Ever dreamed of being a hacker? Or even better, a hacker that works for the federal agents? Well, Mainlining allows you to do just that! Played entirely from a home desktop environment, you take control of a MI7 agent ready to take down cyber criminals armed with only your PC...
After getting a job at the MI7 you are given the task of bringing justice to various cyber criminals using nothing but your skills as a hacker. The game boots into its own Windows type environment called Rainbows, and from that point the game is played entirely from there. The only tools you have are a notepad, a web browser, and your witts.
After a messenger type window pops up your given the briefing that your looking for a criminal responsible for taking the MI7 servers offline. With only a web address and a username to go with, you are instantly required to figure out how to go about the task of locating the said users real name and location.
If youve never played a game like this before you might struggle to understand it right from the start, but Mainlining does an amazing job of placing you into the scenario of a realtime hacker. You dont need to be a hacker in order to play it, though it will require a lot of mental ability. As ive played similar hacking games over the years i soon realised that in order to succeed in locating a name id need to go visit the website given in the brief. Discovering that it was linked to an organisation who are against the MI7 i found a way of sending whats called a Ping to the website in order to obtain its IP address, after that i was able to hack into its server and download several files linking crimes to the culprits, and also a list of names involved.
Taking advantage of the Blue Pill Act (where the government can snoop in on data collected from authoroties) you soon discover that your able to gain access to pretty much anything, in any city, in any state. With over 500 criminals operating in your juris diction you need to gather evidence and build a case thats sure to take down those in charge. Acting too fast can cause you to miss leads neccessary to catch higher ranking criminals, whereas acting too slow can give your target time to cover tracks and escape. Mainlining is a game that will definately test your abilities to think outside the box.
The graphics in Mainlining are the pixelated creations of Dave Grey, who has had former colaborations with Microsoft anf HBO. The game is said to have a 2009 feel, though personally i think its more a 1990's look, taking us back to the early days of pc gaming. In any case its a fitting design for the game and really works well. Based on it being a game played via a windows type environment i think having a more up-to date realistic look could of been a mistake and took away the feel of the game. In effect it would of seemed too real, and possibly confusing as to wether you were really hacking something.
The game was developed by Rebelephant, a company owned by Sam Read who takes control of the design and programming of Mailining, as well as keeping the direction of the game moving forward. No expense was spared in creating a well written and indepth storyline for mainlining, and award winning Canadian novellist Jill Murray was hired for the job. Having written storylines for games in the Assassins Creed series you can tell that Mainlining will be an engrossing experience.
Last but not least, the in-game music was created by BAFTA nominated Jared Emerson-Johnson. Jared has been responsible for bringing us the audio work on hugely popular titles such as Tales From the Borderlands, The Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead.
So as you can see, Mainlining has some great talent directly linked to it, and this all pays off as its an extremely addictive game. The fact that it requires a lot of thought without much explanation gives you a unique feeling of accomplishment that very few games can offer. Its a game you can lose hours of time with before you realise how long its been. Though as mentioned its not a game you can just jump straight into, its not like any typical game, and unless you understand the idea of the game you will spend some time scratching your head.
We first spotted the Mainlining at this years EGX Euro Gamer convention, and seats to play the game were forever filled. The good news is you can download the free demo for PC/Mac on Steam! It contains more than enough gameplay to get to grips with the game, and its enticing enough to get you hooked. As its a point n click adventure im not sure if we will see a home console release, but for pc gamers i can see this one being a game that will be forever remembered.
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