R.U.S.E. an RTS that has some bluffing involved

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Kasey Chang
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R.U.S.E. an RTS that has some bluffing involved

Post by Kasey Chang »

RUSE from Eigen Systems and Ubisoft has one of the worst trailers, IMHO, as it's nothing like the game.

RUSE, at its heart, is a normal WW2 style RTS where you build bases and build units based on the bases. You have the typical infantry, anti-tank, tank, artillery and Anti-air, air, and special (usually, German experimental units, like Super-Heavy MAUS tank, Nebelwefer anti-air, rocket battery, and Panther anti-tank recon. It's basically alternate history, albeit told within the confines with WW2, but then it goes into the "cold war" where certain units end up fighting the Soviets in limited engagements. Its primary difference is the availability of "ruse", or special ability cards you can play on a particular sector which messes up enemy sensors.

For example, enemies may see your units, but those are guesses based on radio transmissions, and only tells them it's a "heavy" (large icon) or "light" (small icon) unit. One of the ruses "radio silence", will make all your units in that sector disappear from their view... except those that can be sighted directly by another unit, such as recon units. Another one is "change radio frequency", which causes the enemy to think your lights are heavy, and vice versa. Other ruses include spy (reveal all units for what they really are even without visual), decryption (see enemy unit movement orders), decoy attack (launch decoys at the enemy, usually as distraction, looks like the real thing until they destroy one), and so on.

The units are your typical this is good against this but bad against that rock-paper-scissors game. Tanks are vulnerable to anti-tank and air, but rolls over infantry and artillery. Infantry can perform ambushes in forests and are the only units that can capture bases (instead of destroying them). Anti-tank obviously eats tank for breakfast but usually gets killed by infantry. Air units comes in recon, fighter, fighter-bomber, and light bomber. Fighter kills any other flyers, fighter bomber are great against tank rushes, and light bombers kill fixed structures like bases. They are all vulnerable to anti-air units. Artillery, given enough range and time, will easily wipe out any infantry units, but are vulnerable to anything else. Anti-air can be used to hit infantry but aren't that good at it. Useless against tanks.

Resource management is through capturing "depots", which start out neutral. You can take over a neutral depot by sending Quatermaster unit (cost $40) to take it over. And it generates a $3 x 3 convoy every 30 seconds. Those trucks need to reach your HQ to count. No depot, no money, no new units. You can build secondary HQ to make resource gathering faster, and less vulnerable to raids (enemy can cut your supply line by putting units to kill your depot convoys) and infantry can take over enemy depots (and other bases).

This game really shines in MP, where you play the ruses against other human players, trying to psych them out while your attack goes in the other direction. And Uplay lobby looks to be a decent play-matching service. Its SP campaign ain't that bad, with that bit of alternate history.

Graphics are pretty good, as it almost seamlessly switch between stylized icons and actual units on the ground, and it really lets you zoom in to ground level and see the trees, then zoom up to strategic view as if you're playing one of those miniature sandtable games. The buildings are quite detailed as well, as are the units.

All in all, this game *could* be interesting in MP. I've only played SP so far and I'm near the endgame in SP campaign, where I am about to engage the Russkies in a limited war to prevent them from getting something Germany was working on.
My game FAQs | Playing: She Will Punish Them, Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius, The Outer Worlds
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ChuckB
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Re: R.U.S.E. an RTS that has some bluffing involved

Post by ChuckB »

I played through it on my PS3, they added a pretty good PS Move integration, which made it much more fun (pointing at units and moving them with the Move "glowstick")
It's not perfect but I enjoyed it.
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Kasey Chang
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Re: R.U.S.E. an RTS that has some bluffing involved

Post by Kasey Chang »

Decided to play RUSE again. It's a pretty typical RTS though. The production could use a little more automation. Working through the campaign again, still against the Germans, it's not too long after D-day, still trying to take Carentan, not making too much progress, except did manage to take Vologna.

Will probably not continue very far, as I did finish the game before.
My game FAQs | Playing: She Will Punish Them, Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius, The Outer Worlds
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