Revisiting Half-Life: Uplink

Photo: halflifeuplink.com

It's been over a decade since I last played Half-Life: Uplink and even then I didn't finish it. Times were different - I still remember being scared as hell in a dim lighted room, playing on old monitor and bad speakers. There's something that made the experience so terrifying for younger version of me. If I remember right this demo came on a CD with few other demos for games like Turok, Worms and maybe even Beyond Good & Evil, though I'm not really sure about the last one. Anyway, this game was my introduction to PC gaming and FPS genre in general. And to Half-Life, of course, which led me to the road I'm still walking on.

I think Uplink is still a great demo though it didn't have the same magic as it use to. But that's how nostalgy works in the end! It's still pretty challenging at the times (but that could be all because my HL skills are rusty) and atmosphere is what you'd expect from Half-life experience. Especially old-schools sounds made this revisit feel like coming home after a long, long journey - there's something special about those sound effects in original Half-Life. And the soda machine can still kill you!

I remember how scared I was of the first zombie you encounter because I had never in my life experienced anything like that. Now, as I'm older and played a lot of HL and zombie games in general, that spooky feeling wasn't unfortunately there anymore. I knew what to do and how to fight those things now too well. And that's sad in a way. There are only a few games that can give that brand new feeling of unknown, at least for me, and the fact that I'm pretty familiar with the engine and game making in general also has a big impact on how I approach games and enemies. 13-15 years ago I had no idea what I was doing on FPS games - now they are hardwired into my blood (hey, I'm using words!). 

And that's why I almost hope that I didn't revisit Uplink. I loved that hazy memory of my time with it. Is it ruined now or do I appreciate it more? We'll see.

Ps. I also recorded a gameplay video with my commentary while playing Uplink, but I don't know if that will ever become public. You'll just have to wait and see...