I have doctored someone’s school grades to make sure they fail and I have exposed a cheating politician. I have taken down a company like Nestle, ended a cult and landed aeroplanes. I have destroyed chemical weapons, I have stopped a nuke. I’ve done all this and more in Greyhat because I’m the hacker everyone turns to when they need something done.
Greyhat – A Digital Detective Adventure reviewDeveloper: Limited Games (Leon Lim)Publisher: Limited Games (Leon Lim)Platform: PCAvailability: Released 31st August on Steam for £9.29 (currently £7.89)
All I need is an IP address. I plug it into a tunnelling program and then I’m inside their machine, on their desktop, files and folders before me. Some might be locked but there are always clues to passwords lying around. Maybe it’s the name of a loved one, maybe it’s a birthday, maybe it’s their favourite band. I check their emails, their documents and webcam feeds, and sooner or later I find what I need.
Greyhat leapt out at me earlier this year when I played a preview build. I found it sharp, imaginative and intriguing. I particularly loved the way it emulated the feeling of being an elite hacker in a film. You know, one of those people mashing away at a keyboard as a weird interface pops up and then crumbles away under their relentless assault.
It’s like that here. When you’re chatting in the game’s instant messenger (called Vitriol, by the way) you don’t individually type each letter but mash either side of the keyboard and the game types for you, either in a positive or negative voice deepening on which side you use. When you find IPs, an over-the-top program dramatically scans all the computers in the world to find your mark. Then, you’re in a hacking mini-game where you have to match lines of gobbledygook code by mashing the correct side of the keyboard as fast and accurately as you possibly can. And of course you uncover the kind of secrets hackers dream about, then read about the consequences of your exploits on a news website a day later.
It also has a surprisingly punchy story set-up running through the game like a line, pulling you through, but I don’t want to say much about it because the thrill is in the surprise. I wanted to see where that went and I wanted to see what other ideas the game had. And I did. But I didn’t expect it to take me this long.