I'm guessing they started it off with several things, but it looks like most of it will be user generated. There's a submittal process for new portals, but from reading it, it sounds like they want publicly accessible places that are easy to get to (so I'm guessing my ideas of hiking out to scenic places or cool abandoned things in the middle of the woods wouldn't get approved).
I read some more about it today, and hacked a couple portals on the way home (did one at a red light...barely slowed down). Not to go into all the game specifics (you can read through the links I posted above), but you hack a portal, which gives you items, which you can then use later. I got a couple keys (not sure what to use those for yet) and some resonators. It takes 8 resonators to "claim" a portal, and they are varying levels. So I can deploy 8 level-1 resonators to claim a portal, but can't deploy 8 level-2 ones to level the portal up, so you need to coordinate with other people in order to get enough higher-level resonators deployed. Seems once you hack a portal, it's inactive for 5 minutes (at least for me...maybe someone else could hack it in the meantime). So unless you want to sit there for 5 minutes to hack it again, you might as well move on.
Then it goes on into weapons and stuff you can use to destroy areas and reclaim a portal owned by the other team. Then there's the XP you can get by just driving around, which seems to be in clusters where Android phones are or have been in use. Which is kind of disturbing because when I drove into my neighborhood, I can tell which houses have Android phones (there's a big cluster right at my house, but not at my neighbor who has an iPhone). But all restaurants and gathering places I passed had clusters in them to collect, which you get just by driving by.
All-in-all, as it stands (unless I'm missing something), it's not overly exciting. I'm sure it will take you to some places you haven't been, assuming people put portals in interesting places. But since I've geocached for years, I've probably seen any exciting things around me.
I can think of a lot of ways they could make this more exciting, including, but not limited to:
- They need to integrate this into Google Maps (as a layer maybe) so you can use Navigation with it. The default app is kindof bad....it doesn't really follow you very well and seems to jump (like it has no idea which way I'm traveling).
- They should really take more advantage of augmented reality. Like you should be able to use your phone's camera to look at a portal location and see the portal above it (more on that below). Or players could pick an avatar and dress it up other players could use their phone's camera to spot other players (like if someone playing looked at me through their camera's viewfinder, I could be decked out like Master Chief or a chicken or something).
- There should be more variety to the gameplay. Like some portals could spew monsters out (that your team has to destroy), or have additional messages or items or other things...I was picturing using augmented reality with my phone's camera to see a portal with tentacles coming out of it, or a swirling portal in the sky, or a giant monster or UFO hovering over my hometown, or only having so long to close a portal before a wave of zombies is unleashed (which might deplete your health if you got too close, and your team would then have to track down and destroy with weapons). Just some thoughts that would add more of an incentive than "capture the portal which will be captured by the other team within an hour" gameplay mechanic.
Oh well....it could just be better. I'll probably play it for a few days just to see if there's more to it than my initial impression.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram