I went on my first Ingress meetup with a friend who is a veteran player last night. We spent about 3½ hours walking and driving around to hack and link portals. I made it to L4 in just those few hours.
I don’t have a solid grip on what the actual point of this game is, but I think I’ll enjoy it more once I do. The game interface is a work of art, though it drains my phone’s battery power like crazy. I agree with the poster above who said the game simply seems to be two factions undoing and reclaiming the same areas with no net progress. If that’s the case, I can see myself getting bored of it pretty soon.
Personally I play it as a solo game with the goal of gaining as many points as possible within real-world time and travel constraints. I find it quite interesting played this way.
You can also play it as a team game and work together to achieve certain goals, perhaps occupying a certain area or creative gigantic fields or certain field patterns.
Anyway I have reached Level 8. Not sure I will continue playing but it’s been an interesting 9 months and I have probably spent more time on Ingress than any other game. I rarely play the latest games so it’s nice to be at the cutting edge of gaming for a change.
I think location-based gaming has a bright future and Ingress is a superb early effort in the genre which has made its mark in gaming history. I think the next stage would be to increase the variety and strategic depth of the gameplay. I hope other companies jump into this space soon.
Sorry to revive an old thread but somebody mentioned this in another thread and I was looking into it. Can someone tell me–is this an actual game or just kind of a fun activity? I know there’s a lot of wiggle room in the definitions here, but what I mean is, what constitutes the challenge in this app? Just mere stick-to-it-ive-ness of some kind? Or do I have to figure things out in any sense or use skills in some way?
It is like the grinding section of a Japanese RPG but with a requirement that you walk places. I’ve been in battles with frogs though, either desperately keeping my portals up or trying to neutralise theirs as they fight back. That’s pretty damn gamey.
This sounds very interesting but I have a couple of questions -
I live in a pretty rural community the whole county has < 30,000 people, my house is not walking distance from anywhere (my job isn’t either). Anyway, what is the likelihood of having any portals in the area.
Re above, I know I could just download the game, but I see that it needs access to my contacts list my calendar and my identity. I’m really concerned that it’s going to start spamming all my friends. Why on earth does it need my contacts and calendar???
If there aren’t any portal near you, you can submit new portals through an in-game process. I have no idea how long it takes for them to be approved and for the game to load the new portals, though.
If you’re the only person around who play, then I guess you win!
The county I live in has less than 20,000 people. The portals are things like historical markers, fire departments, churches, etc. There are plenty of them around even small localities. The village I grew up in, with a population of 60, has 3 portals.
It needs your contacts because you have the ability to recruit others to play the game. It doesn’t do anything with the information unless you want to send the information to someone, but if you do want to, it needs to have access to your contacts.
Since this is becoming main stream, I should have guessed that there was a good reason for it needing your contacts. That makes sense re including others. Just wanted to be careful.
I will give it a shot. The county I’m in is very historical, and a tourist destination to boot. I bet it has lots if your village of 60 has 3 portals.
I saw someone mention this game in another thread, and it sounded interesting…long story short, it finally compelled me to upgrade my 5-year-old flip phone and get an iphone, and I just started playing yesterday and am already on level 3. I’m lucky I live in an old colonial-era town.
So far I’m not really interested in playing with other people – I just like the fact that it gets me to explore unfamiliar sections of my town and learn things about where I live, plus there’s that health incentive. I walked 4 miles yesterday playing the game and didn’t feel like it was any effort.
I’m still too weak to do any attack damage, so I see myself as a stealth ally, running around and recharging all my faction’s portals on the sly.
Also, it kills me that sitting at my desk in work, I’m within range of three enemy portals. I vow to conquer them someday.
It’s global…it’s actually kind of cool to see where people all over the world are playing. Look at Ingress for the world map.
ETA I put this game down for a while but I think I’ll start back up again. I just moved, and there’s a portal across the street. Unfortunately, I can’t quite reach it from my couch…I’d have to walk out to the end of the driveway.
Newb question: how do I get my own faction’s portals to show up in my inventory without hacking them? Or, can/should I hack them?
Some of them have lame or absent descriptions and I want to be able to edit them from afar. I can do this for enemy portals I’ve inventoried, but not my own portals I’ve recharged.
Yeah, hack your own team’s portals. You won’t get the AP or whatever it’s called but you get sweet loot. Hacking is the only way to get portal keys which is what you want for managing portals remotely. Unless someone hacked a portal and dropped the key which they do sometimes if a buddy is swinging by later and needs a key.
First, you have to hack a portal to obtain a portal key. If you don’t get a key the first time, wait for it to cool off and try again. It usually doesn’t take more than two or three times.
Then you have to be at a portal that is within range of a portal you have a key for. Your range is initially pretty small, but increases as you level up.
There can also be no other portal links (force lines I think they call them?) between the two you’re trying to link.
Find a place with a couple portals and start the tutorial…it’s pretty well crafted and doesn’t leave much out!
The Fella and I just started playing it and we spent about an hour driving around and hacking portals and recharging portals. We don’t know quite what we’re doing, but we’re having fun doing it. We picked the Resistance with a gut feeling, and it turns out we’re in a heavily frog area! It actually makes it pretty fun. We’ve already been invited to join some local groups, but for now, we’re going to go on our own while we figure it out.
