F@#$ Pokemon Go vs Ingress

Augmented reality games by Niantic!

Unless you've been living in a cave, you've heard of Pokemon Go.  If you are living in a cave, download Pokemon now because I bet you'll catch some rare monsters.

Pokemon Go was not the first.  Ingress was was launched around 4 years ago and Pokemon about 4 weeks ago.

The Plots/Basics

Ingress

Ingress is sci-fi themed.  The CERN collider released 'exotic matter' into the world which coalesces around landmarks forming portals.

There's two factions and some aliens involved.  The Enlightenment faction (color coded green) wants to help the aliens advance civilization.  The Resistance (Blue) is suspicious of the aliens and wants to stop them.  That's all the plot you're getting out of me, because 1) I don't really pay attention to video game plots closely, and 2) I don't really have a 2.  Uh...if you get interested in the game I don't want to spoil anything?

The game is all about the portals.  You hack them to get gear.  You claim them for the glory of your team, and also because then you get better gear.  You 'link' portals together forming triangles; this claims points for your team.  You attack them with gear to deny the same to durty durty resistance or the durty durty enlightenment depending on your point of view.  Basically, the game is a global version of capture the flag.


Pokemon Go

Strangely, Pokemon Go is Pokemon themed.  Duh.

You catch the Pokemonsters, you evolve them into better monsters and fight with them.

There's 3 factions, but the story for all of them and why they are fighting hasn't been made clear.  That will almost certainly be some new content that Niantic pushes in future updates.

This game centers around the monsters.   Catching them gives you experience to level up and something to fight with.  You can catch monsters nearly anywhere, but in my 4 days of experience they are much more common around PokeStops.

PokeStop?  Are you just making up words now?

No of course not.  Pokemon does though.  PokeStops are in the same spots and Ingress portals, although there are more Portals than PokeStops.   At a PokeStop, you highlight the stop Icon, a picture of the stop expands and you can 'spin' it and it drops some gear.  You need to spin the PokeStops because they release PokeBalls, which you throw at the PokeMonsters to catch them.

A special PokeStop is a gym.  You can deploy monsters in the gym to hold it, you can fight the monsters holding it to claim it for your faction.  Holding a gym gets you better gear.

The Conceptual Differences so far

Ingress is much more team oriented then Pokemon Go.   First off, there's an actual scoring system for the factions.  

That's not to say the PG is without team-work.  Gyms require many PokeTrainers to realistically hold them and start getting the good loot (there's a similar mechanic in Ingress).

PG is much more walking oriented than Ingress.  In Ingress the destination is important, and to really score points for your team you need to make big triangles.  Big triangles require driving.  Destinations are really important in PG too, but there's game mechanics that reward walking too.  So Ingress lends itself better to Sunday drives, and PG works better with strolls through the park.

Ridiculous Criticisms

On a radio show I once heard an interviewee describe something as a beer and tacos argument.  You are asking me to choose between beer and tacos when both are delicious.

The Driving vs. Walking thing  

Driving in Ingress is only important if you want to score points for your team.  Sure that's the point of the game, but is that the point of your game?  It's capture the flag, like mankind's 3rd game ever invented.  There's a lot of sub-goals in the game that can have absolutely nothing to do with driving.

You can also do quite a bit in Pokemon Go sitting on your ass.  Go to a PokeStop with several lures, place them on the PokeStop and spend hours there.

There's no skill involved

Juan I'm looking at you!

In Pokemon you throw balls at the monsters and need to hit them to to catch them.  To catch a portal you just need to press some buttons.  So Pokemon requires skill and Ingress does not?

WRONG!

I've played PG for 4 a whole days now so I've thrown plenty of balls.  And from what I've seen, some monsters catchings are slaves to a random number generator.  You can hit them with a Pokeball right in the beak, with a curve, without a curve or whatever, and they still escape.  

Furthermore, getting adequately proficient at the throwing of the balls takes about 15 minutes.  An hour if you're working on a curve.

Granted I haven't fought in gyms much.  But I would be really surprised if they were anymore challenging then Glyph Hacking in Ingress.

Segue to Ingress.

When you attack a portal, a ring contracts from about half an inch to nothingness.  You keep your finger on the touch screen to fire the weapon; the closer you get to the nothingness without having ring completely disappear  gives you a damage bonus, capped at 20%.  There is skill at timing the release.

Glpyh hacking.  When you hack a portal you can hold down the hacking button to unlock the 'glyph hack' option.   The game will then flash a series of 1 to 5 symbols that you have to "Simon" back.

You have less than 20 seconds to complete all the Glyphs.  Glyph hacking is worth it because you get better gear.  Gear is pretty important.  Anyways, I challenge you to get these two glyphs right the first time you see them.

Final thoughts for now?

So I've seen a lot of Ingress players bash PG for...reasons.   In someways I can understand it, you like your game and everyone else should too and not move onto the next Flavor of the Month.

And I've seen a lot of non-players bash PG(and by extension Ingress) for various other reasons.  The most common is people getting too engrossed in PG that they don't pay attention to their surroundings.  My rebuttal for that is, can't you say that about smart phones and their apps in general?  Getting immersed in your smart phone while walking or driving is a real problem and it shouldn't take a game to make people aware of the public safety hazard.

And some of it is just the inevitable push back on this summer's trendy activity.  PG got really huge really quick and that will cause resentment to people who have to see the countless social media updates and barely funny memes.

So immersion hazards aside (which in my opinion is more of a smart phone issue than a augmented reality game issue), who do these games really hurt?   Non-players take a deep breath, and realize you won't be bombarded with your friends updates and memes by October.