Ruse

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R.U.S.E is a great strategy game and a very unique one.

There is no other strategy game like it.

I played more than 50 top RTS games over the past 5 years and R.U.S.E is on my top 10 list.

It is a perfect strategy game for the casual players who doesn't like (or cannot handle) click fest strategy games such as Star Craft II.

You don't have to click fast with the mouse in order to win.

The pace of the game is reasonable and you have enough time to react and win without having to click the mouse like crazy.

R.U.S.E is mostly about strategy and tactics.

There is some economy too but that will take only 10% of your time unlike Star Craft II where is takes 80% of your time.

There are many strategies to explore with the different factions, units and ruses (read game description above).

The best way to enjoy the game is to play skirmish battles vs the AI, since this game mode offers unlimited play time.

The AI plays well in higher difficulties and offers a good challenge.

There are also lower difficulty levels for beginners.

If you haven't played strategy games before, then R.U.S.E. is a great game to start with.

It promotes high level of thinking and problem solving, and it offers great satisfaction.

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Leading up to the day Halo Reach came out, I found that I needed something to tide me over until I could blast some covenant. After trading in a couple older games I had, I picked up Tom Clancy HAWX 2 and a game I didn't know much about called R.U.S.E. After spending a good deal of time with the game over the past weekend, I'll give a detailed first impression of the game and let you know if it's worth your time and money investment.

R.U.S.E. is a strategy game. You need to understand that first and foremost. What this means is that you will be moving units around the field and creating them from your base. While it has some of the same mechanics as a Starcraft or Command and Conquer, it is a little different. To begin with, you don't collect resources in the typical sense. Sure, you create supply depots, but once you create them, you can forget about them and not need to worry about collectors to get the cash flow going. If enemies attack you need to defend your supply depots, but for the most part, you'll set and forget them. If you aren't into strategy games though, this game won't change your mind about them. If anything, it's more difficult than most strategy games, but I'll get into that later.

While R.U.S.E. (from here on out I'm dropping the periods) is a strategy game, it does have a story. The game takes place during World War 2 and you control an officer during certain invasions. You'll encounter incompetent leadership, spies, and other page turners that actually make the story a little engaging. It's nothing to write home about, but it's better than nothing. The story isn't where the game really shines though, it's the art of deception that the game brags about constantly.

RUSE is all about tricking your enemy and doing things under the radar. While playing the game, you will get ruse's given to you at time intervals throughout the game. These include things like radio silence (hides units from enemy), spies (show enemy units), ones that show enemy movement, and others. These are critical to your gameplay. I cannot express this enough. If you do not use these strategically you will be blown away in seconds. For instance, if you send your bombers in to take out an MG post, if you don't throw on radio silence the enemies fighter pilots will tear you to ribbons. With your bomber squadron obliterated, it's going to take time and money to rebuild all the while the enemy is on your doorstep. By hiding your whereabouts you can destroy the enemy and be back in your base before they actually know you're attacking. It's a beautiful system that is wonderful while it works but frustratingly difficult when it doesn't. Keeping track of where you set up a ruse and how long it has left can be difficult. You get a notification on the screen but it's hard to tell what sector the ruse is for. Plus, you usually have to travel across multiple sectors to attack and enemy and with a limited amount of ruse's, you will be vulnerable at one point or another. Overall though, the RUSE system is a nice addition and sets it apart from other games.

