Monday 21 January 2013

Ingress Invite Landed (And What To Expect When It's Public)

Ingress. One word that gets Google Fans excited and annoyed at the same time. I was one of the annoyed but when my invite came, I become one of the enlightened.
So, what is Ingress? It's the game to get people out of the house and gets Google lots more information for their maps. There are two groups in this game. The enlightened and the resistance. What you need to do is to get out of the house and search for XM and Portals. XM is exotic matter that helps you interact with portals. They are little white dots on your map that when you are close to them, they can be collected. Portals are points that you want your team to control. To control these portals, you need to hack them. When you hack these portals, you get items like portal keys or resonators. Resonators can be deployed to upgrade your portal. You will need friends to upgrade you portals to level two and upwards. Resonators deplete every day and it costs XM to recharge them. You can only recharge them remotely if you have the corresponding portal key. You can also link portals to enhance your strength and make control fields. Do not worry, this is all explained in the tutorial.
The tutorial in this game is very informative and simple to understand. You will have to walk around to complete the tutorials but you have to walk to play this game so it doesn't matter too much. After the tutorial, you will be asked what team you want to join. There is some information on what each team stand for but that doesn't matter too much. You don't need background information to join Team Red in Team Fortress 2.
I have started to play the full and I was involved when I was visiting Canterbury; there were some portals at points of interest (i.e the West Gate). But now I am at home in a borough of London; there is not much to do. No Portals, just XM. As this is a beta game, there is an option to try to get portals in your area by sharing GPS linked photos to Ingress which will help improve the game and improve Google's Maps software for places of interest.
The game is exciting and great in a big area of interest. It is a great way to meet mobile gamers like yourself. And start rivalry Ingress gangs in your area. When this goes public and has many more players and more portals, it will be a big following. Just think, Ingress on Google Glass.
So, should you sign up to the beta? You need to. I would recommend it to everyone who likes mobile gaming and wants to try the future of it. If you can't wait, I can personally invite you as a reader of this blog and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I hope to see you in the Ingress world.