R.U.S.E.

I decided to give R.U.S.E. a try because I wanted to mix things up a bit, and an RTS that tries to do something different seemed like the perfect way to fill that niche, though from here on out I'll refer to it as Ruse, because that's far less of a pain to type. As a personal aside, I generally don't go for RTS games because I play them far too slowly to succeed, preferring to build up a strong army over time, rather than quickly strike out with a few units in many different groups, yet found that Ruse worked very well, and played quite quickly, meaning that I didn't find myself spending a couple of hours on each level, like I might with other games. However, like all the games I review, I'm just covering the single player portion of the game, and while the mechanics and things will carry over, similar to an ESRB warning, online results may vary.

Ruse is set during World War II. The campaign follows the career of one promotion minded destined to be General by the name of Joe Sheridan. Though initially a low ranking officer in Africa, his tactical genius is quickly discovered when he meets a British intel officer by the name of Andrew Campbell. Unfortunately, Sheridan is not a patient man, and has a pretty high opinion of his abilities, so much so that he chafes at the thought of taking a subordinate role to other tactician Generals. Eventually, your superior has a fall from grace, where it also becomes apparent that someone has been leaking the Allies' military strategy to a very capable German officer, which sets the stage for this whole head to head dynamic when Sheridan is promoted, as the two have a history that spans the course of the war. The story gets wrapped up pretty nicely at the end of the war in Europe when you find out just who the leak is, and what his motivations are, though given the few characters in the game, it's pretty obvious who is bad news by about the third cut scene.

To drive home the "You're a Commanding Officer" point, the battlefield is actually a 3D map on a table, in a tactical room in some bunker (which you can see when you crane your neck), and units are represented with tokens.

The campaign does start during the earlier years of the war, and covers locations like North Africa, Italy, France, and of course Germany, over a total of 23 missions. Not only do your enemies and the environments change, ranging from the deserts of Africa to the beautiful countryside of Holland, where you're pitted against the remnants of Italian forces that refuse to surrender or veteran German soldiers, but you'll also discover that the devs attempted to match the evolution of war technology with the correct period. For example, as the war progresses, the Americans, who you predominately have control of, supersede Lee tanks with Shermans, B17 bombers are introduced, and some of the odder units of war, like the Calliope, make their way onto the battlefield. It may seems small, but it's a great way of making the war feel like this dynamic thing, as well as an attempt at being somewhat historical, but that goes away when people start talking about nukes way before the first one had been used.

What you're probably more interested in is the actual gameplay. I'll give Ruse credit for trying out a few new things that I haven't seen before. The first is the game's good rock-paper-scissors system for deterring the relative strengths and weaknesses of various units, and the way that the terrain or scouting units drastically change that balance. Units can be broken down into the following categories: Infantry, Armor, Anti-Armor, Artillery, Anti-Air, and Aircraft. Here things are basically how you would expect, with Infantry being vulnerable to the more powerful armor, but not ineffective against non-combat units like Anti-Armor or Anti-Air, Armor being strong against everything but Aircraft and Anti-Armor, and Aircraft superiority challenged only by other aircraft or strong Anti-Air units.

Units, when you don't have a direct bead on them via recon or another unit's line of sight, are shown as chips on the map, with a distinction between heavy and light units. This acts as a sort of fog of war system.

That, however, would make things far too simple, so you can utilize terrain and a few other mechanics to really alter the flow of battle. Infantry are weak when exposed out in the open, but while concealed in a woods or hidden in a city, though not actually inside a building as you could do in Company of Heroes, they gain an incredible combat bonus through the use of surprise attacks. This can be utilized against any land based unit, but what it does is make Infantry extremely potent against Armor, with the ability to destroy tanks in a volley or two, which, when added to the existing strengths against all other land based units makes Infantry some of your best units. Additionally, any other unit that can enter the woods gains this same combat bonus, such as certain lighter forms of Anti-Armor or Anti-Air, allowing relatively few units to hold off a much stronger force.

There are a couple of ways you can counter this however. You can't just barge into those areas with a tank, as they either cannot enter those areas, or in the case of a city, are so vulnerable that it wouldn't be wise. If you know roughly where a unit is, as you do get a brief glimpse of the enemy when your units are attacked, you might try some of the artillery units that are capable of firing on unseen targets and then just hope for the best. Eventually you would destroy the cover, but that would really take too long. So instead, you'll want to use one of the recon units. These come in a couple of flavors. For the Americans you initially have the Willis jeep, which can latter be replaced with the armed and armored Greyhound, both of which can head off road into the woods, and the recon air unit. All recon units have an incredibly large sight area, and can detect hidden units, allowing Armor, fighter-bombers, and all your other units to safely target those guys. Additionally, some units require recon to target an enemy at all, such as the fighter-bombers.

Recon has a large sight area, as denoted by the outer white circle. It is impacted by obstacles, and can become far less effective if used poorly. Additionally, this Greyhound has an attack range, which is the inner blue circle.

You'll have to develop your own strategies for dealing with things, but throughout the campaign I found that it was generally a great strategy to stack a few Anti-Armor and Anti-Aircraft units under the cover of a forest, with those units protected with a Greyhound for it's recon ability and a few Infantry units for extra protection. If I could, some of the long range artillery or a few fighter-bombers would be kept near by, just in case my enemy ever got the bright idea to try and scout my position and then take me out with some long range units.

Generally, the unit mechanics are all pretty cool. Many can be upgraded during the later parts of the game, by expending some of your cash resources to unlock new units, such as replacing Infantry with the elite Rangers, or the aforementioned Lee tanks with Shermans, though this only applies to new units and not existing ones. Other units can be unlocked, though they don't replace any previous unit, such as fighter-bombers or the Long Tom artillery, which seems like it's capable of hitting anything on the map with very little movement. This makes for a much simpler system for acquiring new or upgraded units than some other games take, since you don't have to build an armory, research two armor upgrades, and then build a research facility, and research new missiles, and then upgrade your factory to build the next unit.