The presentation is the next thing I'd like to touch on. The presentation of the game is refreshing and new. The whole game takes place on a board in a military office. Think of a chess board that looks like a battle field. If you are zoomed all the way out, you can see in the background the office where your general is at. Zooming in a little you see chips on a playing board that looks like a setup you would see in a Warhammer Games Workshop store with grass, mountains, and structures. As you zoom in even further, the game switches to actual units and it's like you are on the battlefield. This works perfectly for the type of game it is and I loved switching between the two. The only issue I had with this though was unit selection. In a strategy game, this is a big issue too. Zoomed in all the way, selecting units is near impossible. Your units are usually big (tanks, planes, mortars, etc.) and they take up space. So, you have to zoom all the way out and do a mass selection on their chips. But sometimes you won't want all the units, but zoomed out they are grouped together. Good luck picking and choosing units when they are stacked up like poker chips with a numerical number above representing the total amount of units. So, you have to zoom in to select individual units but with their size it's an issue again. You end up selecting individual sets of units (you can grab all tanks or all infantry on a whim) and move them somewhere, then go and get the other unit and move them, then the next and move them until you have your force and you can continue. It's a lot of extra steps that are unfortunately a pain sometimes. In a game where you are constantly trying to monitor everything on screen, it can be quite the hassle.

Gripes with unit selection aside, the game is actually pretty damn good. It's not perfect by any stretch and it gets really (really!!!) hard even on the easy difficulty in later levels, but if you are a strategy fan, you'll be hard pressed to find another game that is as fun and as unique as this one on the home consoles.

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Definitely get this game for the unlimited multiplayer experience you will get from it... or at least for the solo skirmish modes it offers. The AI is quite good on hardest level. I enjoy playing because it is smart like Chess and fun like a video game should be. One clarification is the campaign, well, consider it one long and fancy tutorial that is a must in order to appreciate the depth of the game. The game is called RUSE because ruses are essential element of the gameplay. They are the novelty and innovation of the game. RUSE is a unique game in that sense. So plan on using them all the time and you are guaranteed to hold an edge over your opponent. In fact, ruses are quite realistic as the campaign will teach you that.

Do not be fooled by any bad reviews. They were harsh because the developpers messed up the campaign story and acting. Well, sincerely the story is not boring or stupid nor is the acting mediocre. I would say they are Ok! But this is not why you will be playing it. The true value is the playability and the fun factor you get from its depth, sort of like Chess. RUSE is quite different from say Company of Heores, C&C etc... in many ways. One difference is the units (far more numerous and varied and historic than CoH or any other) move over a huge landscape (think strategy and ambushes in cities and forests...) a bit slowly so that gives you time to SRATEGIZE, BREATH and THINK more. No need to multi task as much. You still need to coordinate and organise your defenses and attacks so you will definitely be busy all the time. Occasionally I take a break to zoom in and marvel at the 3D world unraveling... the bombers, the hills, sea...quite nice with the fast zooming and fluid technology.

So finally, make sure you play the campaign to learn all the properties of the units and how to deploy ruses. I recommend the hardest level if you like some challenge. It will make you tough in the multiplayer arena. This is where the game RUSE really begins.

Read Best Reviews of Ruse Here

I'll be dividing the game into sections (modes, units, maps, etc) and be telling you what kind of game this is. I'll start off with the big things that people ask about like the campaign, nations and everything else. I'll be writing a pretty long and detailed review. Just read what you want.

Basic info and unique features: First off this is a strategy game staged during WWII, using your mind is key in winning! This is a game which is heavy based on strategy and the "RUSE cards". Chance and luck doesn't play much in this game, for example if a unit is in range of an enemy unit and you choose to fire upon it, the enemy will be hit there's no chance the shell will miss it. It's different from Close Combat games where the enemy is in range but the shell shot may miss. This game is more "global strategy," though you can still micro manage things. The maps are built on a table, like a war planning table the you see in movies where they're planning there attacks and things, explaining it is hard watch a video on Youtube of a RUSE battle and you'll understand. It's pretty unique. Also as you zoom out and look at your units they have chips which designates them as units. Zooming in all the way will give you a ground views of the map and will let you see the horizon, zooming out will let you see the table and the surrounding area. Surrounding area is like an office. If you play on the map D-Day the surrounding area will be a ship with hatches and things, really nice.

