mixture of text adventure, resource management, strategy, god-sim and RPG: all set in the popular fantasy setting of Glorantha. Released in 1999 and nothing short of an anachronism, KoDP is purely represented with lavish 2D backgrounds and text.

Have you ever wanted to be in charge of a warrior tribe? Have you ever wistfully looked over the hills...dreaming of adventure? Have you ever eaten feta cheese on the back of a blubbery whale?
Are these ridiculous questions going to lead to some sort of resounding recommendation to play this game? Yes!

The days before Gillette.


"To the winner go the spoils...to the loser only the knowledge of defeat"
(and maybe an injury).


Shake dem bones (what a pitifull comment).


Greater Crab Deamon vs Minotaur Champion!
Note: it has eyes on stalks and eyes on its face.

This game was made for the thoughtful fantasist. A person who doesn't need their imagination pre-packaged. A person who with irony in mind can gleefully inhabit a world populated by duck headed peons (if you find yourself without this irony I would consider seeking help). Good software, like good literature, art, music etc is a prompt for the imagination. It is the quality of this prompt that often makes a classic. This world of mind that good art conjures, is besides tangible themes and ideas, the most important thing it can offer. Until this aspect of software is considered paramount in development and reviews; there can be no such thing as software as an art form: only as entertainment (whatever that is) or at best as a technical exercise.

Official Website
Fansite
Another Fansite
Wikipedia Article
Download Torrent

Ok...ok...hold the waffle! There are both PC and Mac versions of this game and they are identical. If you are looking for a game that hearkens back to the real old days of PC gaming but with some of the pizazz modern computers can offer and don't mind using that musty old imagination you've got up their somewhere; you needn't surf further than this page.