[Review] R.U.S.E.: About triumph of brains over brawn

FULL REVIEW

RUSE is developed by the French studio Eugen Systems who are renowned for their Act of War series on the PC. The studio almost exclusively develops strategy games and it is nice to see that they have tried a very different approach to game-play with RUSE; as opposed to running with typical RTS game mechanics. The game is set during the Second World War and the story follows the exploits of Joseph Sheridan of the US Army. The game spans the across the WWII period— from the time of Axis domination in Europe and Africa, to the fall of Berlin at the end of the war.  

War is an elaborate deception

The game features military units from United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Italy, France, and the Soviet Union; however, most of the single-player campaign is played using only American forces. Ruse’s game mechanics work on two levels—first it’s the typical units vs. units, rock-paper-scissor style of stand-off between opposing forces, along with most of the micromanagement it requires. 

The second and more prominent part of the game-mechanics is the application of various Ruses to turn the tide of battle in your favor. These are several numbers of these bluffs available to the player, which can be broadly categorized into three types of information warfare—hiding information, revealing information and deceiving the opponent with false information. Each of these tactics has a counter-ruse and most battles are decided by its ruthless and precise execution. Let’s say that the player’s base is under imminent threat of a crushing attack from the enemy forces. The player can use the decoy-building ruse to set-up a decoy base further away from the real base and hope that the opponent takes the bait. If the opposing force falls for the ruse and redirects its attack towards the decoy base, the defending player will now have the opportunity to launch a counter attack on the enemy base. This is of course just one example of how the ruse system works in the game and there a several scenarios where deploying just right kind of ruse against an opponent can get the player out of a seemingly hopeless situation and onto victory.

Theater of War

The main objective of the game’s single-player campaign is to win the war; however, there is another parallel plot which revolves around an enigmatic double-agent known as Prometheus. The game’s missions are interspersed with pre-rendered cut-scenes that follow the two plotlines. The campaign takes about 15- 20 hours to beat of moderate difficulty settings. 

Following the campaign’s conclusion, there is a handsome amount of other game modes to keep you busy for several more hours. The ‘Battles’ mode is another single-player mode, where the player faces-off with an AI controlled army, on a player’s choice of map and setting. This mode functions almost like a sandbox mode that can be used to tweak and tryout various strategies. Multiplayer games are player vs. player, ranked and unranked matches that can be setup as a private or public session. Sadly, RUSE does not support multiplayer over LAN. Lastly, the ‘Operations’ mode has several scenarios that are categorized into 1 vs. 1, ‘vs. All, and co-operative modes. These are incrementally difficult challenges for the player to help master the game mechanics. 

Uplay features are also built into RUSE and thankfully without their dreaded PC DRM. Players can spend action points on Uplay to unlock themes and wallpaper, a vehicle upgrade, a multiplayer map and golden chips for use in non-campaign matches. 

Playing RUSE was a largely enjoyable experience with some exceptions. Our experience really got bogged down during certain campaign missions, where figuring out the right strategy required multiple attempts. As we had mentioned earlier, the game-mechanics allows the players to turn the tide of battle in their favor; however it’s works just as effectively the other way around. One wrong move has the potential of decimating a sizable army in a flash. This can often be quite frustrating at times, especially during multiplayer sessions where regularly saving the mission progress is not an option. Overall, RUSE is a pretty solid RTS, albeit being a very different beast. At the very least, the studio deserves commendation for their bold decision, especially during a time when the industry seems to be playing safe rather than being innovative. 

Rating: 7.5/10 

Details 

Genre: Real-time strategy

Studio: Eugen Systems

Publisher: Ubisoft

*Platforms:   PC (Windows), PS3 (PS Move Support), Xbox 360 (reviewed on Xbox 360)

*reviewed on PC

Price: 

PS3, Xbox: Rs. 2, 499/-

PC: Rs. 699/-

PC System Requirements

Requires activation on Steam

OS: Windows® XP (with Service Pack 3) or Windows Vista® (with Service Pack 2) or Windows® 7

Processor: 2.8 GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD® Athlon™ 64 3000+ or higher

Memory: 1 GB for XP / 2 GB for Vista and Win7

Graphics: 128 MB DirectX® 9.0c-compliant video card (ATI® Radeon X1000/GeForce® 6 Series or better)

DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c (included)