With the common usage of broadband these days, everyone will need a bit of know-how about how to setup the necessary security programs to protect their computers from hackers, viruses, software vulnerabilities, spyware and what not. Even then, there is nothing to stop a determined hacker from getting into systems and thats where the authorities must make a move.


Rinas apartment gets blown up.
Project Hacker is about how a university student named Satoru Amatsubo and his childhood friend Rina Kokubo get dragged into the world of IT crime when they accidentally pickup a rogue program disk designed to corrupt a mobile phone network. Being chased by a group of criminals, the two go to the police for help but, without proof of their claims about the criminals the police wouldnt believe them. It was then that Satoru decided to put his great hacking skills to use to find out who the owner of the disk was. Little did he know that the top IT crime organisation, GIS already had an eye on him for accessing government servers without authorization. Eventually both Satoru and Rina are offered to join the GIS for his skills to help solve IT crimes which include unauthorized bank transfers, changing hospital karte data and hacking into an airports control system.
Gameplay
Being a traditional adventure game (or visual novel), the game is completely text driven where you have a selection of actions along the bottom screen to interact with your environment. In this case you can talk, inspect, move, use items and your laptop computer. Those of you familiar with Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney will be familiar with the way these type of games play. For those who dont, most of the time youll find yourself selecting a new topic to talk about to drive the story along while making the odd decision during dialogues for a bit of variation. While there is no multi-branching storyline like some other visual novel games such as Zero One, there will be times where the wrong decision will lead to a game over screen.


Someones been hiding out.
With Project Hacker, the game is split into five different scenarios known as Programs. For each one, a case is given to GIS and the chief, Misutzu Sekushi sends out Satoru, the character you play and his partner Rina to investigate. The early parts of the investigations involve you going around speaking with various people to understand more about the incident which usually ends up with fairly hilarious scenes between our two heroes as the over-energetic and mischievous Rina goes about deceiving people with her acting or, teasing Satoru now and then. In one part theres even some amusing Engrish being used at a US military base such as. You were permitted to enter the inside, and OK, I check what you say. But eventually, you will usually always end up gaining access to a suspects password protected computer.