Campaign: The game has only one campaign, the Allies. There's no option for a German or Axis campaign, only Allies. But you can in 4 missions choose to use German units, but you'll still be on the Allies' side. So there is an option to use German units, just not a full 20 mission long campaign. The Allies' campaign is composed of 22 missions including the 4 mission where you can use German units, excluding the prologue, which isn't even a mission you only control 2 units for about 5 minutes. Anyway, the 22 missions are stretched over North Africa till Germany 1945. There are 4 missions in North Africa, 4 in Italy, 3 in France, 3 in Holland, 3 in Belgium, and finally 5 in Germany. You play as a General Joseph Sheridan a fictional character, no one real in WWII. The game doesn't end like most WWII games with the Battle of Berlin, it has a twist. For me it took exactly 1 week for me to finish the campaign on strategy fan difficult (medium), there's 2 more difficulty levels, beginner strategist (easy) and war gamer (hard), it also depends on how much you play, I play... well a lot. So it took not that long for me, but the missions can get long, it also depend on how fast of a speed you want to play it on, and how much you play of course. Unit limit in campaign missions is 40 units and there is no time limit for the campaign missions.

Nations: You can play as Germany, USA, UK, France, Italy, USSR, and Japan can be played but you have to buy the Rising Sun expansion pack. Each nation has its own strengths and weaknesses. For example the UK has the best air force in terms of feasibility, production speed, and cost. Many people playing as the UK will have a flyboy style gameplay. Although they have an armor base to produce tanks, tanks aren't their strong suit; they actually have the worst tanks! Italy has cheap and fast units but they aren't resistant to too much fire. They rely on fast strikes, overwhelming numbers and continuous pressure on the enemy to crack them. The USSR has an incredibly fast production rate of infantry squads, thus many people rush with Soviet troops! They advance in the armored vehicles category, which comprises of the best tanks the Soviet industries have to offer with KV-1s, T-34s, IS-2s, and IS-3s! The USSR uses brute strength to defeat its enemies! Germany fielding the most advanced, best in their class, and with expensive units can bring down some real pain and terror if you know how to handle it. Having a hampered war economy will really cost you. Germany has high end units for every need, but for a price. Their Tiger tanks will wipe out entire armored columns! Their jet fights can handle any air opponent with ease. Their heavy Sturmgrenadier infantry is armed with the best weaponry Germany has to offer. Artillery includes Stug assault guns, Flak 88 guns, and more! If you have a well established economy you have nothing to worry about. The USA has everything for every need like Germany but does not have the best units. They balance quality with production rate and price. Making it the ideal nation to play as if you what to be effective in every field but not have your economy too strained.

Battles, Operations, and game modes: "Battles" are just skirmish battles you fight against the A.I. There's also a "profile setting", which allows you to choose how the A.I. should most of the time play as, for example in the air force profile the A.I will mostly use fighters and bombers to attack you, and you get the idea. There's 6 profiles altogether, regular, air force, howitzer, prototype, blitzkrieg, and turtle. There's also 3 game settings, one: The choice for free-for-all and 2 team battles, the maximum on one map is 4 players. War modes, you can choose which era you want to fight in 1939, 1942, 1945, total war mode, and nuclear mode. Now what I mean by 1939, 1942, and 1945 modes is that, each unit in the game has a war make, which era it was made in and served in, so if I choose 1942 era war mode, I'll only have access to units which were available up to 1942. In total war mode, your war mode era starts from 1939 and progress every 10 minutes till 1945. And nuclear mode, is were you can deploy nuclear howitzers, this mode I believe is really a joke, you build a high end army and it can all blown away by one nuclear shell, its just a mode for messing around. The total war and nuclear mode comes in the The Manhattan Project DLC, which is a free DLC available in the PSN store, the DLC also includes 3 new maps (see "Maps" section below). There's also the option for time 10, 25, 35, etc, minutes but there is NO option to put the timer off, the maximum time limit is 60 minutes! Operations are single player and co-op missions. There are 6 operation missions in total, two 1 VS 1 missions, 1 VS All is where you fight two or three A.I. opponents at once, and two co-op missions, you need a internet connection to play these two, you can host a private session to which you can invite friends to, or look up a match. Unit limit in Battles is 100 units. The DLCs add more missions also.

