As a Resistance agent in the game of Ingress it can be frustrating to see your local city or locality covered in green control fields. Blarney where I live is firmly blue but Cork isn’t so lucky. So when a huge control field popped up extending from Blackrock Castle to the City to Cork Airport to Carrigaline I had to find a way to bring it down.
On Sunday I did just that. The Old Bridge portal was level 4 or 5 and had at least one level six resonator. I took down some of the resonators easily enough but the final L4 resonator proved tricky as OliverIE recharged it remotely while I attacked! The most worrying part of the capture was the group of 13-15 year old boys crossing the bridge who chanted penis jokes behind me! Idiots. One of the downsides of visiting some locations I guess. Oliver will earn a tidy sum of AP capturing the portal back again too. (You’re welcome!)
Ingress is quite limited as a game but it’s a very interesting experiment. The hack/capture portal gameplay is one where you have to cooperate or at least be mindful of the enemy. If your portals are too strong you’ll have a nice set of virtual points on a map but you won’t level up any time soon. The “winning side” in any area don’t get any points for maintaining a huge control field.
When you first start up the game there’s a quick tutorial where the players runs through missions designed to familiarise them with the game. Unfortunately that’s about as far as directed gameplay goes. Hopefully in the future missions will be added with objectives for players. Having said that, if this is a taste of what “augmented reality” games can be like I’d like more please. It’s a good excuse to get out walking if nothing else.
I still think it’s a devious ploy by Google to collect photos and information about monuments, statues and places of interest. We’re also feeding them very useful walking information connecting those places.
I must say, following your previous mention of Ingress, the basic idea has caught my imagination more than any other in recent years.
This might, in time, be a genre that will gain mainstream popularity in the same way that the Wii console did. Partly it is the health aspect of getting out and having a reason to walk around your own area but, also, it could be a really good match for travel – imagine flying into Warsaw for the weekend to play an espionage-themed version. If cleverly laid out, it could be a terrific way to experience a city for the first time. Edinburgh’s old town, for instance, would be an epic backdrop.
Check out the ingressworld.it link above and zoom into Edinburgh. Looks like a very active community there. Resistance have the upper hand but Enlightened still have a few portals! I’ll be travelling in a few weeks, but it’s to a city I’m not sure I’d be comfortable about wandering around with my phone glued to my face all the time. Have to convince the Polldaddy guys to go up north to Edinburgh sometime!
hey at least its a good devious ploy! it has been for me so far anyway and i havnt even started playing yet really.
ive mostly been going around Waterford submitting portals around the city but also visiting the few hundred portal tombs/dolmens/standing stones etc that are scattered around the county, something which i had been meaning to do for years.
and then there is all the cycling ive been doing, i cycled 24k one day last week just to submit a few portals… im pretty sure ive never cycled that much in one day in my whole life… this game might start making me fit if i dont watch it!