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I've been playing FO:New Vegas these days, and it got me thinking about the hacking mini game. I quite like the concept they've been using in FO3 and FO:NV. I always start off by selecting all matching braces to get rid of duds, after that it's usually quite easy.

So this computer hacking has of course been done before.

Fallout 3 + New Vegas: find a passphrase from a memory dump (not time based).

BioShock 1: "pipe dream" clone. Fits the theme very well. The basic idea is to create a short circuit in the system. Yeah... fluids based computer :)

BioShock 2: lame stop-the-needle-in-the-right-place. It's just timing, no real thinking required.

Mass Effect 1: concentric frogger; unlike most hacking games you can retry multiple times, but it does become more difficult as time runs out.

Mass Effect 2: select a matching picture from a scrolling list without touching red pictures. The goal is to find the complete source of a program that can hack the system. A bit weird if you ask me.

System Shock 2: Connect 3 nodes ... yeah, boring. I'm not really sure how I should interpret this.

Anachronox: also a pipe dream clone. But it's quite a bit different from BioShocks's version. Here you have to place the routes on a more or less empty grid. Some cells could be damaged. It can be quite complicated some times.

From this list the FO3 method is absolutely the best.

Did I forget any other games that featured a hacking minigame?

ps, I intentionally didn't mention uplink as it's the whole game, not a minigame.

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There's that Dead Space interactive comic that is just 4 hacking mini-games.

Oh and Alpha Protocol had two hacking procedures. In one you had two passphrases whose movement was tied to each analog stick/keyboard and mouse. There's a grid of letters and numbers that are all changing, except for the squares that match the pass phrase. You have to line up the phrases to win.

The other one was just a sequence of numbers connected to twisted paths and you had to choose the correct paths in order.

I gotta say, for as much as I like Pipe Dream, and as much as it did fit the setting, I thought it was a bad choice. I liked it at the start, but you just do so much hacking throughout Bioshock that it became tedious. At some point you're just clicking as fast as you can to reveal all the parts and then making the same pipe path. As a puzzle it doesn't get that interesting, but it was always fairly time consuming.

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Shadowrun (SNES) has a hacking mini-game "Matrix" that is kind of like Minesweeper.

(look at around 0:40)

Dystopia, Half-Life 2 modification has a hacking mechanic (it's more integral to the game in certain game types) that is a 3D virtual-world physics-based puzzles.

(look at around 1:20)

I'm sure there is tons of other examples in the Cyberpunk genre as well.

*EDIT*

Alien Swarm has a linear-style Pipe Dream hacking system. I can't find a video of it though.

Edited by Drath

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Dreamfall had a bunch of hacking minigames, as I recall (mostly boiling down to matching symbols). Moonbase Alpha has those concentric rings and draw within the lines type of minigames too, although they're technically repair minigames, not hacking...

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Perhaps Black Ops deserves some kind of mention in here for that computer terminal in the interrogation room.

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I remember thinking that Fallout 3 had the most fun and most believable hacking minigame I have seen.

In most games it just comes across as an arbitrary minigame that has nothing to do with computing and breaks my suspension of disbelief. But I could totally buy into Fallout 3's "choose the correct password from a list imbedded in garbled code", with added logic puzzle as to number of correct letters. It was quick, I could make it quicker by being clever and it scaled well with difficulty and hacking skill.

Vampire the Maquerade: Bloodlines didn't have a minigame for hacking, just a difficulty level vs hacking skill. This was tempered with using investigation and observation to find passwords lying around though, or even guess some of them if you were particularly smart.

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I gotta say, for as much as I like Pipe Dream, and as much as it did fit the setting, I thought it was a bad choice. I liked it at the start, but you just do so much hacking throughout Bioshock that it became tedious. At some point you're just clicking as fast as you can to reveal all the parts and then making the same pipe path. As a puzzle it doesn't get that interesting, but it was always fairly time consuming.

Captain Fish is right about this one. Pipe Dream isn't a bad game, but it takes up so much time. I'd much rather play the scratch-off lottery of System Shock 2.

Another issue with hacking is the reward. Bioshock makes you play a long, tedious game of Pipe Dream just so you can get the "staff discount" for the vending machine. There's no sense that you have any real access to the system.

Fallout 3 and

(see the 2:50 mark) do the best job in making the player feel like you have control over an entire system.

Fallout 3 also offered some good excuses for why certain computer options didn't work. "Whoops! That option is unavailable due to nuclear apocalypse."

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I must be the only one who hated the Fallout 3 hacking "game". I was invariably terrible at it. What's the matter with me?

I did like BioShock's one, just because it was fun to play.

Of course, none of these "mini-games" are anything like real hacking, they're just that... mini-games.

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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BioShock's was absolutely bollocks IMO. Sure it was great if, say, you just played the demo — but after enduring having to do it again and again and again it was the most offputting, tedious thing ever.

I like Assassin's Creed 2's truth puzzle things. I know they're not really hacking minigames but they could be, and they'd be a lot better than most.