Units: Each nation has around 26 to 33 units, some nations may have more tanks then others. Units are deploy through industrial building, like barracks or a prototype base. After you build these buildings you get to deploy different units. You also get the ability to upgrade units, like a Panzer IV can be upgraded to a Panther tank. The bad thing is if you upgrade you won't be able to use the previous unit which you upgraded from, kind of stupid. Headquarters can deploy machine gun nests or bunkers, machine gun nest are fragile positions that can be destroyed fairly easily, but bunkers such as the German Siegfried Blockhaus is a very resistant bunker armed with a 88mm gun and a flamethrower for anti-personal proposes. Each fraction has it's own bunkers, but some of the nations have very, very weak bunkers, there's not always equality in the units, which makes a much more dynamic game play. Barracks offer infantry and recon units, some nation's barracks can even deploy light tanks which are only affective against infantry. Infantry can engage tanks with Panzerschrecks, bazookas, but some units are stuck with using mere hand grenades! Infantry units can place ambushes in woods which triples their effectiveness and shelters them from damage. Artillery and Anti-air bases field, well, artillery and anti-air units. You can deploy Bofors, Flak 20mm, Flak 88mm, (88 guns are not only very affective against air units but also tanks, thus it is a dual propose gun), ZSU-37, and all the other good stuff. But to make the Bofors and Flak 20s affective, you would have to deploy them in large numbers to have some kind of affect. Artillery units for each nation is about 2-4, 2 howitzers and 2 assault guns but this is not the case for all nations! Armor bases field armored recon for some nations and tanks for all. They can deploy: armored recon, Light tanks, advanced light tanks (upgrade to advanced), medium tanks, advanced medium tanks, heavy tanks and advanced heavy tanks. Anti-tank bases field anti tank units, like AT towed guns and tank destroyers. The thing is that, these units can only be used against tanks and vehicles, not infantry. Like a Jadgpanther during WWII had a secondly armament of a machine gun to deal with infantry but not in the game, it can't use its main gun either to attack infantry at all, so you have to send tanks with your tank destroys to protect them from infantry. Anti-tank units available are around 4. Moving on to airfields! You can deploy air recon, paratroopers, fighters, fighter-bombers, and bombers. There are about 7 units that can be deployed through the airfields. Now how fighters "work" in the game is after they have eliminated an air unit they will have to go back to the airfield and resupply. Fighters can also make ground attack runs on infantry, if the infantry unit is destroyed or not the fighter will still have to resupply, while fighting other fighters or bombers it will stay on the tail of its target and destroy it completely before returning to base. Of course you have to be carefully, and watch out for anti-air units, large groups of AA can tear planes to shreds. And at last there's the prototype base. Prototype bases field all the powerful and wacky weapons of WWII. There are about 3-5 units available. Which include, super-heavy tanks, like the German Maus, American, T95, and the French FCM F1. There's also artillery like the 155mm Long Tom, 210mm Morser, Armored anti-aircraft, Flamethrower tanks, rocket launcher vehicles, like the Russian Katyusha. Also when a unit is hurt or too damage to fight it retreats you know this when a flashing exclamation mark appears over the unit if the unit keeps getting hit it'll eventually get destroyed. Another thing is with the UPlay points that you earn you can get the Super Perishing tank upgrade option you can upgrade your Perishing tank to a Super Pershing!(For those that don't know about UPlay read "UPlay" section below I've explained it there). That's all for units!

