Published by Ubisoft and developed by Eugen Systems, the guys behind Act of War, has stated that innovative features were added to the game to boost up the strategy genre. The end result was a great success as R.U.S.E. invades the strategy fans around the world.

The story of R.U.S.E. puts you in the hands of one of the people in the war-room with all the other war generals in the era of World War 2. The single player is divided into two campaigns where the first campaign you are Major Joseph Sheridan for the American army, taking your battles from Germany to Africa, and the other campaign takes place from the point of view of General Major Erich Von Richter being on the German side. The German side follows General Richter mission to uncover a traitor in his command.

Going against the genre’s conventions the game tops the experience. You can immediately notice that Eugen Systems have learned a lot of lessons from their previous projects and successfully created a simple but still immersive, scalable and innovative strategy game. I am saying simple because the interface along with the control as very simple to use and you will master them immediately. Being a strategy game that has been released on consoles having just a gamepad to play with, these tend to be a bit of a hassle to control, which is where Eugen Systems have worked hard to polish and make it as simple as possible.

The other thing which goes against the genre’s conventions is the fact that who’s got the biggest army with a lot of money or huge base wins the game. This is because the game focuses on information warfare and how you deploy or group your troops. Information warfare can be affected by using either ruses or decoys to basically either spy on your enemy to see their movements or intentions or trick them to change the outcome of the battle.

Ruses are basically tokens which you can use to either spy on the enemy’s communications or to trick them. Ruses are crucial to the battle’s outcome and even if you are outnumbered in resources, if used well, you can win the battle. Ruses are divided into three different categories which are Decryption (they reveal information on the enemies movements), Radio Silence to hide your own information/ communication and lastly the use Decoy Offensive which is basically deploying fake structures or cardboard units on the field to trick the enemy.

The game handles easily and quite good with base building being quick and easy with just a drag-drop move. Buildings can only be built adjacent to roads and supply-lines with roads are crucial to the game. The only source to build roads and buildings is money which can be increased by building supply depots on specific points which are scattered into the map. The depots are not infinite and you must extend your coverage to reach other depots without being intercepted by your enemy. The game is not a fast-paced (Real Time Strategy) RTS since it’s a slow pacing all around the campaign and multiplayer. It’s always a matter of who’s got the best strategic plan or war intelligence.

As regarding the graphics, you are not viewing the battlefield itself but viewing a 3D version of it on the war-room of the generals where it is decided on how to move the troops. The game features an impressive engine to zoom in-and-out on the map with great scalability. When you zoom out, the troops will be grouped according to their strength level with a small circle, along with the armor forces which will be shown in a larger circle on the map. As you zoom out further, if you have troops and armor in the same area, they will be grouped together so that you will get an instant idea of the resources you have. Ok, granted you don't have perfectly designed polygons which make it surreal but the way the game zooms in-and-out on the battlefield is impressive. Of course the board of where you give your orders to the map is very detailed and it isn't a 2D flat map, the buildings, hills, environment are rendered in 3D with an great attention to detail.

As it regards to the multiplayer, the game handles quite well with its feature to allow dedicated servers. Although it will not be ranked, it will do a great job in LAN parties and practice sessions. Multiplayer modes are divided into cooperative and competitive modes providing ranked matches.

Conclusion

R.U.S.E. is quite an innovative RTS game and players on both PC and consoles will surely appreciate this game. Console players will find it great to control the game as it was successfully created to be very accessible without sacrificing complexity. The only thing one might find a bit boring is that it is a slow paced game, but nonetheless it’s a great innovative game and it should be appreciated by all fans of the genre.