Who among us hasn't wished to be a cool hacker from the movies, like Hugh Jackman in Swordfish (a classic)? In real life hacking things is apparently quite dangerous and hard, but in video games we can crack the system and mutter "I'm in" under our breath as often as we want. Naturally, there have been some fabulous hacking games on PC over the years, and we've collected what we think are the cream of the crop of the best hacking games to play on PC right now.
]]>Now that Cyberpunk 2077 is delayed again until December 10th, what are you to do? You've grown a lurid blue mohawk, your leather jacket is almost worn in, and your prescription mirrorshades are ready for collection at Specsavers - but for what? You might as well use this time to explore all games cyberpunky, from edgy and nihilistic griping about how the future sucks to wacky cyberjapes that make you wanna jump up and shout HACK THE PLANET. I have some recommendations.
]]>If you plumb the depths of human ingenuity you will resurface with a wet box of penicillin and 100 million bits of different-coloured plastic. We people are very good at making useful things, and then killing ourselves with them. But videogames, my friends. Videogames hold the solution to our self-destructive ways. That tech utopia your pal Start-up Stan is always talking about is in reach, we just need to find a way to make these 12 practical devices from videogames appear in real life.
]]>I was homeless when I discovered Minecraft -- not homeless in the street-sleeping sense, thankfully. Only in the sofa-surfing sense. I had a bed, even. The creaking cabin bed of two friends who took pity on me and let me crash for a few months in their house, while I sullied my fingertips with sambuca in a dank Yorkshire nightclub for part-time pound coins. My chin-scratching uni days had just ended, but I stubbornly refused to go back to my family house in Northern Ireland. I could do this, I reasoned, I just needed time.
Then my friend showed me how to punch a tree, and I found a new home.
]]>Rural life is disgusting. All those shrubs and trees, how awful. You should pack your checkered pouch and head into the big smoke. The shining cities of videogameland are calling to you, and the team of the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, will be there to help you get settled in to your disgusting, overpriced flat no matter which giant urban maze you choose. Trust us, life is so much better in the city.
Ignore the rats. You'll get used to them.
]]>Hello chum! Sit down and have a nice glass of water and a pack of Bombay mix. That's how we greet our closest friends on the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. This week, best pals John and Brendan discuss how friendship is handled in videogames, and what characters felt most like close buddies. John felt a kinship with Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins, and sees Lydia from Skyrim as Wilson the football from Castaway. Whereas Brendan felt a habitual closeness to the undead woman in Dark Souls who sold him poisonous arrows. Takes all sorts, really.
]]>The Steam summer sale is in full blaze. For a while it even blazed so hot that the servers went on fire and all the price stickers peeled off the games. Either that or the store just got swamped with cheapskates looking for the best bargains. Cheapskates like you! Well, don’t worry. We’ve rounded up some recommendations - both general tips and some newly added staff choices.
Here are the things you should consider owning in your endless consumeristic lust for a happiness which always seems beyond reach. You're welcome.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
There are plenty of game cities I’d like to visit. The bars and shops of Mass Effect’s Citadel remind me of a huge, strange airport. The Imperial City of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a part-majestic, part-ruinous jewel in a cosmopolitan world that consistently burps magic. But I wouldn’t necessarily want to live in these places. They’re dangerous. The city of Dorisburg in Else Heart.Break(), however. That’s a place I’d at least spend a year or two.
]]>While Brendan skipped around gaily like a cyberkid in a cybercandy shop, hacking that candy to receive godlike powers, John was less enamoured with Else Heart.Break(). If you were torn between those two opinions and passed over the sandbox RPG when it came out last year, hey, it's in the latest Humble Bundle. It's a mega-bargain, also offering Sunless Sea, Trine 3, Door Kickers, and more for as little as £6.
]]>It was three o'clock in the afternoon when the drugs began to wear off. I was sitting on a bench waiting for the factory workers to leave the building behind me so I could sneak in and steal some important files. The drug in question was a nameless multicoloured square that speeds up time. I took it so I could break in sooner but I had accidentally clicked on the screen, interrupting the effects. I looked in my bag for more drugs. Nothing. But I did have a cigarette. What if...?
I got out the cigarette and hacked it. I typed 'FastForward()' into its code and then took a quick puff. It worked. Seagulls started flying around me in timelapse trails, rain came and went in seconds, the sun went down, and the workers scuttled out of the factory one by one. It was 7.30pm. Time to get to work.
]]>The entire time I’ve spent with Else Heart.Break() [official site] I’ve had two concurrent thoughts:
- I think this game is probably extraordinary - I am not having any fun playing this game
]]>It was back in 2010 that Swedish developer Erik Svedäng started work on else Heart.Break() [official site], shortly after the release of his critical darling Blueberry Garden. The game spent a year in pre-production, and a further four in actual production thereafter, helped along by support from the Nordic Game Program. It was on Thursday, however, that Svedäng finally released else Heart.Break() to the world.
]]>else Heart.Break() [official site] reminds me a lot of the PlayStation 2 era, and not just because it, you know, looks like a PS2 game. Combining infiltration and hacking with open-world social RPG stuff is the kind of curious idea I'd associate with those strange and experimental days - or at least my golden memory of The Old Days. These memories probably have little relation to reality, but I remember the PS2 having lots of strange games doing strange things that I wish had come to PC but never did, so I only peered at them from afar and probably got a far rosier picture of them. Anyway!
That won't be a problem with else Heart.Break(), as it is coming to PC - on September 24th, creator Erik Svedäng has now announced.
]]>We've covered else Heart.Break() before, so I feel I need not dwell on what it is. But wait! What if you've somehow missed those previous posts? Hmm.
function Heart.Break() { if (gameFamiliar == true) { Recommendation = "Skip the next paragraph"; } else { Recommendation = "Keep reading, intrepid reader!"; } // Feel free to critique my code. I am no professional, my friends. }
]]>I've gushed about how pretty else Heart.Break() looks before, but what's going on beneath those PlayStation-era polygons? This new six-minute uncut gameplay trailer might seem like the perfect way to discover what one even does in the game, what our goal is and how we'll achieve it, but... seemingly nothing major is resolved, nothing visibly changes. Which I suspect is the point. It's six minutes of moving through a city that's new to you, trying to learn your way, poking at and interacting with things, and chatting with people who aren't there just to drive the plot forward.
]]>Oh sure, this new trailer for else Heart.Break() gives a lovely look at the computer-programming, romance-finding adventure-y RPG-ish game from Blueberry Garden creator Erik Svedäng and friends, but the real question is: what's up with that syntax change? Last time we cooed and ahhed over its PlayStation 1-era look, the name was stylised as else { Heart.break() } and gosh, doesn't the Internet enjoy scrutinising other people's code? Are you happy now, backseat programmers?
More to the point, doesn't this game look delightful?
]]>Well, we were mean about WatchunderscoreDogs, so I guess we should be mean about elseOpenCurlyBracketHeartFullStopbreakOpenParenthesisCloseParenthesisSpaceCloseCurlyBracket too. At least this is a game about programming though, so the silly name is a mite more justified. Or maybe lots of hackers really do use a lot of underscores and we've been unfair all this time?
Anyway: we wrote about this back in 2012, but the next game from Erik 'Blueberry Garden' Svedäng (with art from sometime collaborator Niklas Akerblad) is currently causing internet-wide cooing thanks to a thoughtful write-up and interview by Leigh over at Gamasutra. Apparently, the game has drifted from its puzzle-based roots during development, and into a new and extremely appealing focus on world-building.
]]>Erik Svedang's Blueberry Garden was a delightful, surreal platformer about exploring a world in order to discover how to play the game, so it's only right his next game would be an even meatier meta-commentary on games: else { Heart.break() } puts you in a world where the game's code itself can be accessed and altered by the player, prompted on by characters in the game. Blimey!
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