"RUSE cards": This game has something called ruse cards, there these special abilities that allow you to trick and deceive your enemy. The maps you play on are divided into sectors. You place your ruse card in one sector in which it takes affect for a certain period of time. Maximum amount of ruses that can be placed in one sector is 2. There are ruses that reveal information, those that hide information, those that allow for fake structures and units. They're some that are aggressive ruses, that increase unit speed, inspire units too fight to the death, and one that forces enemy units to flee faster. And another which allow you to revert intel, what this does is it chances the frequency of units, it disguises light units as heavy and heavy units as light. The enemy will get a big surprise! It take about 2 minutes for you to get a new ruse. A good example is from the game's manual, it says, "combining Decoy Army and Blitz, you can move your decoys to their target location fifty percent faster."

UPlay: UPlay is a points system, as you do missions in the game you get reward points, with those you can buy 4 things: the D-Day map, the premium theme of RUSE, the Super Perishing tank, or the Golden chips. You can find the UPlay option in the games main menu. I would highly suggest that you buy the D-Day map, it's a beautiful, big, great map, it's one of my favorites. The RUSE theme looks ok in the XMB but really isn't worth buying it, up to you though. Buying the Super Perishing tank grants you the option to upgrade your regular Perishing tanks to Super Perishings! As I explained before each unit has chips which designates them as units, lets say your chip color is blue, having the golden chips will give golden strips around the chip, nice golden look!

Maps: There are really only 17 maps (not including any Downloadable Content maps), they've put in 3 or 4 maps a second time with a different name, and a slightly different location of your HQ on the map. I think they did this because a few of the small maps in the game can be played 2 VS 2 in multiplayer and 4 VS 4 as well. In map section, there are 2 separate sections one for 2 VS 2 and another for 4 VS 4. There are small and big maps, whatever you want. There's a broad range of maps, there's some snowy maps, tropical, woodland, volcanic, yes there's one map where you fight around the base of a volcano. Each map has it's own strategic situation, meaning you can't use one tactic on every map you have to first study the map and see the best approach. Maps have a nice look to them, no glitches so far. The Manhattan Project adds 3 more maps. The volcano one, and 2 more islandy type maps. All of these are medium sized maps. The Chimera pack offers 3 more maps, one small desert map of North Africa, another desert map of medium size, and a snowy map called Nuclear Winter. The Pack of the Rising Sun is also a DLC but it doesn't add any new maps. The DLCs maps and maps already in the game can be played online and in single player "battles."

Income: You obtain money by deploying supply depots. But not just anywhere, they're fixed positions on the map that you send engineers to and they "recommission" the depot. Then supply trucks roll out and go to the nearest HQ or secondary HQ, each truck has 3 dollars and 3 truck come out at regular intervals. The trucks only use roads, so it's important to keep the roads secure. Supply depots have a limit of supplies or money, on top of the supply depot it says how much money is left in the depot. There can be $200 in the depot but it takes time for it to all come out. That's why as you play deploy supply depots to keep the money flowing, you'll be surprised how quickly you can go bankrupted! All the nations use dollars. Some unit costing $5 is cheap but something costing $40 or $50 is pretty pricey. Also keep in mind deploying a supply depot will raise you unit limit by one more. I'm saying that, if I have 20 units on the battlefield and I choose to deploy another supply depot, the unit counter will be raised to 21. In online gameplay, each truck carries 3 dollars but you only get 2 of the 3 dollars and the the 1 dollar left goes to your partner, if there is one. So you're funding each others war economy!

Glitches/freezes: There are some glitches that I've found, one is: a few times when I was playing a online or skirmish matches the terrain glitched, it was all blurry and whenever I tried restarting or quitting the match the PS3 froze, I had no idea why this was happening, later that day my friend told me sometimes the PS3 files get mixed up and told to me to restore my file system I did that and everything was fine after that. (If you don't know how to do that look it up on the internet or ask Sony, restoring the file system does not delete any files or data it only sorts them out) This thing has only happened twice since I've got the game and I've had the game for about one year. One other problem is that during online gameplay the server rips you and your partner apart and throws each of you in a different alternate dimensions or something! I was playing with a friend once and was talking with him with a microphone, suddenly a messages pops up and say that he had surrendered, I ask him why have you surrendered, he says that he hadn't, I play the game while talking to him, he finished the game before me and says he had won. I read on a forum that this thing has happened to someone else as well! I'm not sure how many times this has happened to me, but I'm not alone for sure. The online lobbies glitch a lot as well, many times when someone joins a lobby one person may see them there but another may not, and if the host starts the match the game will freeze at the loading screen, by "freeze" I don't mean PS3 freeze and you can't do anything, It will just not load and you'll have to quit the game. Tip: If you just sign out of PSN you won't have to quit the game back to the XMB, you'll be returned to the game menu. It's quite rare that the PS3 system freezes.