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I really like the FO3 hacking game. I totally agree it is by far the most believable. The Mass Effect 2 one and Alpha Protocol's are very similar, with AP pretty much just having you do it twice at once. If the controls for AP's weren't totally shit, it probably would be one of my favorites. As it is, the keyboard side moves infuriatingly slowly, and the mouse's is slow AND oversensitive, which sucked twice as hard. Still, I like it in principle.

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Looking back on it, Alpha Protocol's may actually be decent: the problems with it, after all, meant that the minigame retained tension without being too difficult or tedious. I actually felt like I had to act quickly within the time limit even when I almost never failed, due to the frustrating controls.

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It's worth noting that the amount of control over the passcodes in Alpha Protocol improves as you put skill points into hacking. Things that speed up hacking just end up making it control better.

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Human Revolution hacking

Most interesting hacking mini game I have seen yet! :tup: By the looks of it, that thing could probably be sold as a 5 € puzzle game or something.

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This might've been going on for a while, but I've noticed a lot of games have started using Flash for their game UI. A lot of the snappy flashiness of the Assassin's Creed 2 games and their minigames, for example, is due to this. I'm guessing using this middleware allows them to design the hacking minigame in pure Flash, which is very suited for that kind of responsive 2D stuff.

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While the rest of the world is moving away from Flash... games are starting to use it? Seems weird. Are you sure it's actually Flash? It'd strike me as an odd choice.

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Animations are using it too: witness Wakfu.

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While the rest of the world is moving away from Flash

I'm not sure that's actually happening, though. It's more like the world is starting to use other technologies where they're more suited. Flash is still pretty great at fast, smooth vector graphics, animation and interactivity.

edit: Ah, here it is. Dragon Age 2, Crysis 2, Civilization, Fable, etc. Seems pretty popular.

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I'm not sure that's actually happening, though. It's more like the world is starting to use other technologies where they're more suited. Flash is still pretty great at fast, smooth vector graphics, animation and interactivity.

Yeah, I think it's just that the world is seeing that maybe most of the web shouldn't be all that Flashy. Or that you can get similar results with JavaScript and stuff and that still integrates better with HTML.

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Yeah, I think it's just that the world is seeing that maybe most of the web shouldn't be all that Flashy. Or that you can get similar results with JavaScript and stuff and that still integrates better with HTML.

Hopefully we'll get to a point where a free and open source cross-browser JS library can compete with the flash player, but even if someone made one (and knowing open source I'm guessing there are hundreds of isolated little projects attempting this as we speak, and even Adobe is working on it) you'll never be able to compete on the author side. It's like Photoshop or World of Warcraft – the best you can hope for is to make a dent or scratch in their market share.

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Some Rare guy explained to me at Eurogamer that all their huds, interfaces, etc are done in Flash — including in their flagship Kinect game, Banjo, and Viva Piñata. He said such practice isn't remotely uncommon in the industry, as many UI designers — who often handle interaction and animation too — can readily use Illustrator/Flash, whereas using other approaches requires more training, developer intervention (not who you want handling animation and visual effects, etc.

Personally I think Flash gets too bad a rap, largely due to Apple's self-centred smearing efforts. It's not nearly as bulky, inefficient, or bloated as many seem to think, especially in comparison to earlier versions. Granted it may not be the best long-term solution for the web, but its been incredibly useful for many things and has helped define modern web interactivity.

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I prefer hacking mini-games that don't take you out of the flow of the game world.

The problem i have with hacking in BioShock is that you can run up to a stunned turret, initiate the hack and... Ok? So now you're just standing in front of a live turret casually taking your time playing pipe dream?

The way games like System Shock 2 and BioShock 2 handle the hacking may not be as deep or as "fun", but they're risky and balanced within the context of the other game systems. BioShock 2 as compared to BioShock 1 makes hacking significantly less easy to abuse. Enemies are still active while you're trying to crack some security, you can't just magically pause the battle and take your time. There's risk involved, and it makes it something you have to think about instead of it being a catch-all solution, which i find much more rewarding and interesting than simply having a charming mini-game associated with it.

Also, since we're generally talking about interacting with computer interfaces in a game space, i wish more games did what Doom 3 did. Now I know, a lot of you probably hate Doom 3, but the game certainly wasn't without merit. One such merit, specifically, is that Id did some really, really cool things with simulated in-game computers. You didn't click an object and have a fat ugly UI pop up in your face, you actually interacted with computers as objects in the normal game space.

That always struck me as incredibly cool and immersive.

Edited by Sno

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One such merit, specifically, is that Id did some really, really cool things with simulated in-game computers. You didn't click an object and have a fat ugly UI pop up in your face, you actually interacted with computers as objects in the normal game space.

Yeah, that was one of the few things I loved about Doom 3. Thanks for reminding me.

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It was really cool, but there were never intricate puzzles on those screens, only OPEN THE AIRLOCK buttons (if I recall correctly.) A seamless transition is always preferable though, I agree, and I think maybe one of the Splinter Cell games did that, sort of focusing in on the hacking interface. I may be completely off.

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