R.U.S.E.

Real-time strategy games haven't had the same success that other genres have had transitioning from PC to console, mainly due to the complexities involved with managing many units in real-time with a controller. Halo Wars is one of the few success stories, but it also had a helping hand thanks to its Halo heritage. Ubisoft and Eugen Systems hope to change that, however, by adding their World War II RTS R.U.S.E. to the short list.

R.U.S.E. sees you cast in the role of Major Joseph Sheridan of the United States Army during World War II as he fights the Axis powers through Africa, Italy and Germany. Each mission tasks you with a series of objectives that you’ll need to accomplish before you can proceed with secondary objectives that award you with more points and experience. Like most other RTS games you’ll usually be given a base or HQ that you can use to construct units and other buildings to gain more supplies. Where R.U.S.E. differs from other RTS games though is that rather than focusing on brute force it relies far more heavily on deception and information control to win as you’ll constantly find yourself going up against stronger Axis forces with very few resources and units at your disposal.

R.U.S.E. does a good job of walking you through the game's different aspects, allowing you to become comfortable with how to effectively use cover provided by towns and forests to hide your units and ambush enemies, how to use lines of sight to defend points from multiple sides, and how to use mixed forces of troops to compensate for each unit’s weaknesses. It also introduces the concepts of ruses that allow you to try and fool your enemies with decoy units or structures, prevent your movements from being detected with radio silence, or to decrypt enemy transmissions to predict their units’ movements. It’s these ruses that will form the pivotal spear head of any strategy you employ to win battles, and when they work perfectly it can be a thing of beauty to see your enemy rushing to protect its flank from a tank battalion only to find out it’s nothing but decoys as you swiftly move a small group of infantry through a gap created by the confusion.

The ruse system is very rewarding and is a refreshing take on the usual RTS strategy of building up a large force and tank rushing your opponent. The only downside is that games do take longer to complete and are slower paced as a result. Where it really manages to hit its stride is when playing against a human opponent as a human is far easier to fool than the computer AI and it’s extremely rewarding managing to outsmart a friend using nothing more than a small troop of forces. Adding further variety to the game and your combat strategies is the ability to choose to play as the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Italy, France, or the Soviet Union, with each army having its own strengths and weaknesses with different units being at its disposal.

The campaign missions are well structured with very few of them relying on repeating the same series of objectives but rather letting you try out various strategies and gameplay mechanics to prepare you for the online arena. As a result, most of the campaign missions function as extended tutorials with the AI guiding you on where to move and position your forces, what to build, and how to attack the enemy. Of course, you can also opt to play a once off mission or a custom game against an AI opponent if you feel like you need some more practice.

With a good combat system and interesting take on strategy, Eugen Systems only need to nail the biggest gripe that most RTS games have when coming to consoles: the control system. Unfortunately here they fair less well with unit selection still being problematic when you need to select individual units in a hurry. Using the left analogue stick to move the on-screen cursor to select units is haphazard as the game constantly snaps the cursor to every unit but the specific one you need to select. It’s annoying and in the heat of battle it can lead to frustration and even losing a mission. You can avoid it by zooming in further with the right analogue stick, but by doing so, you lose focus of the battlefield and forces in play, which is fundamental to your success. Another distraction comes in the form of the battle updates which involve small informational videos that pop up on-screen, and while the news that a troop of infantry is flanking you is useful, it would've been better to relay this information via a sound clip and small on-screen text pop up rather than abruptly shifting your view of the battlefield with a large video that you can't ignore. The control system isn't a total loss though, because while the distractions from the in-game videos and need for finer unit selecting is annoying, the overall control scheme is beautifully simplistic, with the two sticks being used to control the cursor and your view of the battlefield, while the face buttons control units and production orders. It provides everything you need without having to dig through several layers of menus or stats screens.

Looking at the world of R.U.S.E. you’d never see it winning a beauty pageant with its units and landscapes looking somewhat drab and featureless, but what that does mean is that you can zoom and fly around the battlefield using the much hyped IRISZOOM engine without having to worry about lag or texture pop-ins. Sound wise the on-screen action and your advisor’s comments on troop health and enemies unit movements is informative and clear, and works well with the overall feel of the game.

I was a bit hesitant at first when loading up R.U.S.E., as RTS games and consoles are still not the best of friends, but other than the aforementioned control issues and some graphical fidelity problems there is a lot to like about R.U.S.E., with an interesting reliance on deception above strength, and an emphasis on outwitting your opponent. Whether or not it will succeed in the market will be dependent on whether gamers are going to give it a chance, as without online opponents to play you’re left with only the campaign and AI battles which can never hope to match the cunning and guile of a human opponent. However, if you found yourself interested in trying out another RTS after playing Halo Wars, then R.U.S.E. is a great introduction to the world of more complex and strategic RTS games on the console.

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