Played via the 25th Anniversary Update for Half-Life, which added Uplink as a playable chapter without the use of mods.

Not a lot to say about Half-Life: Uplink, that doesn't mean that it's bad but simply put, it's an abridged version of the action you see in the actual game, and for a demo it works marvels. As I said about the later on demo of the same style for Half-Life 2, I like that these demos ultimately gave you a fully-fledged piece of the GoldSrc engine to mess around with, and since there's no actual cut content you can experience what Half-Life has to offer but in a bite-sized more enclosed manner as a nice little treat to get accustomed to how the movement, gunplay and enemies work before jumping into the actual game.

Honestly a shame that it took this long for Uplink to be readily accessible on Steam. This 20-minute slice perfectly encapsulates everything good (and bad!) about the original Half-Life, but as a kid who dug through Cuttng Room Floor pages looking at all the unused content (Hello, Mr. Friendly), I'm just happy that this is readily accessible to more people. By 1999 you didn't have to "sell" Half-Life to people anymore, so its even crazier this goes as hard as it does. Now give us that E3 Half-Life 2 tech demo so I can be like those guys who oogled at the barrel physics.

Yeah, I can see why this chapter got cut from the game.
the arenas suck ass and are just no fun it fight in.

Very little enemy variety too. it's like 90% just HECU grunts.

Also for the majority of the demo you only really have the MP5 with very little ammo supplied and hand-grenades. Half-Life's grenades notoriously suck so being having to use them as your primary weapon is nightmarish.

While it is kinda neat as a piece of Half-Life history, it has no value beyond that.
This getting scrapped from the final game was for the better.