The downside to upgrading is the initial cost, both in terms of resources and time lost, but generally the trade off is worth it, such as when you unlock the B17 bombers, which are also capable of air-to-air defense, rather than being sitting ducks for enemy fighters.

You do still need to construct some buildings though. Units are all produced at their respective bases, such as Barracks or Airfields for Infantry and Aircraft, respectively. You can also set up Anti-Air, Anti-Armor, or Machine Gun Nests, all as buildable structures. While most games require you to build some sort of worker unit that then goes out and spends lots of time constructing a building, Ruse follows an entirely different route. Instead, once you decide where to construct a building, a truck leaves your Headquarters, your main base, and travels along the roads to that point. Once there, your building is erected in about 2 seconds. It doesn't matter if its a unit construction building, a defensive building, or a supply depot that generates the resources you'll need in this game, all build nearly instantly. The down side is any building en route is extremely vulnerable, as are the supply trucks that bring resources back from supply depots to your HQ, so you'll want to make sure an area is well protected enough that you don't risk wasting resources. If you happen to get close enough to a truck en route with an Infantry unit, you might want to pass on actually destroying it, and instead use your Infantry to capture the completed building, which grants you full control over it, though it does destroy that unit in the process. Just be careful, because your enemy can do the same thing to you.

Some well placed lighter units can hold a choke point against much tougher enemies using the woods for cover, as you can tell from all the smoldering tank shells.

While the way Ruse handles buildings, unit production, low build times, and many other aspects of the game are very nice, what really makes the game unique are the ruses. A ruse is a trick you can use to either grant yourself more information about your enemy, confound your enemy, or alter the way units behave. They are as follows: Decryption let's you know your enemy's movement plan, such that when a unit under the effects of Decryption is ordered to move to a new location, you'll see an arrow that represents the destination, allowing you to prepare. Spy reveals all the units in the area that aren't hidden in woods, letting you know what they actually are, rather than just the blank markers they are normally denoted by. Radio Silence hides your units from the enemy, making them invisible unless there is a line of sight detection. Camouflage Net does the same thing, but for buildings, and you're advised to use that when there are incoming bombers or artillery. Decoy Building creates a false base, and if an enemy Infantry unit attempts to capture it, that unit will die. Decoy Offensive launches a fake attack on an area of the map, though these false units are easily destroyed, and it will alert the commander that those are decoy units. Reverse Intel changes the map markers for light and heavy units, such that it will look like there are only a few Infantry approaching, until you realize they are all tanks. Blitz increases the movement speed of all units in the area, including your en route buildings and supply trucks. Terror is a propaganda campaign that increases the likelihood the enemy units will flee in battle, called being routed, which occurs normally when health is very low and results in loss of unit control and low movement speed. Fanaticism counters this and orders your units to fight to the death. Your ability to use ruses recharges automatically over time, and you can only have two active per sector, a subdivision of the map, at any one time, so you'll have to choose wisely, though the proper use of a ruse can change the course of a battle.

You'll know what the sector boundaries are when you attempt to use a ruse, or you zoom way out.

Generally, Ruse is a pretty good game. The game is quickly paced, but that works well because you don't put tons of time into doing research or waiting five minutes for a single unit to build. The rock-paper-scissors system is well balanced,  though if your enemy has a formation of Anti-Air, Anti-Armor, a recon, and a few tanks around for good measure, well, that can be a tough nut to crack. Despite of all that, I do have a few criticisms, though some of the portions of the game I disliked the most, such as the minimalist HUD being so much so that it doesn't display the hotkeys to build units, or that units are automatically deselected after being given an order, which can be problematic if, say, you realize that your units are walking into an ambush, and since they move at different speeds, it becomes an issue to reselect all of them, are all issues that can be addressed by fully exploring the options menu, something I discovered only as I went to double check something before posting this review. So, close call on looking like the idiot I am there, and I may have even helped someone else out. That leaves the biggest complaint at "Ubisoft," including having to log into their Uplay service to play the game, though at least this one doesn't launch the Uplay client first from Steam, and then allow you to launch the actual game, like Assassin's Creed 2 does. Also, I would have liked to see the ability to capture certain Anti-Armor or Anti-Air units, like Company of Heroes did, since you can already capture buildings, but I suppose that's just wishful thinking. Basically, if you have an issue with things being a little too different from most RTS interfaces, check options.

I put a really good amount of time into this game, as it took me 22 hours to get through the campaign, which includes time to get all the secondary objectives, and quite a few failures later in the game. That is pretty short when compared to how I usually fare in an RTS (for example, I'm playing Supreme Commander right now, and after 3 hours I'm still in the second mission), but the pace of the game was good, and when combined with things like the only having to manage one resource, quick unit deployment, and so on, I'd suggest this as a nice introduction to the RTS genre because it is so easy to play, unlike some games that require hours to build your ultimate weapons. You can expect missions where you have to hold out for a certain amount of time, others where you must complete an objective within a timeline, ones where you are granted only a few units and no ability to make more. The story is nothing to write home about, though it does seem like there would be a second game that would take place in the Pacific based on some closing lines, though Japan was added as a playable nation in a DLC. If you've got the desire, I'd say Ruse is a game worth picking up when it's in the $5 or so range, maybe even up to $10. As for the quality of the experience itself, I'd say that, give how easy it is to get into it and start playing, Ruse is very good, rating a 8 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 8/10

Suggested Price $5-10