Pokemon vs. Ingress

Well the UK release of Pokemon Go occurred on Thursday 14th July and I reinstalled the App to my complete lack of surprise it failed to logon restarted the App and tried to logon again again again...until I closed it down.  If I tried to register not through my Google account it pointed me at a site that told me due to the high number of new accounts being created they have limited the number that can be added at any one time.

Before all of this however I visited the town (was a city until they forgot register for it) Rochester, Kent, UK.  It is a level 8 Ingress Enlightened (Frogs) farm of about eighty portals, I play for the Resistance (Smurfs).  The thing about Ingress is you get to blow stuff up as opposed to catching fluffy animals and then training them to fight one on one battles for you.  Blowing stuff up in an augmented reality is quite a de-stresser and at same time creates an adrenaline boost so much so I was quite wired for the rest of Thursday, however it reminded me of how much I like the game.

Do I want to blow stuff up for real, DEFINITELY NOT!  There are other aspects of Ingress like creating farms, fielding, hacking kit, glyph hacking kit, guardians etc which allows you to play the game the way you want.

You have chat within the game also, unfortunately any form of open chat environment on the Internet always leads to Trolls.  Pokemon Go does not have chat functionality whatsoever not surprising since there is no age limit on Pokemon Go unlike Ingress which is set to thirteen and older, you do not want young kids subjected to trolls through the game.  They get enough of that via every other form of social media.

Ingress has the capability to trade items between players unfortunately this can lead to cheating in the form of dual accounting whilst Pokemon Go does not have that feature at the moment.  Although one of the first reviews I read of the game suggested that trading would be part of the game.  Maybe that will be in a future release.

The thing about Ingress is that you can play as a lone wolf or as a team player or both it is entirely up to you.  From what I have seen of Pokemon Go so far it is centered on single player game play whilst it does have some team aspects not nearly as much as Ingress.

My suggestion to you is if you have kids let them play Pokemon whilst you play Ingress.  The PokeStops/Gyms are a direct copy of the Ingress Portals although they have thinned them out somewhat.

Ingress is the grown up version of Pokemon Go not surprising since it came first and is effectively its parent game.

Pokemon Go in its first week generated $14.04 million since its release whereas Ingress has only made $1.1 million this however is a poor comparison since Ingress only recently added a purchase system on the App last year whereas Pokemon Go started with it and Pokemon itself is a huge well known brand.

The irony is that the child has far surpassed its parent in earnings alone. 

Additional note: Pokemon Spawn points are linked to XM generation in Ingress.

Pokermon Go 1st Review

This new mobile app game recently released by Niantic the makers of Ingress is taking the world by storm the only problem being is that the high demand from users has made a pig's ear out of the servers running the game.  It has only been released in the USA and Australia, the UK released is on hold until they can guarantee good service.  That being said if you have an Android phone you can download it from here: APK Pokemon GO download

Which is exactly what I did earlier in the week, once installed on the phone it takes up a whooping 116 Megabytes (MB), admittedly it took a couple of attempts at downloading it the surge for the game was already building.

I am assuming the 116 MB is mostly for the 3D aspects of the game unlike Niantic's previous game Ingress whereby the screen is a very flat 2D environment in place of a walking Avatar that you have in Pokemon GO you have a filled in triangle.  There is augmented reality aspect to the game as well which uses the phone's camera to show the Pokemon's in the real world, I found this slowed the game down somewhat.

Niantic has used many of the portals created in Ingress for the PokeStops and Gyms in Pokemon Go however they have thinned them out quite a bit.

The basics of the game are simple:

• Catch Pokemon's by walking around and throwing PokeBalls at them when they appear
• Collect items from PokeStops (blue portals): PokeBalls, Potions, Eggs etc
• Power Up/Evolve your Pokemons using items you pick up when you catch them
• Hatch Eggs using a Incubator - walking powers it.
• Use the unclaimed Gyms or friendly Gyms to help train your Pokemons
• Capture Gyms (white portals) for your team (Blue/Red/Yellow)

The more you do the more experience (XP) you get which levels you up, you need to be level 5 before you can enter a Gym.  That took three lunchtimes to do so.  There are also badges for collecting different types of Pokemons, walking, evolving etc.

Now the following issues maybe because the servers were already falling apart due the high load, I will list them in reverse chronically order:

• Niantic/The Pokemon Company logo on opening screen covers the entire screen which means if you want to swap to a different app you cannot
• Can no longer login it is stuck in a loop which makes the above really annoying
• The loading screen plays a really annoying tune, had to turn the sound off on the phone
• Augmented Reality switch only on the Capture Pokemon & Battle screens, should be in the settings menu as well
• The Battery Saver turns your screen off when you turn the phone sideways away from you sounds good in theory but in practice when you turn it back to face you the App has crashed/locked out.
• It goes through the battery fair quicker than when using Ingress, it took just under 50% of my phone charge in less than hour.
• Even with the sounds & music off the game sounds like it is running a mini fan maybe this is what is taking all the battery power
• Game freezes and reboots quite a lot more so than any game I have downloaded in the past
• Scrolling is very unresponsive
• Clicking on the menu items is really slow

There does not seem to be much in the way of team play you basically capture Gyms (white portals) for your team and you deploy your best Pokemons to the Gym to defend it from other teams.  You can attack another team's Gym with up to six other players but you are still only playing one on one battles.  There needs to be a team score that everyone can access, the scores could be split by worldwide, region, country and towns.

The ability to trade items would also be a good thing too.

The game for me became unplayable after being unable to login for two days so it got uninstalled, I will wait for the UK release hopefully they will have ironed out some of the kinks by then.

Unless you are a Pokermon fan (which I am not) I think you might find the game quite dull in its game play.

It is curious to note the other reviews I have read about this game suggest that it is first game to get you out walking which is ironic because Niantic's marketing for Ingress was the same thing.

Additional:  Is this the thin end of the wedge?

Of course Ingress was much the same.