Game engine, IRISZOOM: The game engine is called "IRISZOOM". It lets you zoom into the battlefield and have a view from the ground, you can adjust the zoom in and out as much as you like. The engine itself is very good, it runs the game fast, it's good quality.

Save system: The saving in this game is nice. You can pause anytime and save. If you load a saved game you'll be at the exact time you save it at, you won't start at a check point. There's also the auto save, every time you get to a check point it saves for you. You can save campaign missions, battles, and operations.

Multiplayer: The online is pretty nice, nothing new about it but it's very fun. People still play online, host rooms won't be filling up like Battlefield 3 matches but people still play. You best chances of playing online is during the afternoon when many people are online. Lag depends on your internet connection and the server you get connected to, sometimes I get no lag other times it's frozen with lag, it seems Ubisoft has the 3rd class servers set up for this game, or at least for the consoles.

Downloadable Content (DLC): There are 3 DLCs available for RUSE, one is the Pack of The Rising Sun, The Chimera pack and the Manhattan Project Pack.

The Pack of The Rising Sun offers the ability to play as the Japaneses nation, and includes 3 more operations. The Chimera pack has 3 more maps, and a few more operations, I think 3 more are added. And the Manhattan Project Pack is free, it has 3 more maps and 2 more modes: nuclear and total war. The Rising Sun DLC costs 9.99 dollars, the Chimera costs $6.99 and the Manhattan Project Pack is FREE, they're all on the Playstation Network Store.

Extras: In the main menu in the extras, there's a "Ruseopeida," in which you can look up the different nations units and read their descriptions, nice feature they added.

Concerns: Not many, just that there is a time limit and unit limit.

Conclusion: This is a very good game, with good graphics. It's fun, it's involving, and even though it's a few years old it's great. Anyone who likes strategy and WWII this is the game for you!

If you have any questions about the game ask me.

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Let me preface this by saying I am a long time PC real-time strategy game player (RTS). While not a hardcore gamer by any means, I have play a lot of RTS games and there is one thing I have learned over the years; RTS games always blow on consoles and they are often stripped down versions of their PC counterparts.

I am not going to go into the actual gameplay and what the game entails as it has been done in the other reviews and you should be able to come to a conclusion with the help of those. What I will say is the Move controller along with the Nav controller is the most intuitive and wonderful control scheme I have ever used for a RTS game. The way you can navigate with precision is really way beyond my expectations and the selection mechanism is perfect. It is a good thing that RUSE is a good game to begin with, but it really is an enjoyable experience sitting on the couch in front of the big screen playing this game. You use the Move controller as a cursor on the screen and it basically acts as your mouse. The clever part is actually the nav controller as you use the joystick to move the screen about and you squeeze the trigger to make what I call a paint brush selection. The more you squeeze the trigger the bigger your selection brush gets and you just move the cursor over the units you want to select. Very elegant and fast. If you want to rotate or zoom in you just pull the trigger on the move controller and move the controller left or right or up or down. It is very smooth and very quick and I actually think it works better than the mouse in the PC version. In the heat of battle you will be zooming out and in A LOT and it really is very quick and easy with the move controller and I found myself being much more efficient with my forces than I ever was in the PC version.

So if you are a fan RTS games and happen to have a PS Move lying about, at least download the demo and give a try, I think you will be pleased.